SYDNEY, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- The high cost and limited effectiveness of a tsunami alert system kept it from being used in the Indian Ocean area, a scientist told The Australian Monday.
"Had there been (an Indian Ocean alert system), I think there would have been time for people in Sri Lanka ... (or) the Maldives ... to have done something about it," said Dr. Phil McFadden, a chief scientist at the national agency Geoscience Australia, referring to the massive waves, caused by an earthquake near Indonesia, which killed approximately 15,000 in a number of countries Sunday.
"It's actually a very expensive process to get the information out to the people who need to hear it in the right ways so they will actually react and go to high ground," McFadden said.
"We have an alert system here in Australia. ... Half an hour after the earthquake, we had an alert out to the Emergency Management Australia."
In places close to the epicenter of Sunday's quake, such as the Thai resort island of Phuket, a tsunami alert system would not have saved many lives. "Bear in mind that these waves travel through the ocean at about 300 mph; they're pretty darn fast," McFadden said.
