By IANS
New Delhi : India withdrew the tsunami warning late Wednesday evening, hours after it sounded an alert along its coastal belt in the wake of 8.1-magnitude earthquake in Indonesia. Emergency arrangements, however, continued to be in place, officials said.
“The Indonesian tsunami warning centre has withdrawn the warning and there is no point in our keeping it. The possibility of a tsunami hitting the Indian coast was over by 8.30 p.m.,” said A.K. Shukla, a seismologist at the India Meteorological Department (IMD) here.
“Had there been a tsunami, it would have reached the Andamans from Sumatra in little over two hours and the country’s coastal belt in nearly three and half hours, but nothing has happened so far.
“As of now, we have withdrawn the warning from India,” Shukla told IANS.
He said the interim tsunami warning system in the coast of Andhra Pradesh had alerted the Andaman and Nicobar Islands about a possible threat soon after the earthquake in Indonesia.
The high intensity tremor, measuring 8.1 on Richter scale, in the Bengkulu province in Sumatra Island of Indonesia was reported at 16.40 IST. The Indonesian Meteorology and Geophysics Agency also lifted the tsunami warning late evening.
Shukla, who was in touch with the National Institute of Ocean Technology and India National Centre for Ocean Information Service, said the science and technology minister had advised fishermen not to venture into sea.
“The minister has formally withdrawn the warning but has advised fishermen against entering the sea both in the Andamans and the coastal belt,” the senior seismologist said.
The latest warning had brought alive memories of the Dec 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that claimed over 10,000 lives in India and rendered tens of thousands homeless.
India is in the process of setting up a full-fledged Tsunami Warning System that will alert the country in case of such an emergency within a few minutes of its occurrence under the ocean.
Keeping in mind the loss of lives and property during the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, all coastal states in India were put on high alert and battalions of the National Disaster Response Force were galvanised as soon as the alert from Indonesia was received.
K.C. Singh, a senior member of the National Disaster Management Authority, told IANS here that three battalions of the National Disaster Response Force were put on high alert and activated at Arakonam in Tamil Nadu, Mundli near Bhubaneswar in Orissa and Kolkata.
The Indian Air Force (IAF) too went on high alert following the trembler in Indonesia, even though there was no immediate threat to military and civilian assets in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal.
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and particularly the Car Nicobar IAF base, were severely devastated in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
The Orissa government alerted officials of the six coastal districts.
“We have asked the district collectors of Balasore, Kendrapada, Jagatsinghpur, Puri, Gajapati and Bhadrak to remain alert as the quake may trigger tsunami in Bay of Bengal,” said Orissa State Disaster Mitigation Authority deputy general manager Abhaya Naik.
The Tamil Nadu government also issued a warning to all coastal districts, following which police and civic officials began evacuating residents living next to the sea all over the state.
Ripples of the Indonesian quake were felt in West Bengal. “We have also received reports of ripples in water bodies from different parts of the state,” met office regional director G.C. Debnath told IANS in Kolkata.
An alert was sounded in the coastal areas of West Bengal.
In Andhra Pradesh, authorities in the nine coastal districts were on high alert, ready to evacuate people from low-lying areas. Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy spoke to senior officials, including the State Chief Secretary and the Commissioner of Disaster Management.
The district collectors were told to advise fishermen who have ventured into the sea to return immediately, the chief minister’s office said.