Deadly Java tsunami weighs on warning system meeting

JAKARTA, July 30 (Reuters) A tsunami that killed more than 600 people on Java island less than two weeks ago will weigh on a group of global weather scientists when they meet in Indonesia this week to discuss a system aimed at reducing such deaths.

The Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System was formed after the December 26, 2004 tsunami that killed around 230,000 in a dozen Indian Ocean nations.

With the tragedy of this month's tsunami on the southern coastline of Java as a backdrop, the group's third session scheduled for tomorrow through Wednesday on the island of Bali will be critical for progress on tsunami warnings.

UNESCO said that when the Java tsunami struck on July 17, communications functioned well after 18 months of work by the group in the sense that national authorities received a tsunami advisory just 19 minutes after the quake that sparked the massive waves.

''However, several hundred people still lost their lives and tens of thousands more have lost their homes and livelihoods.

The system still has big gaps, notably in getting the warnings to coastal communities in time,'' UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura said in a statement.

An Indonesian minister said he had received the advisory but there was not enough time to get the information to those actually living on Java's southern coastline.

No sirens alerted them after a 7.7 magnitude quake struck around 180 km offshore. Just before the ensuing waves crashed ashore, children and tourists still frolicked on Pangandaran beach, the worst-hit area.

In fact, no sirens have been installed on the beaches of Java, Indonesia's most crowded island, and its two existing tsunami buoys had been damaged months before and were still in repair.

''Certainly, it has made us want to speed up the project. Our timetable must be tightened now,'' Fauzi, head seismologist at Jakarta's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency, told Reuters.

The Indian Ocean group plans initially to have more than 10 tsunami buoys floating off Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and India by the end of the year.

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