Warning system helped spread quake warning
The initial parts of an Indian Ocean tsunami warning system that is not due until next year worked to alert governments in the region to the latest major earthquake and helped sound the all-clear ending fears of a killer wave.
Indian Ocean nations agreed in a Paris meeting earlier this month to establish the full warning system next year, but first steps were already underway, said John Harding of the United Nations’ International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.
Today was the deadline for governments to provide contact details to Japanese and US warning centres, and many had already provided the necessary details, Harding said.
The contacts made it possible for word of the quake off Sumatra last night to be relayed ”to authorities in the region through a number of networks”, he said.
Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka then ordered a protective evacuation, Harding said.
Two sea-level gauges in Sri Lanka and off Australia more than 1,000 miles from the epicentre of the quake enabled experts to call off the tsunami warning, he added.
The rise of less than one foot in sea level three hours after the quake meant “it was safe to say that there would not be a large tsunami following that particular earthquake”, Harding said.
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