Plan for tsunami warning system prepared: Sibal

Government has prepared a plan for establishing a tsunami warning system, Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said.

With a view to keep country prepared in the event of a tsunami hitting the country in future, Department of Ocean Development has prepared a plan for establishing a tsunami warning system, Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said in New Delhi on Friday.

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"Natural disasters tell us how helpless we are in combating the fury of nature," Sibal said in New Delhi inaugurating a two-day brain storming session on the tsunami disaster of December 26, 2004.

"Our plan envisages a system for tsunami warning for India and countries of the region like Myanmar, Indonesia and Sri Lanka," Sibal said adding help from any international agency was welcome.

The project report has been made incorporating issues like improvement of the existing system and how to make information available to people, Sibal said. For this, an adequate ocean monitoring system and software was needed.

The entire system, to cost about Rs 125 crore, would take about two to two-and-a-half years, but devices called Deep Ocean Assessment and Reporting System (DART) would be installed before the system becomes operational, he said.

Sibal said the government had given consent for the money needed for the project. The country already had some system in place for earthquake monitoring which needed to be strengthened.

Though tsunamis are more common in the Pacific Ocean with eight tsunamis hitting it every year, it was the first recorded tsunami for India, Sibal said. However, it did not mean that the country should not be prepared to handle such a situation, he said.

The system to be developed is called 'Tsunami and Storm Surges - The Indian Initiative', Secretary of the Department of Ocean Development Dr Harsh Gupta, said.