Tsunami warning system calls grow

Much of Sri Lanka was devastated when the waves struck

Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon has backed calls for a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean after Sunday's undersea earthquake.

He was speaking after scientists said many of the 20,000 people killed by the sea surges could have been saved by an international monitoring network.

He told the BBC: "Surely there's a means of informing people in the Indian Ocean that this is about to happen."

A similar system has existed in the Pacific Ocean for more than 50 years.

Mr McKinnon said on BBC Radio 5 Live: "I think people are going to be asking questions like why can't the Indian Ocean know the kind of things that the Pacific Ocean knows about when tsunamis are around."

DISASTER TOLL Sri Lanka: 10,800 dead Indonesia: 4,500 dead India: 2,958 dead Thailand: 839 dead Malaysia: 44 dead Maldives: 32 dead Burma: 30 dead Bangladesh: 2 dead Eyewitness accounts In pictures: Quake disaster At-a-glance: Countries hit

Five of the countries hit by the towering waves that crashed into Asian and African coastlines are members of the Commonwealth.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka, which suffered the greatest loss of life, admitted on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that more thought should have been given to the possible effects of tsunamis.

She said: "We've never been affected by a thing like this before, so probably we got very lax about it. That's not an excuse, but that should be the reason."

Mrs Kumaratunga said she had already spoken to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about what she called "our common tragedy".

She said she had suggested that the region should set up a joint monitoring and disaster management system to cope with tidal waves and earthquakes.

Onslaught

Seismologists in Australia have said the lack of a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean could have contributed to the scale of Sunday's disaster.

There is no reason why a warning system should not have been positioned David Booth, British Geological Survey

Experts believe that a monitoring network like the one in the Pacific Ocean could have saved thousands of lives.

The international warning system in the Pacific constantly monitors for signs that an earthquake has taken place under the ocean.

It gives advance notice to coastal areas and low-lying islands that floods could be on the way, so that emergency plans can be activated.

Phil Cummins, a seismologist at the government-funded Geoscience Australia research organisation, told the BBC that a similar set-up in the Indian Ocean could have provided some stricken areas valuable time to prepare for the onslaught.

The Thai tourist resort of Phuket was badly hit by the tsunami

Another expert, David Booth of the British Geological Survey, said there was "no reason" why the Indian Ocean should not have had a warning system in place.

"It's difficult to do it for the earthquake itself, but it's easier to do it for tsunamis," he told the BBC's Today programme.

"The reason for that is that seismic waves travel very very fast, but tsunami waves travel at slower speeds - speeds which allow a delay time for a warning to be given.

"In Japan, warning systems are so sophisticated that critical systems such as transport can be shut down after an earthquake, and around the Pacific, there's a well- established tsunami warning system."

However, such systems are expensive and require close co-operation between neighbouring countries.

For developing nations struggling to repair their battered infrastructure, those factors could prove a real obstacle to ensuring that such a disaster never takes place again.