TSUNAMI IMPACT: Sirens, Loudspeakers To Be Used for Killer Wave Warnings

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

PHUKET, Thailand, Apr 7 2005 (IPS) - Tourists heading to the beaches of Patong on this popular resort island are being exposed to something more than the pleasant sound of waves rolling off the Andaman Sea and crashing on the shore.

In addition to the hum of cars passing near by and the burst of speeding motorcyclists, holidaymakers have to take in a steady flow of announcements in Thai from nearby loudspeakers.

At least that is so between 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., which are the times the Patong municipality have designated as hours to run local news bulletins for the benefit of both locals and foreigners on the sweeping coast.

This innovation, however, is not aimed to liven up the atmosphere on this much sought after beach. On the contrary, the network of loudspeakers on towers by the shore is part of a system being unveiled by Patong’s local government to create a tsunami early warning system.

”We are broadcasting news because we want to give people good information,” Chairat Sukkaban, Patong’s deputy mayor, told reporters. ”This will make the Thai people more relaxed.”

Of course were a tsunami to head towards the coast, the loudspeakers that were installed in mid-February will be put to their intended purpose: to warn the public about the approaching deadly waves.

To augment the beach’s loudspeakers, three separate towers with sirens that can each go up to 120 decibels and can be heard up to two kilometers away from each tower are being installed to cover Patong’s bay.

The sirens will be part of a more sophisticated network connected to Thailand’s National Disaster Warning Centre (NDWC), currently being set up in Nonthaburi, on the northern outskirts of Bangkok.

”There will be no person in Phuket to turn the switch (for the sirens) on. It is fully automated,” Pat Neely, an expatriate from the United States helping to coordinate the early warning system, told reporters. ”These sirens are used elsewhere for disasters like floods and chemical spills and for tornado warnings in the U.S.”

According to Chairat, the network of sirens and loudspeakers has placed Patong ahead of other beaches along Thailand’s Andaman coast for tsunami preparedness.

”This is the first on Phuket and will be ready by April 15,” the deputy mayor told IPS. ”Other places will get it later.”

The NDWC intends setting up 50 sirens in the six provinces along Thailand’s south-western coast, Smith Dharmasaroja, the centre’s chairman, told a seminar over the weekend.

The centre’s early warning system plan also includes directions for people in the six provinces to follow if an evacuation is ordered and also a new environmental and zoning system to make areas ”safer and more tourist friendly,” reports ‘The Nation,’ an English language daily.

Close to 5,400 people, about half of them tourists, were killed by the tsunami that struck Thailand’s six southern provinces along the Andaman coast. The others besides Phuket were Krabi, Phang-nga, Ranong, Satun and Trang.

The unveiling of the tsunami warning systems have, however, not attracted tourists back to the sandy playgrounds of Phuket and the nearby islands.

Nor have the surge of new advertisements to portray Phuket as a beach resort that has regained its legendary beauty after the shores were cleaned of the tsunami’s destructive trail.

According to ‘The Nation,’ tourist arrivals at Phuket’s airport during the first two months this year hit a low of 48,000, as opposed to the 248,000 holidaymakers who had flown in last year during the same period.

The loss from the tourism economy in places like Phuket, Phang Nga and Krabi have been estimated at 43 billion baht (1.07 billion U.S. dollars), according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

The pain from such a dramatic drop in tourists due to the tsunami is severe for women like Dam, who earn money on Patong’s beach by massaging holidaymakers. ”After the tsunami there is nobody here, or maybe one or two people wanting massages a week,” says Dam, stocky woman dressed in a shirt with a floral print worn over a green pair of trousers.

Before the December tsunami, she had four to five customers a day, a number that had kept marginally rising or falling during the 18 years she had plied her skill in the art of Thai massages.

The Manila-based Asian Development Bank did have women like Dam in mind when it revealed in a report released this week that 24,000 more Thais will join the ranks of the country’s poor due to the affect of the tsunami on the economy.

Tourists should start thinking about the people who survived, for they need holidaymakers back to rebuild their lives, Wichit Na-Ranong, president of the Tourism Council of Thailand, told reporters.

”There should be no feeling of guilt to have a holiday here now that 100 days have passed since the tsunami,” he stressed.

The tsunami early warning system being put into place at beaches like Patong is also another reason for tourists to return, he added. ”It is more safe now.”