• DMC assures high-tech communications within 1.5 hrs

The Disaster Management Centre (DMC) is well-equipped to communicate tsunami early warnings to the public within one-and-a-half hours of an earthquake, it assured yesterday (30).

DMC Director General (DG) Maj. Gen. S. Ranasinghe gave this assurance in response to a query from The Sunday Morning about whether the centre lacked nearly Rs. 200 million to renovate around 50 tsunami early warning towers situated in coastal areas.

He stated that a part of the financing had been secured by the DMC through a project headed by the Irrigation Department and funded by the World Bank (WB). 

The DG stressed that the centre had adopted new high-tech communication methods to reach almost all citizens living around Sri Lanka’s coastal belt.

“We can communicate the early warning within one-and-a-half hours. This includes all verification processes too. For any earthquakes in the Indian Ocean that are over the magnitude of 8 on the Richter scale, we are not reconfirming but taking immediate action to evacuate citizens from coastal belts,” he stressed.

Maj. Gen. Ranasinghe said that Sri Lanka’s 77 early warning towers covered only 154 km out of the 1,364 km-long coastal belt around the country. 

“Some people think these towers alone can save the lives of the people, which is not true. There is a mechanism and we have recently introduced a ringing tone to inform us about tsunamis. Initially we registered 60,000 numbers and are planning to expand it further. We have created WhatsApp groups, we are getting the support of 119 and the tri-forces, and officials have been assigned to mitigate disasters and evacuate people,” he stressed.

“We have Australian, Indonesian, and Indian Ocean tsunami early warning network connections with the DMC and the Meteorological Department. If anything happens in identified stretches in the Indian Ocean, we will know at the moment it happens. They immediately give out the message and we have a dashboard at the emergency operational early warning centre. The moment we get that, the shortest time we have is one-and-a-half hours. The moment we are notified, we reconfirm it with the Indian tsunami early warning system and then get the final confirmation,” the DG explained.

On Friday (29), the US Geological Survey (USGS) reported that four strong earthquakes had taken place in the Mid-Indian Ridge of the Indian Ocean on the morning of 29 December, southwest of Sri Lanka. 

The first quake registered a magnitude of 4.8 and a depth of 10 km, with three subsequent quakes which registered magnitudes of 5.2 (depth 10 km), 5.8 (depth 7.7 km), and 5 (depth 10 km), respectively.

Again on Saturday morning, a ‘white’ warning was issued by the National Tsunami Early Warning Centre, urging those living near and around the coastal areas to remain vigilant. 

The warning was issued following a 6.6 magnitude earthquake in the Indian Ocean off North Sumatra at 10.49 a.m. yesterday (30), with a depth of 10 km. 

Those living near and along the coast around the island were advised to be attentive regarding future announcements in this regard.

The public was notified that the latest information in this regard would be broadcast through the media as it became available to the Department of Meteorology.

Later in the day, the department said that there was no tsunami threat to Sri Lanka due to the earthquake and that the coastal areas of Sri Lanka had been declared safe. 

The department said that the message was being announced in consultation with relevant national and international agencies.

In response to the recent earthquakes, the DMC DG said: “We have identified the plate. Tsunamis and earthquakes can happen only on the tectonic plate 10 km under the normal surface and we know where the plates are. Within this plate, there’s an additional plate being developed in the southeast, 200 km away from Sri Lanka. If something happens on these plates, we know how much time we have and we have the early warning plans in place.”

Commenting on yesterday’s warning, the DMC DG said: “With anything above the magnitude of 8 on the Richter scale, we do not wait for any other warnings; we release the warning for evacuation. Today, it was prematurely released by the Meteorological Department, which is not empowered to do so. It is the DMC that should do it. The duty officer got excited and released the message without informing us. It is good as a rehearsal, but it made people get excited unnecessarily,” he said.

“We have done a number of rehearsals. On 5 November, we had a regional tsunami exercise with 10 countries,” he added, assuring that communication would be done through the proper channels in case of an emergency.

The catastrophic effects of the 2004 tsunami, known as the ‘Boxing Day Tsunami,’ were felt by 14 nations, including Sri Lanka.