Tsunamis to give warning
2005-01-29 18:24
Phuket, Thailand - Delegates at a conference in Thailand decided on Saturday to create several regional tsunami-warning centres around southern Asia that would protect the area from killer waves, a UN official said.
The two-day meeting at tsunami-battered Phuket island had considered a Thai proposal to make a Bangkok-based disaster prevention centre the hub of the Indian Ocean region, but chose to have several centres after other nations objected to the Thai plan.
"There will not be one regional centre," said Margareta Wahlstrom, special envoy of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. She added that there are "a number of institutions" around the Indian Ocean that could serve as smaller regional centres.
India and Indonesia have also offered to host such centres that would collect seismic and other data from around the region, analyse it and issue tsunami warnings.
The two-day meeting, which opened on Friday, gathered delegates from 57 countries and agencies to hash out how to create a network that would quickly warn nations of a coming tsunami so coastal areas could evacuate. It followed a broader meeting in Japan earlier this month.
A tsunami-warning system has operated for decades in the Pacific Ocean, where a centre in Hawaii issues alerts to 26 nations. Experts say many of the more than 145 000 lives lost in the December 26 southern Asia disaster could have been saved with even a few minutes advance notice.
- AP