RI has installed 90 tsunami early warning systems

MAKASSAR, South Sulawesi (Antara): Indonesia has installed 90 tsunami early warning systems across the country, Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) official said Saturday.

"We are planning to install 70 more tsunami detecting devices so that all of the 160 early warning systems worth Rp200 billion will have been installed in the country by 2008," secretary toBMG's Makassar branch Andi Eka Sakiya said.

He said that the devices were among others installed in Java's southern coastal areas and in Sumatra.

According to Andi, the BMG had also installed seven weather radars to serve as an early weather monitoring system in several areas such as Jakarta, Medan, Surabaya and Palembang.

"We need 22 more radar units to cover all of Indonesia so that natural disasters can be anticipated anywhere in the country," he said.

Andi said it was expected that all of the devices would have been installed in various regions by 2010.

The head of BMG's Makassar branch, Hanafi Hamzah, said meanwhile that tsunami early warning systems would also be installed soon in West Sulawesi's and Central Sulawesi's coastal areas.