'No alert' in Indonesian tsunami

BBC News, 27 October 2010 Last updated at 13:43 GMT

A crucial link in Indonesia's tsunami warning system was not working during Monday's tsunami because it had been vandalised, says an Indonesian official.

Whole villages were wiped out by the tsunami

Hundreds of people were killed and many are missing as a result of the tsunami, which was generated by a magnitude 7.7 earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra.

The earthquake unleashed a 3m-high (10ft) wave that crashed into the remote Mentawai islands, levelling a number of villages.

Survivors have said no warning was given.

Ridwan Jamaluddin, of the Indonesian Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology, told the BBC's Indonesian service that two buoys off the Mentawai islands were vandalised and so out of service.

"We don't say they are broken down but they were vandalised and the equipment is very expensive. It cost us five billion rupiah each (£353,000; $560,000).

Another official, from the Indonesian Climatology Agency told the BBC's Indonesian service that both tide gauges and buoys are used to detect a tsunami, but the buoys are more important to generating an early warning.

"To predict a tsunami, we need the data from the buoy and the tide gauge, which is located near the beach. The buoy is more important because it is on the sea, so it will record the wave much quicker that the tide gauge," said the official, named Fauzi.

Difficulties

Residents of the Mentawai islands have told the BBC they heard no tsunami warning.

"There was not any siren to warn people in Sikakap [a small town on North Pagai island]," said Ferdinand Salamanang.

"Yes there was a quake and tsunami detection system in our port, but they are broken down. We did not hear any warning this time."

Almost exactly two years ago Indonesia launched its new tsunami early warning centre, designed to give people in coastal areas enough time to escape any waves before they reach land.

1. Recorder on seabed measures pressure and sends data to buoy.
2. Buoy also detects changes in sea level and motion. Tide gauges, usually sited on land, detect tidal changes.
3. Information is transmitted via satellite to ground stations which assess risk of tsunami.

The project was launched after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, which hit the country in 2004.

A quarter of a million people on the ocean shores died, more than half of them in the Indonesian province of Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra and close to the earthquake's epicentre.

The system was meant to be completed in 2010 but it is still a work in progress, says Tiziana Bonapace, a disaster risk specialist with the UN.

"Earthquake and sea-level monitoring systems are in place, but what has proven more difficult is how to get warnings out to remote areas in time," she told the BBC.

"This remains the weakest link in the system, and unfortunately the tsunami hit one of the farthest outlying islands. Further exacerbating the situation is that buoys do malfunction, and many countries have been experiencing difficulties in this regard."

'Too late'

A more difficult challenge, she said, was instilling at the community level an awareness of the potential for disasters and how to prepare for them.

Even if the system had been fully functioning, the earthquake struck so close to the islands that an alert may not have given residents enough time to escape.

"Pagai island is very close to the epicentre, so the waves reached Pagai island in just five or 10 minutes," Ridwan Jamaluddin said.

"Even if the buoy is on, it is still too late to warn the people."

That view is echoed by Andrew Judge of SurfAid International, a humanitarian agency that has worked in the area for 10 years.

"The distance from the epicentre was very short... there's no time to act" on an alert, he told the BBC.

The Mentawai islands are very remote and communications are very difficult, he said. "Those people wouldn't have been reached by an alert."

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Parliament to evaluate BMKG for giving wrong information

Antara News, Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The House of Representatives (DPR)`s Commission V plans to evaluate the performance of the National Meteorological, Climatology, Geophysics Agency (BMKG), a legislator said.

"We will call BMKG officials after our recess to evaluate the performance of BMKG regarding information on tsunami in Mentawai," Lasarus, at Parliament Building, here, Wednesday.

He criticized BMKG for giving wrong information on the Mentawai tsunami.

When a magnitude-7.2 earthquake hit Mentawai Island on Monday evening (Oct 25), BMKG issued a warning that the earthquake could trigger tsunami. However, not long after that, BMKG issued information that the earthquake did not have the potential to cause tsunami.

"As an official government institution, BMKG is considered to have given the publlic misleading information which led to the deaths of hundreds of people. It`s obviously misleading. Why was BMKG so careless?" he said.

He also asked legislators from West Sumatra to react to the misleading information.

The House`s Commission V had fully supported BMKG so far, especially regarding the budget so that BMKG could work optimally to anticipate possible disasters and to correctly inform the public, he said.

The tsunami hit Mentawai islands, West Sumatra Province, following a 7.2 magnitude undersea earthquake on Monday night.

By Tuesday night, the death toll in the disasters rose to 112. At least 502 people were missing and thousands of others evacuated to safer grounds following the tsunami.

Aftershocks continued to happen in Mentawai, West Sumatra, following the magnitude-7.2 quake . A quake measuring 5.5 on the Richter Scale followed at 10 pm at a depth of 22 kilometers, 89 kilometers southwest of Pagai Selatan.

Another quake was also recorded at 5.0 on the Richter Scale at 10.31 pm at a depth of 34 kilometers, 51 kilometers southwest of Pagai Selatan.

High tide floods coastal subdistrict

JAKARTA (Jakarta Post): The combination of a high tide and high rainfall Sunday inundated hundreds of houses in Penjaringan subdistrict, North Jakarta.

Subdistrict head Budi Santoso said his staff had prepared two inflatable boats for possible evacuation, and established a coordinating center with a communal kitchen in the subdistrict offices.

"We estimate that our area will continue to be flooded until Monday," he was quoted as saying by the Tempointeraktif news portal.

Jakarta officials warned last week that high tides in December threatened to flood coastal areas in the city, following an alert from the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency.

The head of the Jakarta Crisis Center, Heru Joko Santoso, said officials were warning that Penjaringan and Pluit subdistricts in North Jakarta would be threatened by high tides between Dec. 8 and 12, and Dec. 20 and 25. -- JP

High tides could flood Jakarta: Officials

Mustaqim Adamrah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Jakarta officials on Tuesday warned that high tides in December threatened to flood coastal areas in the city, following an alert sent by the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency.

The head of the city's crisis center, Heru Joko Santoso, said officials were warning that Penjaringan and Pluit subdistricts in North Jakarta would be threatened by high tides between Dec. 8 and 12, and Dec. 20 and 25.

"The tides could be worse than the last incident," he said.

Last Monday, battered sea barriers in the two North Jakarta districts were breached by an unusually high tide.

Jakarta Deputy Governor Prijanto said all the administration could do was provide an early warning "to alert residents about the high tide, and install a communal kitchen and health tent".

Heru said expected high rainfall levels in December would exacerbate the high tides, and floodwater could reach as far as the city-owned Laguna Pluit low-cost apartments and the office of the Pluit subdistrict administration.

He said the area around the Riverside apartments in Kapuk Muara subdistrict could also be affected.

Heru said tents would be set up around the Penjaringan subdistrict administration office and near Muara Karang bridge, to accommodate those forced from their homes.

He said the crisis center had warned Penjaringan residents about the possibility of flooding.

Meanwhile, heavy rain on Monday evening and Tuesday morning inundated hundreds of houses in Cawang subdistrict, East Jakarta, with floodwater reaching chest-level in some areas.

Another 1,500 houses in the Pondok Arum housing complex in Tangerang, Banten, were under 1.5 to 2 meters of water.

Flooding also affected Dr. Subki Abdulkadir Islamic Hospital in Bekasi, forcing it to close.

Heru said other parts of Jakarta, including Cawang, Kramat Jati and Jatinegara in East Jakarta, Cakung in North Jakarta and Pancoran in South Jakarta, were at risk of flooding because of heavy rain.

Governor Fauzi Bowo has met with the governor of neighboring Banten, Ratu Atut Chosiyah, to try and put together a plan on revitalizing water catchment areas along the border between the two provinces.

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.

BMG asks for more weather radars

YOGYAKARTA (The Jakarta Post) : The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) said Wednesday it has asked the government to purchase more weather monitoring radars so it can improve its performance around the archipelago.

"Our seven climate monitoring radars are inadequate to cover Indonesia's vast area. So we have asked the government to purchase more radars," BMG secretary Andi Eka Sakiya was quoted as saying by the Detik.com news portal.

Currently radars are located in big cities such as Jakarta, Medan, Palembang and Surabaya he said. BMG hopes to have 22 more radars, which could also function as early warning systems for disasters.

"By 2010, BMG aims to have 48 weather radars. All disaster-prone areas will hopefully be able to be monitored by then," Andi said, adding that the radars would be placed in areas including Aceh, West Sumatra and southern Java.

Indonesia`s low lying islets may disappear by 2030

Batam (ANTARA News) - Islets in Kepulauan Riau (Kepri) province may disappear by 2030 due to global warming and sand quarrying, an official has said.

"The islets lie 0.5 meter below sea level," Herry, the head of the Batam chapter of Meteorology and Geophysics Agency, said here.

Quoting a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report, he said the increase in global temperature by 1 degree Celsius since 1866 had melted the snow mountain in the North Pole, covering some of low-lying areas in the world.

"The islets in Kepri which lie below sea level may disappear in the future," he said.

However, he declined to mention the name of the islets.

Meanwhile, Jaya Murjaya, the head of the Yogyakarta chapter of Meteorology and Geophysics Agency, had predicted Indonesia might lose about 2,000 of its islets by 2030 because of rising sea water level.

"By 2030 sea water level will rise in the range of 8 cm to 29 cm from the current level," he said adding that the accumulation of gas emissions and ozone depletion had contributed to a rise in global temperature.

The global warming might lead to extreme climate change also, he said.

High tides expected to continue for a week

JAKARTA (The Jakarta Post): The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) said large waves that have been pounding the southern coastlines of Java, Sumatra and Bali since Thursday have weakened, but are expected to continue for another week.

The agency said the waves were caused by persistent winds from the Indian Ocean coinciding with the arrival of the lunar tide.

The head of the maritime meteorology information subsection at the BMG, Suratno, said Monday high atmospheric pressure in the southern part of the world, especially in the Indian Ocean, and low atmospheric pressure in the northern part of the world, especially in India and Japan, had caused strong southerly winds, which subsequently had caused massive waves around Indonesia.

"High atmospheric pressure causes only normal winds of between 25 to 30 knots, but because this is persistent, it has caused massive waves," Suratno told The Jakarta Post after a closed-door meeting to discuss the phenomenon. (Matheos Viktor)

LIPI ready to meet radar demand

Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) says it has met specifications set by the Indonesian Navy after successfully develop maritime radars.

The institute announced Monday that it had successfully developed maritime radar technology in collaboration with the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands. The radar is able to detect any object entering Indonesian territorial waters.

"The Defense Ministry has ordered three maritime radars with a coverage of about 35 nautical miles each," said LIPI's radar project head researcher Mashury Wahab on Thursday.

Mashury, who attended a two-day radar seminar at LIPI headquarters, said the Navy required a radar with a minimum coverage of 20 nautical miles.

The institute said, however, that further research is still required to meet specifications set by the Air Force.

"Usually, it takes about six months to build a radar after the order is placed. The manufacturing time for each unit for an institution may also vary as a radar is usually ordered for customization," he said.

"Military and civil radars, such as for the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG), have different characteristics and specifications."

As for the Air Force, Mashury said LIPI was already planning to develop a more sophisticated radar system.

"Our partner from the Technical University of Delft is optimistic that we could develop the radar, as they have enough expertise."

Local engineers, he said, were already able to repair foreign radars used by the Air Force.

The Air Force, which currently uses radars imported from the U.K. and France, said it would use domestically-produced radars developed by LIPI provided they have a coverage of 250 nautical miles.

It is estimated that the cost of using domestically-produced radars is one-tenth the cost of using imported radars.

Umar Anggara Jenie, LIPI's chairman, told The Jakarta Post that the further development and implementation of domestically-produced radars would have to occur in phases.

"We should first apply the currently available technology before reaching the next level," he said.

"A leap in such technology, such as in the enlargement of the radar's radius, cannot be achieved without using the currently available technology first."

Mashury insisted the advancement of local radar technology should be balanced with the establishment of a supporting organization.

"Indonesia needs a national radar organization as a means of communication between related institutions. It'll become a forum for exchanging ideas and to collaborate in research," he said.

He proposed that the organization should consist of highly-ranked officials, such as government ministers dealing with defense, research and technology affairs, chairpersons of LIPI, BMG and the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology, as well as representatives from state airport operators PT Angkasa Pura I and II.

Dean of the School of Electrical Engineering and Informatics at the Bandung Institute of Technology, Adang Suwandi Ahmad, said that prior to reaching the manufacturing stage, radars should be subject to testing and certification phases.

"Then we also need supporting industries such as the state-owned aircraft maker PT Dirgantara Indonesia," he said.

BMG warns of high waves in central Indonesia's waters

DENPASAR (Antara): The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) Friday warned that high wave up to four meters may occur in the waters of southern Java, West and East Nusa Tenggara in the next few days.

"The high waves are very dangerous for all ships passing those areas," said Diana Anggariati, a BMG officer in Bali provincial capital of Denpasar.

She said that worse areas include Java and Bali seas as well as Bali and Lombok straits.

High waves and strong wind have hit Bali waters and its surroundings since several days ago, disrupting shipments and fishing activities.

Provinces 'better prepared' for disaster than Jakarta

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Several provinces are better prepared to deal with natural disasters than Jakarta, the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) said Friday.

"There are six provincial administrations that are the most concerned with weather changes as well as natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis," agency head Sri Woro B. Harijono said during a meeting with members of the Regional Representatives Council.

She said the provinces of West Sumatra, Lampung, Banten, Central Java, Maluku and Gorontalo were all well prepared for any disaster.

"For instance, Gorontalo provincial administration was the first to request the agency install a server to detect earthquakes and tsunamis," Sri told reporters.

The server is equipped with software that will automatically alert local citizens with sirens whenever an earthquake is detected.

The Gorontalo administration, she said, paid to have one installed in the middle of last year. West Sumatra then followed suit.

"Meanwhile, Central Java and Lampung have provided, respectively, a building for a climatology monitoring station and a plot of land for a weather radar tower," she said.

The Jakarta administration, however, is notable only for its lack of action, she said.

"The Jakarta administration has yet to take such action as the other six provinces," Sri said.

"May be the administration thinks that the city is not on the continental plate that might cause earthquakes and tsunamis," she added.

She said that her agency had sent a prediction for torrential rain to the administration on Feb. 1 at 00:20 a.m., a day before the floods hit Jakarta.

"Concerned institutions that receive data sent by the agency should take follow-up action," Sri said.

The Jakarta Public Works Agency's water resources development division said it had acted after receiving the forecast.

"We disseminated the information to related institutions. We also began operating flood posts for victims, shortly after we received the information," the head of the division, I Gede Nyoman Soewandi, told The Jakarta Post.

"We did not, however, predict that the heavy rain would cause this much damage," he added.

So far the flooding in Greater Jakarta has killed 54 people, forced at least 340,000 from their homes, and left more than 200,000 homeless.

Prih Harjadi, deputy for data systems and information at the BMG, said the dissemination of such information needed to be comprehensive and support public awareness and preparedness for natural disasters.

"Sophisticated technology to disseminate information swiftly will not be useful should the people be unaware and unprepared," said Prih.

"Local administrations should also take part in increasing public awareness and preparedness for natural disasters. The administrations should make a plan to help residents evacuate when a natural disaster occurs," he added.

Japan Brings Weather Research to Indonesia

Wednesday, 07 February, 2007 | 16:21 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: The Agency for the Assessment & Application of Technology (BPPT) and the Japan Marine Science & Technology Center (JAMSTEC) are cooperating in atmosphere dynamics research by installing various weather radars in the Indonesias region.

The research, which is called Hydrometeorological Array for Intraseasonal Variation Monsoon Automonitoring (HARIMAU), is aimed at improving weather forecast techniques so that rains that cause flooding, like what is happening currently, can be better anticipated.

In a workshop introducing HARIMAU yesterday (6/2), Professor Manabu Yamanaka from JAMSTEC said the radars that will be installed can monitor winds in a radius of up to 300 kilometers.

The radar that will be installed in Serpong, for example, will be able to monitor the realtime wind map in Jakarta, Bogor, Bekasi and Tangerang.

Yamanaka said that the six radars, comprising X and C-band Doppler Radars and also Wind Profiler Radars, in many locations in Indonesia cannot work independently.

“They must be combined with radars and weather stations belonging to BMG (the Meteorology & Geophysics Agency),” he said.

In addition to monitoring weather anomalies like what is currently happening in Jakarta, HARIMAU can also produce information that can also be used for other interests such as sowing periods, transportation and air pollution.

BMG data is often not accurate: Aircraft association

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Aircraft Association (INACA) says data from the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) are often not reliable, thus pilots do not trust the information from the agency.

Elshinta radio station quoted a senior official in INACA on Monday that pilots must seek information from a more reliable agency due to such a problem in BMG.

"When BMG predicts, for example, our visibility is only few meters, the fact is different," he said during a hearing with the National Commission on Transportation Safety (KNKT.)

He called on BMG to renew and calibrate its weathermeasurement tools to give a more reliable information.