20 years after the Indonesian tsunami, how prepared is the world for a large tsunami?

The 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean was one of the natural disasters most destructive of the modern era, by causing more than 228.000 muertosbut it also spurred international scientific cooperation in the face of this tragedy of which 20 years have passed on December 26.

The head of the Tsunami Program of the UN agency for education, science and culture (UNESCO), Bernardo Aliaga, explained that the world counts with better warning systems and greater international cooperationalthough there is still work to do to prepare communities in the most remote areas.

“After 2004, there was a wave of solidarity with the affected countries and that wave of solidarity included a lot of scientific and technical cooperation and scientific diplomacy,” Aliaga, a Chilean scientist who joined UNESCO in 2001, said via videoconference.

In this sense, many experts believe that the world has never been better protected before tsunamis.

Since the 2004 tsunami occurred until today, the number of boyas DART (Deep-ocean Assesment and Reporting of Tsunami) that detect tsunamis went from about four to about 40 throughout the world, while there are currently about 150 centers with seismographs throughout the planet.

20 years ago, there were only two regional tsunami warning centers in the Pacific Ocean and now also exist in the Indian Ocean, the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, while eResponse time has dropped from up to 50 to 5 or 7 minutes.

One hundred communities in 34 countries, including Spain, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Indonesia and India, are recognized by UNESCO for their preparation for the risk of tsunamis, although there are still hundreds or thousands of vulnerable villages and populations that have not been formed.

For example, in the Caribbean there are about 25 prepared communities, but the objective is to reach 300 in 2030.

Aliaga warned that preparation is vital, since it is certain that more tsunamis will occur in places prone to these natural disasters. from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterraneanbut it is not known when.

The 2004 tsunami was caused by an earthquake of magnitude 9.1 near the Indonesian island of Sumatra and caused a tsunami wave which caused more than 228,000 deaths, the majority in Indonesia (167,000 deaths).

The UNESCO expert explained that international scientific collaboration “for these times is good proof of the best of humanity put at the service of a noble cause, which is saving lives.”

An example is the global network of seismographs that detect earthquakes in real time, which are the main cause of tsunamis, essential information to set off the alarms.

The most advanced marine tsunami prediction systems are the American DART, which has a pressure and temperature gauge on the seabed and a buoy on the surface.

The Chilean expert points out that these systems measure height variations of millimeters or centimeters at 1,000 or 2,000 meters deep.

Tsunamis (“giant wave” in Japanese) are formed by the “molecule by molecule” pressure of water columns that, dragging all types of waste and materialsbecome a wall when they reach the coast, according to Aliaga.

Japan, which suffered a devastating tsunami in 2011, is one of the countries best prepared for these natural disasters by having a practically real-time warning system.

Aliaga stressed that also It is important that citizens are informed and know what to do before a tsunami, even in places where one occurred a long time ago, such as in Spain, where the last great destructive tsunami occurred as a result of the Lisbon earthquake in 1755.

“It’s not about panicking either, it’s about knowing what to do, how to do it, when and where,” said the UNESCO expert, who specified that Sometimes they are simple slogans.

“Take basic measures with the family, where we meet, how we communicate. That is, the father does not come in the car to pick up the children who are at the edge of the sea at a school. It is the teachers who have to take the children and take them up,” he said.