By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Mar 29 2005 (IPS)

Although science and technology offer time-tested early warning systems to detect deadly tsunamis, countries that share the Indian Ocean are learning fast about the pivotal role the public and local communities can play to save lives.

This was the reality that emerged out of the nightmare that swept across this region late Monday night, when a powerful undersea earthquake struck off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Within minutes of countries in the Indian Ocean basin learning about the quake, a network of government officials and community leaders were summoned into action to evacuate people from coastal areas that were vulnerable to a devastating tsunami.

In southern Thailand, for instance, civilians, police and military led the way to rouse sleeping residents and usher them to safer ground. ”The work was done in half-an-hour after notification of the earthquake,” Suvit Yodmani, executive director of Bangkok-based Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC), told reporters on Tuesday.

”The areas were cleared on a knocking-the-door basis,” he added. ”The communication to get the message out was not haphazard.”

In Sri Lanka, religious groups, village leaders and the police were at the forefront of evacuation measures after the government issued an alarm about a possible tsunami striking the country’s eastern coast. ”Temples rang bells, village networks sprang into action and also the police went from house to house to get people to evacuate,” a Sri Lankan diplomat told IPS.

The sea, however, did not rise up this week as it did following the late December undersea temblor off the coast of Sumatra, although Monday night’s quake was as strong – 8.7 magnitude – as the one three months before, which was 9.0 on the Richter scale.

The staggering death toll following the Dec. 26 tsunami was attributed to the affected countries lacking an early warning system, including limited public knowledge about preventive measures to take in the face of such an approaching natural disaster.

But if the vulnerable countries intend placing faith in a greater public role as part of an emerging tsunami warning system, then the disaster prevention blueprint in the Philippines will be very instructive about the work that lies ahead.

For few countries in the Indian Ocean basin have plans that measure up to what is in place in that archipelago, where the threat of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and typhoons are regular features of life.

The public learning curve to be aware of impending natural disasters begins in the Philippines school system. ”The grade six school curricula includes lessons that offer vital information relevant to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. And students learn about typhoons in grades three and five,” Renato Solidum Jr., director of the Philippines Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, told IPS.

Furthermore, disaster prevention plans also include educating vulnerable communities with the system that comes to life when evacuation messages have to be relayed, hazardous areas to be avoided in the event of a disaster and escape routes to follow.

”You have to go down to the community to inform people about the alert level that will be used when a disaster like the tsunami strikes,” said Solidum. ”Communities can play their part through natural observation, like noticing unusual sea levels falling or rising or the rapid sea retreat that precedes a tsunami.”

For ADPC’s Suvit, community involvement is one of the three pillars on which an effective tsunami warning system must be built. The other two are the high-tech monitoring and detection systems, the likes of which do not prevail in the Indian Ocean region, and a communication network to transmit alarms about impending tsunamis.

”We in the region have to concentrate on communication and community involvement because they are cost effective areas,” he added.

What is more, they are measures that vulnerable countries can pursue at national levels while the region’s governments seek ways to cooperate on the very expensive and politically sensitive high-tech tsunami detection system.

According to a U.N. official, there has been little movement towards setting up a central tsunami warning centre for the Indian Ocean to mirror the detection centre in Hawaii, which monitors tsunamis across the Pacific Ocean.

Even the financial offer made by Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra shortly after the deadly tsunami of December to kick-start a fund to build a warning centre has not been matched by the 11 other countries hit by that tusnami.

However, interest in such a warning centre – which some experts estimate will run into the millions to build and at the same time gobble an equally high sum to maintain – has been prominent in major international disaster conferences, including ones in Japan and Indonesia.

Even if one was to be set up, says Suvit, it could take two years to be fully operational.

Till then, the countries that could be hit by a tsunami following undersea earthquakes and aftershocks from the Sumatra-Java fault line will have to turn to local communities to respond once the alarms go off about a possible wall of water rushing to engulf their coastlines.

”For developing countries, such a level of public awareness to save lives in the wake of a tsunami is very important. We have to really work at it,” said the Sri Lankan diplomat.

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