On Wednesday, a plan was agreed with the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to set up a
seismographic tsunami warning network for the Indian Ocean and
Southeast Asian region.
Technical exchanges will be strengthened with ASEAN countries,
said Chen Jianmin, director of the China Seismological
Bureau,?adding that his bureau promised to offer countries and
organizations information from China's national seismographic
network.?
According to Chen, ASEAN members also welcomed China's proposal to
host an Asian conference on disaster reduction in the near
future.
He said it is also important?for China to?improve its
existing earthquake-warning system along its coastline, which is
18,000 kilometers long and not free from the threat of
tsunamis.
Walter Mooney, a senior research seismologist at the US
Geological Survey, said the workshop provided good ideas. "To
create a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean is rather
difficult because in some cases the distance from the earthquake
and tsunami to land is very small," he said.
Laura Kong, director of UNESCO's International Tsunami
Information Center, said the risks of tsunami exist to different
degrees in all oceans.
(China Daily January 27, 2005)