S. Pacific Unprepared for Tsunamis?

[Copied from Discovery Channel] Madeleine Coorey, AFP

April 3, 2007 — Australia's hasty reaction to the threat of a tsunami which hit the Solomon Islands contrasted sharply with a lack of equipment and expertise to warn South Pacific nations, experts said.

A massive undersea 8.0-magnitude earthquake spawned the deadly tsunami Monday that pounded the Solomon Islands and triggered emergency warnings around the Pacific of possible sea surges there.

Australian officials were aware almost immediately of the abnormally large quake and predicted from its size and location that there was a chance the country's east coast could be hit by a tsunami.

Beaches along Australia's east coast were quickly closed and ferries crossing Sydney Harbor stopped as officials anxiously awaited news.

But it took hours for any more information about a possible tidal wave to reach Australian cities because of a lack of equipment and expertise in the South Pacific, experts said.

"This was frightening in a sense that we were warned there could've been a tsunami, we were trying to work out the magnitude of it but we were shooting blind, and I don't believe this is good enough," said Peter Beattie, Premier of Queensland state.

The South Pacific needed more equipment, such as tide gauges and satellite-linked buoys, to measure ocean movement so that Australia and its neighbours could be better warned of tsunamis, expert Gary Gibson said.

"It was so frustrating for the first few hours not to have confirmation (of a tsunami)," said Gibson, chairman of the executive committee of the US-based International Seismological Center.

"The Pacific has the best tsunami warning system in the world. The South Pacific is not quite as well set up. You can be waiting a long time to get information."

Gibson said Australia's warning system had been upgraded following the devastating 2004 tsunami, caused by a massive undersea quake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
That tsunami killed 200,000 people around the Indian Ocean shoreline.

"It's a matter of priorities and the priority has been given to the northwest coast because of the possibility of big earthquakes from Indonesia," he said.

The Australian government has said it would review its system after the Solomons tsunami, although its early warning system was on track to be fully operational in 2009. By that time, officials should be able to make more accurate predictions of tsunamis.

Monday's information vacuum led to some overreaction in Australia, particularly in the northeastern city of Cairns, where hundreds of residents attempted to drive to higher ground, causing gridlock on low-lying roads.

That response, said Gibson, "was not based on reality."

Kevin McCue, director of the Australian Seismological Centre, said Australian officials should have used historical data to predict that any tsunami from the Solomons quake would not present a danger here.

"We should have known we weren't going to have a damaging tsunami," he told AFP. "I think it was just an overreaction to Sumatra."

He said Australia should help neighbours such as Papua New Guinea improve their warning systems by giving them equipment and personnel.

But he said no amount of money would help those most at risk escape a tsunami as there was only five minutes after a quake to seek higher ground.

"They don't have telephones, they don't have power. There's no way of alerting people on the ground in the most risky areas," he said.

David Walsh, of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii, said there was a large network of water gauges in the South Pacific which were used to determine the risk of tsunamis.

But he noted: "Many of the gauges are inoperable on any given day."