RP, Australia sign tsunami warning agreements

VIENNA, Austria – Australia and the Philippines have signed agreements enabling them to receive real-time data on any earthquake that could cause a tsunami and information that would come from an organization overseeing a treaty banning nuclear explosions.

The Vienna-based Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization said data it collects at its monitoring facilities, which are set up to detect nuclear explosions, could be transmitted within 30 seconds and give authorities two and a half minutes of additional warning.

That vital time could be used to alert the public ahead of the devastating waves.

In December 2004, a massive earthquake off Indonesia’s Sumatra island triggered a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people – 131,000 of them in Aceh province alone.

A tsunami off Java island last year killed nearly 5,000.

The Vienna-based organization’s executive secretary, Tibor Toth, signed separate agreements with Philippine Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo and Peter Shannon, Australia’s permanent representative to the United Nations in Vienna.

“It is very, very important,” Romulo said in a statement.

Shannon said the deal was “part of a network that has developed since the terrible disasters that the Asia-Pacific region experienced.”

The organization has been providing real-time and continuous data on a test basis to tsunami warning centers in Australia, Hawaii, Japan and Malaysia since March 2005 in collaboration with UNESCO.

In August, Japan signed a formal agreement for this kind of warning. Indonesia is expected to follow suit in November. – AP