"Setting one up is not as easy as simply lifting your hand," Welfare Minister
Aburizal Bakrie told The Associated Press. "We are preparing one, but it is not
finished yet."
In Sumatra, two buoys have been placed in the ocean containing equipment able
to detect whether a tsunami has been triggered and transmit the information to a
land station. However, sirens on beaches or in villages have yet to be set up
there either.
Answering questions from reporters as to why no warning was issued, Vice
President Jusuf Kalla claimed there was no need for one because most people fled
inland after they felt the earthquake, fearing a tsunami.
"After the quake occurred, people ran to the hills so that is the reason the
number of victims is not as great as in Aceh," he said in Jakarta. "So in actual
fact there was a kind of natural early warning system."
However, out of dozens of people interviewed by the AP Tuesday in
Pangandaran, only one person said he felt a slight tremor and not one said there
was a mass movement of people to higher ground before the tsunami struck.
In two other countries affected by the 2004 tsunami, progress toward a
tsunami warning system has been quicker.
Thailand, popular for foreign tourists, has built warning towers on beaches
across its southern coast to blare sirens and broadcast evacuation warnings in
several languages if it receives a warning from regional agencies.
Malaysia has positioned two buoys off its shores to give at least an hour's
warning to coastal communities and is capable of transmitting tsunami alerts to
the public by SMS, television and radio news, officials said.
Sri Lanka has yet to install its own system, but relies on warnings sent by
the Pacific center, which is based in Hawaii, and a similar institution in
Japan, a tsunami official there said.
The plan calls for the information to passed to villages via phone or the
national media. Most Buddhist shrines, Hindu temples and Muslim mosques along
Sri Lanka's coast have had sirens fitted to them to help spread the word, the
official said.
