Asia battles tidal catastrophe

US officials who detected a massive earthquake off Asia's coast on Saturday tried frantically to warn the deadly wall of water was coming, the head of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said on Sunday.

But there was no official alert system in the region because such catastrophes only happen there about once every 700 years, said Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's centre in Honolulu.

"We tried to do what we could," Mr McCreery said. "We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world."

Within moments of detecting the quake, Mr McCreery and his staff were on the phone to Australia, then to US Naval officials, various US embassies and finally the US State Department.

They were unable to reach the thousands in the countries most severely affected - including India, Thailand and Sri Lanka - because none had a tsunami warning mechanism or tidal gauges to alert people, he said.

The 8.9-magnitude underwater quake - one of the most powerful in history - off the Indonesian island of Sumatra devastated southern Asia and triggered waves of up to 10 metres high, killing more than 22,000 people.

"We actually issued a bulletin about the quake but it only went to the countries in the Pacific... that subscribe... and that would include Australia and Indonesia," Mr McCreery said.

Because of the lack of monitoring mechanisms, US officials had no access to government or scientific information in the areas affected by the latest tsunamis and were relying on more general information.

A warning centre such as those used around the Pacific could have saved thousands of lives, Waverly Person of the US Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Centre, said.

"Most of those people could have been saved if they had had a tsunami warning system in place or tide gauges," he said.

"And I think this will be a lesson to them," he said, referring to the governments of the devastated countries.

Mr Person also said that because large tsunamis, or seismic sea waves, are extremely rare in the Indian Ocean, people were never taught to flee inland after they felt the tremors of an earthquake.

Tsunami warning systems and tide gauges exist around the Pacific Ocean, for the Pacific Rim as well as South America. The United States has such warning centres in Hawaii and Alaska operated by the US Geological Survey and NOAA. But none of these monitors the Indian Ocean region, Mr McCreery said.

It takes a substantial investment and long-term commitment to set up a 24-hour communications infrastructure, operational capabilities and specialised training, he added, declining to estimate the cost.

In addition, US seismologists said it was unlikely the Indian Ocean region would be hit any time soon by a similarly devastating tsunami because it takes an enormously strong earthquake to generate one.

But Mr Person said governments should instruct people living along the coast to move after detecting a quake. Since a tsunami is generated at the source of an underwater earthquake, there is usually time - from 20 minutes to two hours - to get people away as it builds in the ocean.

A major tsunami, a Japanese word meaning "harbour wave", occurs in the Pacific Ocean about once a decade. It is generated by vertical movement during an earthquake and sometimes incorrectly referred to as a tidal wave, according to the website of the US National Geophysical Data Centre.

US officials are now trying to help officials in the region set up some sort of informal warning system and feeling badly that more couldn't have been done, Mr McCreery said.

"It took an hour and a half for the wave to get from the earthquake to Sri Lanka and an hour for it to get... to the west coast of Thailand and Malaysia," he said. "You can walk inland for 15 minutes to get to a safe area."

Witnesses Accounts

¤ "You were sort of mesmerised by these waves coming in. You didn't even know what was happening. It was too quick. Then there was this massive plume of black water behind you. It was like foaming tar. I thought: 'This is it. I'm dead'." - Heather Bills, 46, a businesswoman from New Zealand

¤ "I just parked the car so I could go to the beach. Suddenly I saw lots of people running and screaming. I asked them what had happened but they only said 'Run!'
"I don't know what happened to other people. I just jumped into my car and sped off." - Bhaskar Anpatheer, 43, a local of Penang.

¤ "Death came from the sea. The waves just kept chasing us. It swept away all our huts. What did we do to deserve this?" - Satya Kumari, a construction worker living on the outskirts of the former French enclave of Pondicherry, India.

¤ "We were sitting by the water when people started shouting a wave was coming in. We left everything behind and ran inside." - British car salesman Richard Freeman.

¤ "I have been waiting for my husband and brother since yesterday. I am not sure they will come back as I can see wrecked boats floating in the water." - 38-year-old Narasamma on a beach near Mypadu, a fishing hamlet south of Hyderabad, Sri Lanka.

¤ "I was sitting on the first floor of a bar, not far from the beach, watching cricket. And suddenly all these people came screaming from the beach.
"I looked around and saw a massive wall of water rushing down the street. It completely wiped out the ground floor of my bar... It happened very fast, in a matter of minutes." - Australian tourist, Stephen Dicks, 42, in Phuket.

¤ "I was standing by the seashore when I noticed the sea level rising but I was not concerned then because I only thought it was an unusually high tide.
"Then I heard an eerie sound that I have never heard before. It was a high pitched sound followed by a deafening roar which seemed to be getting louder. I told everyone to run for their life and I started sprinting inland." - Chellappa, a 55-year-old fisherman in Madras.

¤ "My mother had gone to the seaside to buy fish when the wave came and lifted her. It took an hour for us to go and recover her body. Thank God my husband had not gone to sea as he was unwell." - Muthulakshmi, a fisherman's wife, standing on a pavement with hundreds of refugees.