With Massive Tsunami Drill, Thailand Seeks Good, and Bad, Results

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Thailand has seen a steady rise in tourism since the cataclysmic tsunami struck its beaches on December 26, 2004. To make sure that visitors and residents are safe from any future disaster, the Thai Government is staging a national tsunami exercise on July 25 that will involve as many as 100,000 people. It will be the largest drill of its kind ever conducted in the region and will involve evacuations of 24 communities.

Dr. Smith Dharmasaroja, Chairman of Thailand’s Committee of National Disaster Warning Administration is overseeing preparations for the drill, which Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister Kosit Punpiamrat and Minister of Information and Communication Technology Professor Sithichai Pokaiya-udom are expected to attend.  Dr. Smith expects much of the simulation exercise to go well, but he is most interested in finding out what goes wrong.

"We learn best when we make mistakes," Dr. Smith said while discussing plans with representatives of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which has been helping the National Disaster Warning Center (NDWC) develop its warning dissemination systems since 2005. "With tsunami warning systems, every step needs to go perfectly so the people on the beach can be kept fully informed and feel safer. If we pin down the weak points now, we can fix them and make sure the system will work in case there is a real disaster."

Thailand is among several Indian Ocean nations that have established tsunami warning systems and linked them with international earthquake and tsunami detection and communications systems, including the Pacific Tsunami Warning System.

Setting up the detection technologies, communications systems, warning procedures and evacuation drills is complicated, costly, and highly politicized. Soon after the 2004 tsunami, residents and public officials demanded rapid installation of warning systems without realizing their cost or technological complexity.

It took 40 years to fully implement the Pacific Tsunami Warning System, which was initiated through a U.S.-led effort to establish a tsunami monitoring station in Hawaii in the early 1960s. Many of the system’s components are still being installed.

While tsunamis on the scale of the 2004 disaster occur about once every century in the Indian Ocean, no government wants to be unprepared. The Royal Thai Government has been especially proactive, striving to establish a fully functioning system to protect its citizens and the millions of tourists who visit each year.

With the main components of the system in place, the July 25 drill will test how well the links in the communication chain perform, starting at NDWC headquarters in Bangkok and moving all the way to the vacationers and residents in the six Andaman coast provinces that were devastated by the 2004 tsunami.

"The last major drill in May 2006 showed some of our communication problems. For example, NDWC’s SMS messages did not reach key staff or were delayed for hours," said Dr. Cherdsak Virapat, the center’s former chief for international coordination. "We also depended too much on telephones, so this time there will be more two-way radios for officials to communicate and to follow the progress of evacuations."

Dr. Smith explains how the exercise will begin: "The Thai Meteorological Department will send us a test message at 9:30 a.m. to report an earthquake around the Nicobar Islands. The earthquake will be 8.5 on the Richter scale, which will trigger the simulation exercise. NDWC staff will be mobilized and we’ll contact other agencies to launch coordination efforts."

NDWC’s operations center will also monitor data feeds from the deep-ocean tsunami detection buoy jointly deployed by Thailand and the U.S. last year, as well as shoreline sea-level monitoring stations and information from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii. This data will help estimate how long it will take until the first tsunami waves reach Thailand's shores.

Next, NDWC will issue warning faxes and SMS messages to officials in each of the provinces which, in turn, will trigger provincial disaster response plans. The general public will be notified through live broadcasts on television and radio, and 79 warning sirens located along beaches and other low-lying coastal areas will be activated to alert as many people in vulnerable areas as possible of the potential tsunami.  In tourist areas, many hotels have emergency management procedures in place and will practice them during the drill.

Visitors and residents will be able to seek refuge in "safe areas" jointly set up by government agencies and community leaders.

Villagers have been a key element in the joint project between NDWC, the United Nations Development Program, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.

For example, the residents of Baan Talay Nok, in Ranong province, worked over the past year to develop an evacuation plan. "The people in our community agreed to meet at our school after hearing the warning siren," said its principal Supawadee Nakwichien.  "Our school is located on a hill and the tsunami did not reach it last time."

Although the waves from the 2004 tsunami took approximately two hours to reach Thailand, claiming more than 8,000 lives, the simulation there will compress the time between the moment the NDWC receives the tsunami bulletin and the simulated wave landfall. Participating communities should be evacuated by 10:15 a.m., just 45 minutes after the alert.

"I think 45 minutes will be sufficient for most communities to evacuate,” said Dr. Smith. "In fact, a recent case study supported by the U.S. government showed that safe areas can be reached within 30 minutes by walking or running from almost all locations in Kamala Beach in Phuket."

A number of outsiders will be watching Thailand’s performance during the drill to see how well it goes and to learn from it. Representatives from Indian Ocean countries, the United Nations and the U.S. government will participate as observers during the event at NDWC headquarters in Bangkok and in Phuket. Officials from Indonesia, Maldives and Sri Lanka, who have been developing their own national warning systems in parallel with Thailand’s efforts, hope the drill will provide valuable lessons to take home.

"Establishing an evaluation process for the exercise, conducting an 'after action review' and following up with recommendations is the true measure of a successful simulation," said Deanne Shulman, a disaster management specialist with the U.S. Forest Service, funded through the USAID program.

USAID has been urging Indian Ocean countries to stage similar drills. "We have been encouraging each country where we are working to run tests regularly and to see problems as opportunities to get their warning systems running correctly," noted Richard Whelden, deputy director of USAID’s regional mission in Bangkok, which has been leading the U.S. government’s contribution to developing tsunami warning systems in the region.

"Demonstrating the system in one country – what's working or not working – and then inviting other countries to participate is a strategy that is helping us promote cooperation in the region while, at the same time, we can help a country like Thailand showcase its successes and challenges," Mr. Whelden said.

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