Archives

by Prof. Tissa Vitharana (MP), Minister of Science and Technology

The tsunami tragedy and its aftermath has led to many misconceptions being aired. It is unfortunate that in my attempt to put the record straight what I have stated has been misrepresented and been given wide publicity.

I shall be grateful if you could give reasonable publicity to this statesmen so as to correct these misrepresentations and to prevent the public being misled.

Prof. Tissa Vitharana

1. The first issue is the statement attributed to me that "Scientists cannot be blamed for not acting on the records that were available at the Pallekelle Centre of the Geological Survey as it was a Poya Day".

The sequence of events is as follows: At a media briefing I was questioned about my stand in Parliament when the Opposition (including its leader) accused the scientists at Pallekelle of a serious lapse of duty in not warning the country of the tsunami and demanded that a Committee of Inquiry be set up to bring them to book.

I stated that though I am not the Minister-in-charge of the Geological Survey, I feel that it is not fair to try to blame them as the set up was established by the California based Seismic Centre to automatically obtain data for themselves and not as part of a Sri Lanka centred monitoring system.

Considering that earthquakes were not a problem in Sri Lanka previous governments had not thought it necessary to establish our own monitoring system and if anyone is to be blamed it is those governments. (It is unfortunate that a newspaper represented this view in a front page headline as "a failure of the government", implying that I was laying the blame on the present government).

As such there was no one on regular duty to look at the recording on the instruments and to act on them.

The California Centre gets data from over 40 different locations through out the world, like Sri Lanka, and collates them. Based on this they eventually locate the epicentre and subsequently assess the strength of the earthquake on the Richter Scale and conveys this information to the various stations including Sri Lanka.

A scientist at Pallekelle cannot draw any conclusions on either the location or the strength of the earthquake by reading the results available there. Despite my explanation a journalist insisted that it was the duty of the Pallekelle Centre to have stationed a scientist to read the recordings and inform the authorities and the public.

I reminded the journalist that as a result of previous government policies many of the existing vacancies among scientists had not been filled and could one reasonably expect that there would be someone to perform an additional function like this on a Poya Day.

It is unfortunate that without mentioning a word of what I said before the last bit of my comment was twisted to give an impression that I condoned scientists not working on Poya Days.

When there are duties that need to be performed on a Poya Day and these have been assigned to a scientist it is his bounden duty to carry it out, and as the Director of the MRI I always insisted on that.

But in this case there was no such assigned duty and as pointed out the necessary instrumentation had not been established for any conclusions to be drawn by a scientist at Pallakelle.

2. Some newspapers have stated that I said that "there will be another tsunami event in 10 years". What I stated after my return from the International Conference on Disaster Reduction organised by UNESCO at Kobe, Japan was that several respected specialists on tsunamis and earthquakes had cautioned me about not being complaisant about the next tsunami event taking a long time to be repeated.

This included Prof. Tsuneo Katayama, who had been the head of the tsunami programme in Japan and was now President of the National Research Institute or Earth Science and Disaster Prevention and Prof. Haresh C. Shah of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Centre at Stanford, California.

They stated that on the basis of events recorded in connection with the southern end of the Sumatra Fault they had expected the recent tsunami to have originated from this part of the fault. They were surprised that it had originated from the northern end over 200 kms. distance away.

This new development could be the forerunner of a further extension north, closer to Burma (Myanmar) in the not too distant future.

When I questioned them further and asked for a possible time scale for such future events they said that it could even be within a decade or two, but that no one could say so with certainty. They advised Sri Lanka to be ready for such an eventuality in planning our reconstruction programme.

I gave this information to the journalists but I am sorry that it has been interpreted in various ways. I also stated that in view of the separation fault that is developing about 400 kms south of Sri Lanka in the Indo-Australian tectonic plate both local and foreign geologists have warned that the present increasing trend of earth tremors would lead eventually to damaging earthquakes in Sri Lanka.

But these will not lead to tsunamis as there is no overlapping of two tectonic plates as is occurring at the Sumatra Fault. In addition due to the increased global warming more extreme weather events like cyclones, typhoons and droughts are also likely to increase.

I informed the journalists that taking these factors into consideration the Government should ensure that the rehabilitation and reconstruction programme is carried out in a way that would minimise the risk to life and property in the future.

Japan in particular has approached this in a scientific manner and on the basis of properly gathered data they have worked out numerical models on the computer in which at any given location vulnerable and safe areas are identified. Vulnerable areas are generally avoided when constructing buildings or suitable precautions are taken.

In addition the people of each area are informed where they should move to when a tsunami or other event is likely to occur.

In fact at the United Nations University in Tokyo which is famous for its work in relation to earthquakes and tsunamis, the scientists in-charge of the modelling is a Sri Lankan, Dr. S. Herath who has offered to visit Sri Lanka soon with a team from there and help to gather further data, to add to what is already available, so as to set up a model in the near future.

Till this is available it would be wise for us to be guided by the areas that were inundated during the recent tsunami to identify vulnerable areas.

The advantage of the scientific approach of Japan has been that in several recent earthquake and tsunami events casualties have not only been minimised but even reduced to nil.

With the decision of the IOC of UNESCO to extend the Tsunami Warning System that has been in place in the Pacific Ocean Region for the last 40 years to the Indian Ocean Region it will be possible for Sri Lanka to establish and link to this its own independent capability with regard to early warning.

In fact the two professors whom I mentioned head the World Seismic Safety Initiatives and at my request they have agreed to help provide us with the necessary instrumentation free of charge and also train local staff.

In view of the increasing earth tremors and possible earthquakes we need to test out the various dams for evidence of cracks through non-destructive radio-isotopic techniques (I have already drawn the attention of the Chairperson of the AEA to this matter) and also to install seismographs to study the impact of seismic activity on the dams.

In the above context the ongoing reconstruction programme should not be a return to the past with all its dangers to life and property. It must be a scientifically planned modern approach that would ensure minimal loss of life and property in the future.

www.ceylincoproperties.com

www.Pathmaconstruction.com

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries

Produced by Lake House
Copyright © 2003 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager