The earthquake and tsunami that devastated the capital and surrounding villages of Central Sulawesi should have served as a warning to the region and, indeed, much of the world. It is unfortunate that the reaction to the tragedy has been largely just a shrug. Indonesian and foreign experts have proved that a faulty warning system and unprepared citizens caused many, probably a large majority of the estimated 5,000 deaths. None of it had a noticeable effect in Thailand -- and it should have.
The long and short of the recent Sulawesi catastrophe is that the warning systems didn't work. Not only had most of the tsunami-detection buoys ceased to function by 2012. The remaining few buoys that did work combined to send signals to anti-disaster offices on the Indonesian shore that there was no danger from the earthquake which, in fact, caused the three surges that overwhelmed people and property a quarter of an hour after the earthquake. And not only was the Sulawesi hardware functioning in the most dangerous manner, the people onshore were completely unprepared.
Fast forward now to Thailand. At 8 o'clock this morning and every Wednesday, officials in a few places -- chiefly in Phuket province -- will hold an anti-tsunami drill. Or so they call it. Instead of a piercing siren, as originally designed, the officials each Wednesday at 8am play the national anthem. Then they write in their book that they held a tsunami-alert practice. Of course the national anthem is also played throughout Thailand and over all public broadcasting stations at 8am, rendering the so-called "tsunami alert" effectively useless.
