The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : `Possible to predict tsunamis'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 06, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

`Possible to predict tsunamis'

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, JAN. 5. The former Tamil Nadu Director-General of Police, V.Vaikunth, today said that the communication network played an important role in relief and rehabilitation of disaster victims.

Speaking on "Tsunami and after" at a meeting of the Observer Research Foundation here, Mr.Vaikunth, who was also a former Director of Civil Defence, explained how the police communication system came to the rescue of the administration when telegraph and telephones were down during cyclones. "Because of this, we could save several lives. We are yet to catch up with the technology elsewhere in the world."

He recalled the impact of the tsunami or quake in the city from 1679 to 2001 and the tsunamis in 1881 and 1941, which were triggered by earthquakes on the Andaman and Nicobar islands.

There were 250 seismic observatories in the country. Though seismic waves might be less frequent, there were storm surges in Nagapattinam and Divi in Andhra Pradesh in November 1977.

It might not be possible to forecast when a tsunami would strike, except a few hours in advance, but it was possible to predict with a reasonably high degree of accuracy where it would occur.

"I have a feeling whether our experts had not been alive to the happenings. Somebody somewhere had been callous or sleeping."

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