INDONESIA EARTHQUAKE (Jul 23 06) - 6.6 - Sparks TZUNAMI Scare; CHINA EARTHQUAKE (Jul 22 06) 5.1 Struck SW Yunnan Province; Death Toll Risen to 22

Large fallen boulders in the mountain
area caused extensive damages

More than 100 others have been injured. The quake, which struck mountainous Yanjin county early on Saturday, measured 5.1 on the Richter scale, with most victims killed by collapsing homes and falling rocks.

The quake has also destroyed more than 6,000 homes and according to Xinhua news agency another 38,000 buildings have been damaged.
The quake occurred at 9.10 a.m. local time (6.40 a.m. IST) with the epicentre located in Yanjin County, Zhaotong City, in the northern area of the province.

The destroyed homes in the Yanjin province

The quake has caused more than 1,400 houses to collapse and damaged 38,000 others in 13 townships of Yanjin, disrupting road and train services and cutting off electricity and telecommunications, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Update on INDONESIA New Quake & Tzunami

The NST Editorial below is typical of “armchair” critics giving their editorial views without the proper facts. The UN early warning system was set up in the Sumatra areas only so their expressed view “None of the fancy equipment and good intentions made a difference” is totally unjustified.

Meanwhile after the harsh criticisms for the deficient tsunami prevention measures adopted and for the management of the consecutive disaster, Indonesian President Susilo ordered agencies concerned to speed up the procurement of new seismographs and early warning systems at least in the “most high risk” zones of the country.

The president said the government was allocating “a huge extra budget” of several millions of billions of rupees for this project. However he warned that Indonesia would not manage to equip itself with such high technology systems alone. “Donors such as Japan, Germany and China have issued their commitments to this project,” he said. According to the head of state, the anti-tsunami alarm system will be ready before 2008.

So how many more deaths would occur before 2008 if more tsunamis were to occur?

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and Japan's Meteorological Agency had already given the warning that killer waves could be on the way but this was not relayed. Why, not to cause panic and another false alarm?

Scores of lives could have been saved with even a few minutes' notice

And from AFP
Strong earthquake sparks fresh tsunami alert in Indonesia ; AFP Posted: 23 July 2006 1750 hrs

JAKARTA - A 6.6-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Indonesia's Sulawesi island sparked a tsunami alert and calls to evacuate on Sunday, officials said.

Gorontalo province governor Fadel Muhammad said he ordered residents to leave coastal areas after the strong earthquake shook the island at 3:22pm (0722 GMT).

"I have ordered the people on the coastline, through the radio, to evacuate... I have also instructed all district heads to evacuate the people from the coast," Muhammad told ElShinta radio.

"I am taking the safe (solution)," he added.

Indonesia's third tsunami alert in a week came after about 650 people died in massive waves which crashed against Java island's southern coast on Monday.

But there were no reports of tsunamis 30 minutes after Sunday's earthquake 90 kilometres (56 miles) south of Gorontalo on Sulawesi's southern coast.

Officials said the quake's depth 71 kilometres (44 miles) under the Tomini bay seabed probably ruled out a repeat of last week's killer waves.

An officer at Gorontalo province police headquarters could not confirm evacuations were taking place.

"We have no report on a mass evacuation yet," he said. Police contacted in various towns along Tomini bay said people ran outside buildings when the earthquake hit.

But there was no mass panic and no reports of damage or injuries, they said.

On Monday, a 7.7-strength undersea temblor triggered a tsunami that lashed the south coast of Java island, killing at least 596 people.

Two days later, a 6.2-magnitude quake sparked a tsunami warning for residents in west and south Sumatra.

Indonesia, which sits on the "Pacific Ring of Fire", where continental plates meet causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity, was the nation worst hit by the December 2004 Asian tsunami.

Some 168,000 people were killed in Aceh province when a 9.3-magnitude quake unleashed massive walls of water that reached 11 Indian Ocean nations, killing a total of 220,000. - AFP


Patrols along Indonesia's tsunami-battered coastline called off due to dangerous surf

By ANTHONY DEUTSCH Associated Press Writer Jul 23, 7:05 AM EDT

PANGANDARAN, Indonesia (AP) -- High waves halted search efforts Sunday for hundreds of people still missing following the Indonesian tsunami as a powerful quake elsewhere in the sprawling archipelago triggered fears of another killer wave.

The 6.1 magnitude quake off Sulawesi island Sunday afternoon caused coastal residents to flee inland, some screaming "Beware tsunami! Beware tsunami!"

Indonesian officials - who have come under fire for failing to warn people ahead of last week's tsunami on Java island - said it had the potential to trigger destructive waves. They later said no waves was generated and told residents to return home.

The tsunami that hit Java on Monday killed at least 668 people. Some 74,000 residents have been displaced, either because their homes were destroyed or out of fear of living next to the sea. More than 280 are missing, officials say.

The chance of finding survivors is considered unlikely, but marine police and navy boats have been carrying out daily patrols in search of corpses. Bad weather Sunday prevented the teams from leaving port, officials said.

Emergency workers hoped to continue their search Monday, but it depends on the weather. Most seaworthy boats were destroyed in the massive waves, and authorities cannot take rubber dinghies out to the ocean.

In hardest-hit Pangandaran, survivors and army troops lit massive bonfires of debris in palm tree groves and along the beach.

The government started setting up an early warning system after the 2004 tsunami that killed at least 216,000 people across the Indian Ocean rim, more than half of them on Indonesia's Sumatra island. But it is still in the initial stages.

Only two monitoring buoys have been installed, and a government minister acknowledged Friday that they had broken from their moorings and are now
being repaired on land, underscoring the problems in maintaining the high-tech system.

Even if they had been operational, the buoys off Sumatra's coast do not cover Java island.

The government has come under fire, however, for failing to tell coastal authorities about bulletins from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and Japan's Meteorological Agency saying killer waves could be on the way.

Officials have given different explanations for the decision.

Sgt. Sudarman, a detective with the marine police in Pangandaran, said scores of lives could have been saved with even a few minutes' notice.

"We would not have been able to warn everybody, but we could have told those nearby and at least reduced the number of casualties," he said, adding that officers learned of the tsunami threat after receiving a phone call from reporters.

By then it was too late, he said. The water was already receding - a sign of an imminent tsunami - and they were able to save only themselves.


and from BBC…..
Tsunami death toll rises to 650; BBC News, Saturday, 22 July 2006, 14:45 GMT

The death toll in the tsunami that struck the Indonesian island of Java has risen to more than 650.

Around 100 new bodies have been found in recent days, the national disaster agency said. More than 300 people are still missing after Monday's disaster.

The tsunami, triggered by an undersea earthquake, struck a 200km (125-mile) stretch of Java's southern coast.

Towns hardest hit are showing signs of a return to normal, but many people are still too scared to return home.A second earthquake on Wednesday night caused further panic among residents.

Health officials are worried about the threat of disease among the several thousands of people who are camping out in the hills above the tsunami-hit area, Reuters news agency reports.

"The risk of catching diseases is there because they live in an open area with limited tents and water," Rustan Pakaya, of the health ministry's crisis centre, told Reuters.

He said people were being given injections to protect them from diseases such as measles, tetanus and cholera.

Market open

But while people are opting to spend the night in temporary camps, they are returning to towns during the day to pick up supplies, district officials say.

Many businesses in Pangandaran - the town hardest hit by the disaster – have begun to open up again.

"The market and many shops are already open today and although they are not operating fully, things are slowly returning to normal," district spokesman Wasdi bin Umri told the AFP news agency.

Huge bonfires were lit on Saturday to clear the debris from the beach. But as the clean up continues, so too does the search for victims.

Mr bin Umri said the army-led rescuers had been instructed to continue searching for bodies trapped under the rubble on Pangandaran beach.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited the town on Friday and met people displaced by the disaster.

He has vowed to accelerate efforts to build an early warning system planned after the 2004 Asian tsunami, saying "I will work with parliament to get the budget".

His government has come under fire over why no warning was given to local people in the latest tsunami.

US and Japanese agencies sent out warning bulletins, but the government says it was unable to relay the message to the coast.

On Thursday it emerged that text messages sent to government officials by the national meteorological agency after the earthquake contained only the co-ordinates of the earthquake and no tsunami warning.

and from NST

Comment: This is typical of “armchair” critics giving their editorial views without the proper facts. The UN early warning system was set up in the Sumatra areas only so the expressed view “None of the fancy equipment and good intentions made a difference” is totally unjustified.

At least Indonesia has acknowledged two of their buoys were not working. What is happening to the Malaysian ones? Are they still functioning somewhere in the ocean?

Editorial: Rousing up to early warning; 23 Jul 2006

SOME day, historians might look into the "counter-factual" of the Indian Ocean tsunami and ask: What if there had been advance and widespread knowledge of the impending waves?

On Boxing Day 2004, the largest earthquake in 40 years was recorded in the Sunda Trench by seismologists 90 to 150 minutes before the swells reached land. If this information had been relayed to Aceh, Sri Lanka and the Andaman and Nicobar islands, most if not all of the 200,000 fatalities would have had time to stroll away to safety, instead of knowing of the torrent only when it hit them.

Unlike other natural calamities, the worst effects of the tsunami are now mostly avoidable. So following the catastrophe, countries around the ocean’s rim, helped by the United Nations and other partners, went about putting an early warning system into place.

None of the fancy equipment and good intentions made a difference last Monday when a 7.7-magnitude undersea quake south of Java triggered a tsunami that smashed into 200 kilometres of coastline around Pangandaran.

What ensued was a scaled-down reprise of December 2004: communities caught by surprise, the death toll mounting as bodies are uncovered and, most regretfully, alarm bells lost in transmission. To be fair, unlike its much bigger but slower rolling predecessor, the Java temblor gave the Indonesian Bureau of Meteorology and Geophysics only 20 minutes to sound an alert.

Even with the best communications, that would not have been long enough to evacuate the shore. Given the fact that most of the fishing villagers did not have TVs or telephones, any rescue plan would have been dead on the water well before it could get off the ground.

Java illustrates the importance of the "last mile" in the early warning network. In Thailand, the crucial distance between centralised detection and the often isolated coast is being closed by education and drills.

If Pangandaran had been similarly primed, people could have made for the hills as soon as they felt the ground trembling beneath them. Instructing Indonesia’s vast archipelago to watch for and act on the signs is a daunting task.

Furthermore, tsunamis are so rare that local authorities are loth to expend resources on an outside chance that may never come to pass. Yet unless the world stands ready for another momentous outpouring of aid, Jakarta has to be convinced that pre-disaster preparedness is better than post-disaster relief.
See the last posting with pictures on
Indonesian Tzunami (Jul 17 06)