Tsunami: This time, an alert India alerted rest of the world

Indian scientists came to the rescue of almost all countries in the Indian Ocean rim with a sharp and advance forecasting of a possible tsunami on Wednesday.

Scientists of Hyderabad’s Indian Tsunami Early Warning Centre (ITEWC) instantly picked up signals emanating from the bottom of Indian Ocean and issued an alert within six minutes to 28 countries. “There were minor tsunami waves following the earthquake but they subsided within minutes. We withdrew the alert once we were sure that there was no possibility of any tsunami,” Dr Satish Shenoi, director, Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) said.The tsunami buoys and bottom pressure recorders developed by the scientists of Hyderabad’s INCOIS and Chennai’s National Institute of Ocean Technology detect sea surface and bottom temperature, pressure, wind speed and direction, and transfer the data in a flash of a second to the ITEWC. Installed in the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean, these provide ITEWC with round-the-clock real time data on the characteristics of the seas.