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| Down Under |
| Alexander Downer vows for Tsunami warning system |
| 2004-12-29 |
| Australian FOREIGN Minister Alexander Downer pledged yesterday to develop a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean region in co-operation with other countries, in a bid to prevent a repeat of Sunday's disaster. "I know it looks a bit like closing the door after the horse has bolted but there will be tsunamis again in the future, hopefully never again on this scale," Mr Downer said. "We wouldn't want to see the opportunity lost of saving lives in the future coming out of just there being a lack of any kind of warning system." The UN and Japan also pledged to act swiftly to boost early warning capabilities in the region. Mr Downer's comments followed the revelation Australian scientists had warned in September that our coastline was vulnerable to a tsunami because of the lack of an early warning system for natural disasters covering the Indian Ocean. Geoscience Australia's earthquake hazard expert, Phil Cummins, argued in a paper published in September that "a warning capability should be established, using tide gauges on Cocos Island and Christmas Island, to provide several hours' warning of a tsunami generated off Sumatra". UN emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland said such a system was "imperative" and would be discussed at the world conference on disaster reduction in Japan next month. |
| Posted by:God Save The World |
| #2 What makes people say things like this? It's idiotic, to say the least. He's a politician. They think it's what people want to hear. Trouble is, they're correct. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2004-12-29 6:56:05 AM |
| #1 "...there will be tsunamis again in the future, hopefully never again on this scale," Mr Downer said." What makes people say things like this? It's idiotic, to say the least. There will be quite literally millions more similar earthquakes in the future, many much stronger than this one. The next one may come next year or in two hundred years. The possibility of it coming next year is the reason why a relative pittance would be well spent implementing an early warning system... There are accounts of the biblical scenes of destruction from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands here. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2004-12-29 4:34:43 AM |