Communication failure contributed to tsunami disaster

Colombo, Dec 26 - There was sufficient warning about the possibility of a tsunami hitting Sri Lanka but it was not communicated in time to the coastal areas for people to flee to safety, the local Daily Mirror said Wednesday.

According to writer Chanuka Wattegama, there was a 23-minute gap between the first definitive warning from the Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) and the first waves that lashed Sri Lanka.

The Sri Lankan government's Seismological Station in Pallekele had received the first warning at 7 a.m. on that day but it was mild. A second revised warning came at 8.04 a.m. saying that the magnitude of the undersea earthquake was higher, at 8.5 on the Richter scale.

This was indeed alarming and sure enough, the first waves of the tsunami began to strike the eastern Sri Lankan coast at 8.27 a.m.

But no officer was there in the Pallekele Seismological Station at 8 a.m. to read the message and convey it to the authorities in the coastal areas. Being a Sunday, that too a Sunday after Christmas, there was nobody at the station to see the warning.

Warnings within Sri Lanka were not forthcoming even after the devastation of the Batticaloa coast at 8.40 a.m. Trincomalee was hit at 8.52 a.m. and Humbantota in the deep south at 8.55.a.m. Jaffna was hit at 9 a.m. and Galle at 9.15 a.m. Areas near Colombo were struck between 9.20 and 9.30 am.

Virtually none, including the government agencies, used the existing communication facilities to warn the country or each other. There were no warning radio broadcasts, only reporting of incidents as news.

And for all that, the communication facilities in Sri Lanka were not inconsiderable. Wattegama points out that 37 percent of Sri Lankans own a telephone, 80 percent own a radio, and 71 percent have television sets.

Tragically, calls that were made went unheeded. The world's worst train disaster at Peraliya, 96 km south of Colombo, could have been avoided if only the station staff at Ambalangoda had attended, in time, to the warning telephone call that the railway authorities had made.

The stationmaster and his deputy were busy unloading some goods from the train and by the time they took the call, it had left the station to meet its fate at Peraliya. Wattegama put the toll at 2,000 men, women and children.

'It is appalling that our sophisticated communications systems failed us on that fateful day,' said renowned science writer Sir Arthur Clarke, who has been residing in Sri Lanka since 1956 and campaigning for better communications and coastal management.

(c) Indo-Asian News Service

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