Sirens wail in Indian Ocean tsunami drill

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Sirens wailed and mosque loudspeakers ordered residents of the capital of Aceh province to seek safety as Indonesia kicked off an Indian Ocean-wide tsunami practice drill on Wednesday.

The exercise, a U.N.-backed initiative to test the warning systems and overall preparedness of several nations in the region, is supposed to simulate the magnitude 9.15 quake that struck off Aceh on Dec. 26, 2004 and triggered a huge tsunami.

About 230,000 people died as the tsunami raced across the Indian Ocean and hit Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India, including 170,000 deaths in Aceh alone.

Officials from Indonesia's meteorology and geophysics agency issued the test earthquake warning, sending out the notification of a 8.3 Richter scale quake off the coast of Aceh via a telephone text message, followed by a tsunami warning.

In Aceh, hundreds took part in the simulation while passers-by looked on.

'I'm still traumatised from the (2004) tsunami,' said Halimah, 43, who watched the drill but did not take part. 'If there's another disaster, I prefer to take shelter in the mosque so that if I die, I'd die in the mosque.'

Hundreds of people have died in a series of recent disasters in Asia, including a devastating earthquake off the coast of Padang, on Indonesia's Sumatra island, and a series of tsunamis in Samoa and American Samoa.

Since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, early warning systems ranging from beach loudspeaker sirens to deep ocean monitor buoys have been set up to prompt people to seek safety on higher ground.

But some experts have questioned the effectiveness of early alert systems, particularly if the time interval between the alarm and the tsunami hitting the area is very short, as would be the case in Indonesia which lies on the fault lines.

Tsunami waves can travel at speeds of 800-1,000 km (500-600 miles) per hour. The height of normal waves and tsunami waves is similar in deep ocean water, but closer to the shore, tsunami waves slow and swell, reaching heights of 10 metres (32 feet) or more.

The aim of the drill among members of UNESCO is to identify weaknesses in the system and areas which could be improved.

Countries participating include Australia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Mozambique, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, Seychelles, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and East Timor.