Indian tsunami warning system at Hyderabad soon

Kochi, July 20: Praising India for moving fast to set up a tsunami advance warning system in the wake of the December 2004 disaster, internationally renowned tsunami expert S Murthy today said the Indian tsunami warning system at Hyderabad is likely to be fully operational by September 2007.

Talking to reporters, after inaugurating the ''Tsunami Cell'' here at School of Marine Sciences in Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), Prof Murthy said the ''Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Systems'' (INCOIS) set up under the aegis of the Union Department of Ocean Development (DoD) at Hyderabad would act as an interim tsunami warning centre.

Prof Murthy said the centre, which was already in a position to issue advance warnings for tsunami would be fully operational by September next year.

Tsunami buoys would be placed at two places in the Arabian Sea and ten places in the Bay of Bengal as part of the system.

''Among the 37 Indian Ocean countries, only India and Australia have made substantial progress in setting up tsunami warning systems. All the other countries are lagging behind,'' he said.

Prof Murthy said the Indian Ocean Protocol for Regional Cooperation on tsunami, coordinated by the Inter-Governmental Oceonographic Commission (IOC), a part of UNESCO, was also likely to be in place by September next year.

''Once fully operational, the Indian system will be as good as the existing ones for the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans,'' he added.

Prof Murthy said the biggest tsunami threat to India was from under-sea earthquakes in the Sumatra area and very little from the Java trench, which witnessed a tsunami recently.

There was also a minor threat from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the Makran coast on the Iran-Pakistan border on the west coast, he said.

UNI