India against tsunami threat

 

• India is much safer against the threat of tsunamis than it was in 2004, thanks to the state­of­the­art tsunami early warning system established in the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS). However, the best of warning systems could fail, if communities are not prepared, if they do not understand the official and natural warning signs of a tsunami, and if they do not take appropriate and timely response
• We have made impressive progress in building tsunami early warning capability. From absolutely no warning capability or for that matter any public knowledge of tsunamis in the Indian Ocean, we have reached a stage where we can detect large undersea earthquakes in real­time and provide a tsunami warning in 10­-20 minutes after the earthquake occurrence. In fact, for Indian Ocean earthquakes where the network of seismometers is reasonably good, quakes can now be detected in less than five minutes and a tsunami warning issued within 10 minutes if the quake occurs elsewhere in the globe
• The focus in recent times has been on enhancing community awareness and response through several capacity-building activities, biennial Indian Oceanwide tsunami drills, and piloting of the UNESCO-­IOC Tsunami Ready initiative to provide a structured framework to build and measure capacities of coastal communities to respond effectively to tsunamis, through 11 important indicators.
• Two villages — Venkatraipur in Ganjam district and Noliasahi in Jagatsingpur district in Odisha — are now ‘Tsunami­Ready’. “This has to be replicated in other vulnerable coastal communities as it also enhances the ability to respond to cyclones and storm surges too

Source: The Hindu