Indonesia will place sirens on cellular phone towers in a bid to warn coastal residents of a tsunami, a minister said on Wednesday.
JAKARTA: Indonesia will place sirens on cellular phone towers in a bid to warn coastal residents of a tsunami, a minister said on Wednesday, more than a week after huge waves killed hundreds of people on the south coast of Java.
Officials in Indonesia have come under fire for the lack of any warning ahead of the July 17 tsunami, despite regional efforts to set up an early alert system after the massive 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
The recent Java tsunami occured more than 30 minutes after a magnitude 7.7 quake struck under the Indian Ocean, but people in coastal communities were not alerted to the impending threat.
The huge waves brought death and destruction to a 300-km (185-mile) stretch of the island''s south coast. Over 650 people were killed and almost 100 remain missing.
"We will accelerate information to the people to below 20 minutes when there is a potential tsunami by using sirens in the coastal areas," Research and Technology Minister Kusmayanto Kadiman told reporters after a cabinet meeting.
"We will equip cellular phone towers in the coastal areas with sirens. They will work when the meteorological office hits the button to warn of a possible tsunami," Kadiman said.
He also said metereological offices would upgrade their equipment so that information on a tsunami could be relayed quicker to the police, broadcasting networks and local government officials assigned to turn on the sirens.
Information Minister Sofyan Djalil said his office would ask radio and television stations to interrupt programming to broadcast official information about a tsunami as breaking news.
Pamphlets about the threat of a tsunami would also be distributed among coastal residents, he said.
In a meeting with residents on Java's west coast last week, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono found the public appeared to have little idea how to react if a tsunami came their way.
Yudhoyono said he had told local officials to ensure people were educated on the matter after the 2004 tsunami left 170,000 people dead or missing in the province of Aceh.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla, who chaired Wednesday's meeting, said he wanted the country's tsunami early warning system project completed by 2008 to shield all vulnerable coastal areas.
Indonesia's 17,000 islands sprawl along a belt of intense volcanic and seismic activity, part of what is called the 'Pacific Ring of Fire'.
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