ENVIRONMENT: Tsunami Danger Receding, but Not Gone, Experts Say

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kitty Stapp

NEW YORK, Mar 28 2005 (IPS) - Millions of people in the Indian Ocean region, still reeling from the devastating waves that battered coastlines the day after Christmas, are anxiously awaiting confirmation that a massive quake in Sumatra will not trigger a similar disaster.

Millions of people in the Indian Ocean region, still reeling from the devastating waves that battered coastlines the day after Christmas, are anxiously awaiting confirmation that a massive quake in Sumatra will not trigger a similar disaster.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said Monday that the 8.7 magnitude quake struck 125 miles west-northwest of Sibolga, Sumatra, or 880 miles northwest of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta – near where the Dec. 26 temblor unleashed tsunamis that killed an estimated 300,000 people.

“It was a portion of the same plate boundary where the stress was not released on Dec. 26,” Carolyn Bell of USGS told IPS. “There was severe earth-shaking. It’s a very active seismic zone.”

According to the most recent bulletin issued by the United States Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre, whose mandate is generally limited to the Pacific Ocean, the earthquake has the potential to generate “a widely destructive tsunami in the ocean or seas near the earthquake.”

It urges authorities in the Indian Ocean region to take immediate action, including evacuation of coasts within 1,000 kms of the epicentre and close monitoring to determine the need for evacuation further away.

Experts say that now it is a matter of waiting to see what happens in the next hour or so.

“If no waves are observed within three hours, the danger has passed,” Theresa Eisenman of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the Pacific Warning Centre, told IPS. “We’re nearing that cusp of three hours.”

Responsibility for tracking the effects of the quake has been handed over to the Japanese Meteorological Agency in Tokyo, she added.

News reports from the region say that in Banda Aceh, the Sumatran city hit hardest by December’s tsunami, the earthquake cut electricity and sent thousands of panicked residents fleeing into the streets. There has been no word yet on casualties.

The shaking lasted for about two minutes – far longer than most of the daily aftershocks that have rocked Aceh since Dec. 26. Tremors from the quake could be felt in the Thai capital of Bangkok for several minutes beginning at about 11:20 p.m. local time.

“We are communicating with our embassies in the affected areas about the event and encouraging them to work closely with local aid agencies,” said a State Department spokesman.

Last December’s undersea quake and ensuing waves left more than 1.5 million people homeless in 11 countries.

The tragedy prompted an unprecedented outpouring of aid from around the world, although the Asian Development Bank said at a recent international meeting of donor countries, regional governments and aid agencies in the Philippines that there is a shortfall of more than four billion dollars promised for rebuilding India, Indonesia, the Maldives and Sri Lanka.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Monday that officials were in talks with the Indonesian government to determine what kind of action should be taken, once the repercussions of the latest earthquake are determined.

“What (we) know now is that the quake happened in shallow waters, which is a dangerous development,” OCHA said.

Jan Egeland, the U.N. disaster relief coordinator, told reporters Monday that, “The hard-hit population of western Sumatra have been again struck by a very large earthquake.”

“We do not have reports of any tsunami yet and we have also only limited reports of damage,” he noted, adding that there were “unconfirmed reports” of deaths on Nias, a renowned surfing spot badly hit by the earlier quake.

“What may have happened in Nias, where there are reports of deaths caused by this earthquake, may be that buildings that nearly collapsed during the first earthquake collapsed now,” Egeland said.