No siren, no warning: Indonesians caught unawares by devastating tsunami
JAKARTA/PALU, Indonesia: When up to six-metre tsunami waves crashed into the Indonesian city of Palu last month, Didiek Wahyudi Kurniawan’s house near the beach was quickly engulfed with water, leaving his wife and two daughters barely any time to escape.
“I know there is supposed to be a tsunami warning alarm, but maybe it was outdated? I have no idea. We never get any warning from it,” said Kurniawan, 46.
He said he was out at the time but his family escaped by wading through chest-high water to a neighbour’s three-storey building. While his family was spared, scores attending a beach festival in Palu were among those swept away, adding to the more than 1,600 deaths from the 7.5 magnitude quake and tsunami that have been confirmed so far.
Other survivors also said they heard no sirens, even though a tsunami warning was issued and then lifted 34 minutes after the quake, based on data available from the closest tidal sensor, around 200 km from Palu, which is on Sulawesi island.
As Indonesia struggles with the aftermath of the devastating quake, the spotlight has again been shone on the apparent lack of preparedeness in a sprawling archipelago that suffers regular tremors, lying on the seismically active so-called Pacific Ring of Fire.
There was a major push in the region to improve warning systems after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed more than 120,000 in Indonesia alone, including establishing a network of 22 warning buoys to detect tsunamis that was put in place with German and US help.
International agencies and countries poured US$4.6 billion into the reconstruction of Indonesia’s devastated Aceh province on Sumatra island, with new infrastructure such as strategically placed evacuation centres.
Still, with the first waves in Palu arriving within around four minutes and power and communications knocked out by the quake, text message alerts or sirens would probably not have been enough, even if they were working.
Indonesia’s national disaster mitigation agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said people still often did not know what to do when a disaster strikes.
Unlike in quake-prone countries like Japan and New Zealand, earthquake education and drills are conducted only sporadically in Indonesia.
Adam Switzer, a tsunami expert at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, said from evidence so far it appeared the tsunami in Palu was generated by a submarine landslide, something most warning systems would not pick up.
“The earthquake is the warning. The first thing you need to do is take cover in a safe space until the shaking stops and then get yourself away from the coast. It’s about education,” said Switzer, stressing that this needed ‘to be ingrained in every child in Asia, especially in Southeast Asia’.