Thailand conducts region's largest tsunami evacuation drill (Roundup)

Jul 25, 2007, 10:35 GMT

Bangkok - Thailand on Wednesday held South-East Asia's largest tsunami evacuation drill in its six provinces on the Andaman Sea coast, where thousands of people were caught unaware and died in the December 26, 2004, tidal wave disaster.

Several thousand local residents and tourists joined the drill, conducted in Ranong, Phang Nga, Phuket, Krabi, Satun, and Trang provinces.

Representatives from international organisations, ambassadors, consuls, and tourism industry entrepreneurs were also on hand to observe the one-hour drill, said the Thai News Agency (TNA).

The tsunami warning and evacuation exercise aimed at testing the emergency-warning systems installed at 79 locations in six Andaman Sea coastal provinces and practicing evacuation plans.

No serious hitches were reported, but Thailand's National Disaster Warning Administration chairman Smith Dharmasaroja complained that the simulated evacuation took too long.

'The drill went all right but the evacuation time was too long, about 20 to 25 minutes,' said Smith, who was the only meteorological official in Thailand to have warned the government to get ready for a tsunami before the December 26, 2004 disaster struck.

Smith's forecast was ignored and mocked. Consequently, there were no warning towers or evacuation plans in place two and a half years ago when a tsunami triggered by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sumatra hit Thai beach resorts along the Andaman coast, killing approximately 5,400 people, half of whom were tourists.

After the disaster, the Thai government vowed to put in place a tsunami warning system to protect both the local population and visiting tourists from similar disasters.

Thailand will also install 124 disaster-warning systems in its central, northern and north-eastern provinces over the next year to provide early warnings for floods, fires and other natural disasters, Smith said.