Andaman,
Indonesia hit by two more quakes
New
Delhi: The southern region of Andaman and the western
coast of Indonesia experienced two moderate intensity earthquakes
on Wednesday. According to the Indian Meteorological Department
(IMD), no casualty or damage has been reported due to the
tremors. The IMD reported that a moderate intensity earthquake,
measuring 5.1 on Richter scale, occurred at around 2241
hrs on Tuesday with its epicentre being 10.1 degree north
latitude and 92.8 degree east longitude near the south of
Little Andaman. The second quake, measuring 5.3 on the Richter
scale, occurred with its epicentre being 4.5-degree north
latitude and 94.5 degree east longitude near the West Coast
of Indonesia and occurred at around 2019 hours.
Andaman's
aboriginals safe: Pranab (Go
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Kolkata:
Union Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee has said that
the aborigines in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, namely, Onges,
Sentinel and Jarawa tribes are safe, contrary to reports
appearing in a major daily that claimed that these tribal
populations had more or less been wiped out. Giving details
of his visit to the devastated islands, Mukherjee said that
the Ongi people had escaped the tsunami disaster as they
were located on higher ground,. He, however, admitted that
the Sentinelese and Jarawas had been affected, but not s
severely as was being made out by reports. Referring to
the reports about the casualties suffered in the islands,
Mukherjee said they were highly exaggerated, adding that
a joint secretary from the Home Ministry has been asked
to camp there to oversee relief and rehabilitation operations.
The islands consist of the Jarawas (Population of 266),
Onges (Population 100), Shompens (population 250), Sentinelese
(Population 100), Nicobarese and great Andamanese (Population
40) are the world's last aboriginal tribes. A lot of confusion,
however, persists about their whereabouts as there was no
information about them for the past two days.
Nagapattinam
carries out mass burials (Go
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Nagapattinam
(Tamil Nadu): Residents of the Tamil Nadu town of Nagapattinam,
the area said to be the worst hit by last Sunday's tsunami,
have begun carrying out mass burials. So far, Red Cross
officials of the Thajavur chapter have confirmed the burial
of more than 5000 bodies. Out of them, 2400 are from Nagapattinam,
1500 from Velankanni and 1000 from other parts of the district,
Raj Manohar, the secretary of the Red Cross Thanjavur chapter
said. Manohar said the burial toll is likely to go up as
more bodies have been sighted in the district. At least
30 medical teams from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are working
round-the-clock to provide relief to the affected. Nearly
500 injured persons have been admitted to Nagapattinam,
Thanjavur and Tiruvarur government hospitals, he added.
The entire coastal belt from Nagore to Velankanni, in which
14 fishermen hamlets were located, have been washed away
by the tidal waves. The Red Cross, together with the health
authorities, has planned to launch a massive anti-cholera
inoculation programme from today in the district, informed
the Red Cross official. Relief is being activated in full
swing with a little help from corporate houses like BHEL
and Hyundai, which are supplying medicines to government
authorities, he said.
Inertia,
protocol interfered with timely tsunami warning: AWSJ (Go
To Top)
New
York: Bureaucratic inertia, diplomatic protocol and
poor infrastructure is reportedly now being blamed for the
late reaction to last Sunday's earthquake-linked tsunami
devastation in eight South Asian countries. According to
the Asian Wall Street Journal, an earthquake alert in the
computers of Australia's Geoscience Agency triggered a call
Sunday morning to the home of the duty seismology officer
in Canberra. He rushed to his office anticipating the possibility
of a tsunami and sent out a warning message to the national
emergency system and to some of Australia's embassies overseas
within half an hour. But no messages were sent to foreign
governments because doing so would have overstepped diplomatic
protocol, the paper quoted some officials as saying. In
Nagano, Japan, Masashi Kobayashi manned the nation's main
observatory for detecting distant earthquakes on Sunday
morning. At 10:07 a.m. local time, a short computer beep
alerted him that a big earthquake had occurred somewhere
in the region. Japan, a seismological hotbed that gave the
world the word "tsunami," has an advanced and extensive
emergency- management system that quickly swung into gear.
It notified senior officials, compared the pattern of the
earthquake with data on 100,000 other temblors, and determined
Japan faced no tsunami risk.
About
the same time in West Sumatra, Indonesia, about 690 kilometres
southeast of the quake's epicentre, the seismograph in Bayu
Pranata's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency station clacked
so loudly he thought mechanics had started working in the
garage next door. Realizing he was recording an earthquake
of more than magnitude 8.0, Pranata spent more than an hour
trying in vain to contact local authorities. Later, after
a senior earthquake official was notified of the quake by
a local radio reporter, Indonesia's National Earthquake
Centre e-mailed its counterparts in Asia and Europe, but
never followed up with phone calls. Kathawuth Malairojsiri,
a weather-forecast chief at Thailand's Meteorological Department
at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, got
a call from a friend who said he had just seen news of the
quake on the U.S. Geological Survey's Web site. Immediately,
Kathawuth called a Bangkok traffic radio station, JS 100,
asking it to broadcast a tsunami warning -- which the station
did, he says, adding that his office received more than
1,000 calls after that and so he hopes he may have saved
at least a few lives. Some of the hardest-hit areas, however,
such as Sri Lanka and India, had no warning at all.
And
now a number of Indian scientists are saying the country
suffered from its exclusion from a body like the Pacific
Tsunami warning Centre in Honolulu, which tracks tsunamis
for Pacific Rim countries. They also say India could invest
more in ocean sensors and other oceanographic equipment
to gauge better swells brewing in the Bay of Bengal. The
result was the death of tens of thousands of people. Meanwhile,
the tsunami death toll is approaching the 60,000 mark, even
as relief groups continue to face a daunting battle to stabilise
the situation. Scientists and seismologists say that had
there been a better warning system and speedier communication
between officials, an immense difference could have been
made to the ultimate tragedy. "Had there been a warning
system in place a lot of lives could've been saved," said
Phil McFadden, chief scientist at Geoscience Australia.
Dutta Trayam, who heads the seismology department at the
Indian Meteorological Department, said "We simply didn't
get any warnings from anybody." Developed nations that border
oceans susceptible to tsunamis, such as the U.S., Japan
and Australia, have developed extensive detection and communication
systems. Seismologists in all three nations learned almostimmediately
of the Indonesian quake. It took them longer to determine
whether a tsunami would form and how severe it would be,
but the biggest barrier was communicating their knowledge.
Tsunami
can devour New York in 10 hours (Go
To Top)
London/Washington:
A killer tsunami like the one that swamped south Asia
last Sunday would take between 8 to 10 hours to devour New
York and the US East Coast, a British researcher has claimed.
According to Professor Bill McGuire, of the Benfield Hazard
Research Center at University College in London, the largest
tidal wave would race across the Atlantic and hit New York
as well as shorelines from the Caribbean to Boston at up
to 600 mph. McGuire is further quoted by the Daily News
as saying that waves of up to 75 feet would engulf the "Big
Apple" and travel miles inland, destroying everything in
their path.
