International disaster officials will likely lay down the groundwork for a life-saving Indian Ocean tsunami alert system at a meeting as early as next month, a top expert said on Tuesday.
Talks about setting up a warning system similar to the one in the Pacific Ocean will take place at the UN-sponsored World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan, said Dr Laura Kong, director of the International Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii.
The rush towards a global alert mechanism came as the death toll from the tsunami that ravaged Asia on Sunday surged past 55,000 following what is believed to be the first-ever killer tidal wave that has spanned an ocean.
"Things are moving very quickly towards establishing an Indian Ocean warning system and I know there will be a lot of discussion in Kobe with delegates saying that we have to do something immediately," she said.
"This is a real opportunity. Something is going to happen, it's just a matter of how. We want to do this in a way that is inclusive and collaborative and on an international scale," Kong said.
Thousands of lives could have been saved if a similar alert system to that in the Pacific Ocean had been in place in the stricken countries, which include Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India, Kong said.
{{/usCountry}}Thousands of lives could have been saved if a similar alert system to that in the Pacific Ocean had been in place in the stricken countries, which include Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India, Kong said.
{{/usCountry}}Kong's warning centre detected the 9.0-magitude quake, off the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Sunday that spawned the deadly walls of water but could do nothing to raise the alarm halfway across the world.
She will be a delegate to the Kobe conference.
Kong said she expected the unprecedented tsunami devastation to become the focus of the conference and that delegates would thrash out the details of what needs to be done to establish an Indian Ocean alert and that those plans would emerge clearly in about six months.