Concerns over tsunami readiness persist

Although Mauritius, Madagascar and the Seychelles have called off tsunami alerts issued after a powerful earthquake hit the Indonesian island of Sumatra, concerns remain over the preparedness of Africa's Indian Ocean island countries to handle large-scale disasters. Tsunami warnings were triggered in the three island states after the quake measuring 8.7 on the Richter scale struck late Monday off Indonesia's west coast, but government officials withdrew the alerts early on Tuesday, as meteorologists confirmed the seismic activity had not triggered outsized waves. Last December an earthquake off the Indonesian island of Aceh generated a tsunami that hit 13 countries in the Indian Ocean rim, leaving more than 200,000 people dead. "It's safe to say the earthquake did not trigger a tsunami this time as it would have hit by now, but even though we've cancelled the alerts, we are still monitoring the situation very closely," Mauritius Meteorological Services director, Sok Appadu, told IRIN. He said the national weather service had sent out tsunami alerts to the coastal regions, as well as the remote islands of Rodrigues and Agalega in the Mauritius group. "As soon as we received the news from the seismologists in the United States that the earthquake had hit Sumatra, we immediately issued warnings advising people to stay away from the shoreline. The port authority and media also helped a great deal to disseminate the alerts to tourists and fisherman," Appadu said. Mauritius was better prepared to deal with the threat of a tsunami, he pointed out, because the December crisis had increased awareness of the need to strengthen emergency measures to cope with natural disasters. "After the loss of life in December [in Asia] there has definitely been more emphasis on disaster preparedness. There is now a network of communication in place, which involves provincial and local authorities as well as community leaders," Appadu said. "This means, at any given time there is someone who can be contacted in case of an impending disaster, but we still have a long way to go to ensure that a robust tsunami early warning system is in place for the Indian Ocean region. Right now, the system we have is quite fragile, as we depend on information sent via email from Japan and the US - sometimes the computers are down and it is difficult to access important information," he added. On Monday Seychellois authorities broadcast alerts to hotels, port authorities and fishing vessels. Although this Indian Ocean archipelago off the east coast of Africa lies more than 7,000 km from the epicentre of the undersea quake that triggered the tidal waves on 26 December 2004, it suffered severe flooding and widespread damage to roads, fishing infrastructure and tourism facilities. "Our first priority was to alert the coast guard to get the fishing boats out of the sea, to avoid any loss of human life. But since the last tsunami struck we have designed a fairly good contingency plan that involves all government departments; the last time, the National Disaster Committee immediately set up a base at the police command centre in the capital, which monitored the situation," said Francois Albert, an official at the Seychelles Meteorological Services. Relatively well-off islands, such as Mauritius and the Seychelles, are confident that their contingency plans would be executed should disaster strike, but their resource-strapped neighbours, Madagascar and the Comoros, are unlikely to cope so easily. The director of Madagascar's weather service, Solo Alain Razafimahazo, commented, "We have a plan, but we must admit that we do not have the capacity to carry out that plan: communicating disaster alerts is our biggest challenge because there any many villages that are very isolated. This tsunamni phenomenon is a new idea for many of these communities, and resources are needed to start public awareness campaigns." A fundamental concern was the lack of adequate shelter to house potentially thousands of people likely to be affected by a tsunami, Razafimahazo said. "We have trucks to evacuate people from villages, and the police and army know what to do, but the question is, what happens after the rescue?" Kenyan authorities also issued a tsunami alert on Monday, soon after the National Disaster Operation Centre (NDOP) received a report from the US embassy in the capital, Nairobi, that an earthquake had struck Indonesia, NDOP director Col Shem Amadi told IRIN. He said the navy and other military units in the coastal region, the police, the port authority, the provincial administration, hospitals and the umbrella body of hoteliers and tour operators were all put on high alert. "Supposing the worst had happened, we would have mobilised our national resources - you cannot have a perfect plan for a disaster, what you need is the skeleton around which you can put systems," said Amadi. One person drowned and several fishing boats on the Kenyan coast were damaged by the December tsunami.