The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Loss of life could have been reduced, says expert

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 28, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Loss of life could have been reduced, says expert

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, DEC.27. The loss of life in India due to tidal waves, could have been reduced had the scientific community interpreted the available data and sent out warning signals.

As the waves hit the Indian coastline two hours after the Indonesian quake, agencies monitoring seismic activity could have anticipated the developments and at least alerted those living on the coastline, says V.V. Subba Rao, president of Centre of Resource Education here.

Speaking to The Hindu , he argued that a better coordination among the IMD, NGRI, NRSA and well-knit communication among them could have reduced the loss of life.

Mr. Rao, a geologist, who documented the devastation of Latur earthquake, pointed out that the possibility of the devastating Tsunami had been mentioned in the scientific journal "Current Science" last year.

Lack of coordination

The magazine pointed out that any natural calamity of the Tsunami magnitude occurred once in 100 to 120 years. The last recorded Tsunami tidal wave occurred in 1881 and later in 1941. These phenomena were documented by two British scientists. The magazine also indicated the time of next Tsunami based on the study of accumulation of stresses in the quake prone areas close to the `subduction zone'.

The Sunday's calamity exposed the lack of coordination among top institutions and they should have anticipated the impact based on the data on seismic disturbances in the earth's crust rather than indulging in post-mortem, he said.

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