Indonesia's tsunami warning system has not been working since 2012.
Indonesia's tsunami warning buoy system has not been operational since 2012, an official said on Friday, just two days after a tsunami hit the islands of Sumatra and Java in the Sunda Strait, killing nearly 300 people.
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| Lack of early tsunami warning left people on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Java unable to evacuate in time. Photo: New York Times |
In a series of tweets today, Indonesia's National Disaster Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said: "Acts of sabotage, lack of funding and technical faults have caused the tsunami warning buoy system to fail." The official confirmed that on the night the tsunami hit Sumatra and Java, no tsunami warning system was operational.
"There was no tsunami warning system on the night of December 22, 2018. That made it impossible for local authorities to detect the tsunami early. Tsunami warning signs could not be recorded so people did not have time to evacuate," Mr. Nugroho wrote.
According to Mr. Nugroho, Indonesia still does not have a tsunami warning system that can detect undersea landslides and underwater volcanic eruptions.
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| Graphic simulation of tsunami caused by Anak Krakatau volcano. Graphic: Alex Cox/Dailymail |
Currently, Indonesia has only one early warning system for tsunamis caused by earthquakes. It was installed in 2008, a few years after the 9.3 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit the Banda Aceh region in 2004. The twin disasters in the Indian Ocean killed 168,000 Indonesians and nearly 250,000 in neighboring areas.
"There are 127 volcanoes, or 13% of the world's volcanoes, in Indonesia. Some of them are under the sea or on small islands, so when they erupt, they can cause tsunamis," said Mr. Nugroho. That is the challenge for government agencies and research institutes to develop early warning systems, he said.
On the evening of December 22, a powerful tsunami struck the Sunda Strait between the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Java, just over 20 minutes after a volcano erupted. This tsunami disaster has killed at least 281 people and injured more than 1,000. The death toll is expected to rise further.
The reason for the high number of casualties is that the people on the islands did not receive any warning of an impending tsunami. Local authorities initially believed that the wave was not a tsunami but a tidal surge, so people should not worry too much.
Experts say this tsunami may have been caused by the eruption of the Anak Krakatoa volcano, which led to the "partial collapse" of Anak Krakatau into the sea and caused a large wave.
