UNESCO Officials Confident Tsunami Warning System Will Be Ready to Go by July 2006

A detection system to warn of tsunamis like the one that wreaked havoc with the coasts of south Asia last December will be operational by 2006, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said.

UNESCO´s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) also announced that Indian Ocean states will meet in Perth, Australia, on August 3 to coordinate the system´s implementation.

“The first step is for these countries to be able to detect major earth tremors capable of setting off tsunamis, to pass this information on straightaway to their neighbors and to issue an alert,” IOC executive secretary Patricio Bernal said Thursday.

“Then there is the whole issue of public awareness, which is in fact far more important. A detection system is useless if people who are warned of the danger fail to react,” he said.

Some 215,000 people died in the tsunamis of December 26 last year.