Indonesia’s volcano tsunami beat technology to detect it
- No sirens were heard in the towns and beaches to alert people after recent tsunami
- Seismologists say a perfect storm of factors made early detection near impossible
As Indonesia reels from the carnage of yet another natural disaster, authorities around the globe are working on how they can prepare for the kind of freak tsunami that battered coasts west of Jakarta this month.
The December 23 tsunami killed around 430 people along the coastlines of the Sunda Strait, capping a year of earthquakes and tsunami in the vast archipelago, which straddles the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire.
No sirens were heard in those towns and beaches to alert people before the deadly series of waves hit shore.
Seismologists and authorities say a perfect storm of factors caused the tsunami and made early detection near impossible given the equipment in place.
But the disaster should be a wake-up call to step up research on tsunami triggers and preparedness, said several of the experts, some of whom have travelled to the Southeast Asian nation to investigate what happened.
“Indonesia has demonstrated to the rest of the world the huge variety of sources that have the potential to cause tsunami. More research is needed to understand those less-expected events,” said Stephen Hicks, a seismologist at the University of Southampton.