‘India has effective system for Tsunami alerts’

New Delhi: India has put in place an effective system to issue Tsunami alerts after the catastrophe had hit country in 2004, a senior government official said.

Ruling out any shortcoming in the tsunami alert system in the country, Secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences Secretary Shailesh Naik said that Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) is a world-class tsunami warning system.

"This has been proved now, as we were able to issue the first bulletin just seven minutes after the massive quake in Japan, ruling out a tsunami threat for the Indian Ocean, where as the American tsunami warning system, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued its first alert 12 minutes after the massive earthquake near the coast of Honshu," he said.

The Indian tsunami warning system, which was conceived after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, works by assessing data it received from seismic stations, sea level gauges, bottom pressure recorders (tsunami buoys) and predicts the water level changes expected at various locations.

"Following a big earthquake, the system can issue a tsunami alert within in 10 minutes not only in India but also for other neighbouring countries," Naik said.

The Rs 125-crore tsunami warning centre set up in 2007 at the INCOIS in Hyderabad has assessed 25-30 major earthquakes in the last three years.