Indonesia’s geophysics agency lifted a tsunami warning just 34 minutes after it was first issued, as censors missed the warning signs for a tsunami that killed 832 people.
A 7.5 magnitude quake on Friday evening triggered a tsunami which sent huge waves crashing into the northeastern coast of Sulawesi island, killing at least 832 and leaving thousands more homeless in the city of Palu and further along the coastline.
Officials said the death toll was likely to rise as search and rescue operations have been unable to reach areas closer to the quake’s epicentre, due to power and communications being cut off and access routes severed.
Hundreds of people had gathered for a festival on the beach in Palu on Friday when a wall of water more than 10ft high smashed onshore at dusk, sweeping many to their death.
The geophysics agency (BMKG) faced a storm of criticism on Saturday on social media, with many questioning if the tsunami warning was lifted too soon.
The agency said it followed standard operating procedure and made the call to ‘end’ the warning based on data available from the closest tidal sensor, around 200km (125 miles) from Palu.
‘We have no observation data at Palu. So we had to use the data we had and make a call based on that,’ said Rahmat Triyono, head of the earthquakes and tsunami centre at BMKG.
He said the closest tide gauge, which measures changes in sea level, only recorded an ‘insignificant’, six-centimetre (2.5 inches) wave and did not account for the giant waves near Palu.
‘If we had a tide gauge or proper data in Palu, of course it would have been better. This is something we must evaluate for the future,’ said Triyono.
It was not clear whether the tsunami, which officials say hammered Palu and the surrounding area at extremely high speeds measuring in the hundreds of kilometres per hour, occurred before or after the warning had been lifted.
‘Based on the videos circulating on social media, we estimate the tsunami happened before the warning officially ended,’ Triyono said.
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for the disaster agency, told reporters his team had been ‘preparing to send public warnings that were easy to understand’ when the tsunami warning was ‘suddenly ended’.
The communications ministry said repeated warnings were sent out to residents via text message, but Nugroho said the quake had brought down the area’s power and communications lines and there were no sirens along the coast.
Indonesians took to social media to question the BMKG’s move to lift the tsunami warning and a failure to release information in a timely manner.
‘So upset.. the warning was lifted.. although a tsunami happened…’ said one Twitter user @zanoguccy in a direct message to BMKG.
‘I just ran when I saw the waves hitting homes on the coastline,’ said Palu resident Rusidanto, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
About 17,000 people had been evacuated, the disaster agency said, and that figure is expected to rise.
Indonesian president Joko Widodo said the military was being called in to the disaster-struck region to help search-and-rescue teams get to victims and find bodies.
‘This was a terrifying double disaster,’ said Jan Gelfand, a Jakarta-based official at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
‘The Indonesian Red Cross is racing to help survivors but we don’t know what they’ll find there.’
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