Jakarta (AsiaNews) Thousands of citizens of Jakarta feared the worst last night. Only three days after the tsunami in Java, the earth shook once again, spreading the alarm later quashed that another freak wave was about to hit the tormented Indonesian island. The incident re-ignited controversy about the operation of an anti-tsunami alert system in the region, promised in the wake of the tragedy on 26 December 2004.
Yesterday's quake measured 6.2 on the Richter scale and was recorded 48km underwater near Sunda Bay west of the capital. The quake was strongly felt in Jakarta's highest buildings and people quickly started to flock to emergency exists of the city's skyscrapers. The streets of the centre soon filled up with panic stricken people. Elly, a mother of two children, could just about manage to talk about what she had been through: "I am exhausted after being forced to rush to the emergency exit door from the 27th floor to the lobby." Many people in the capital and in nearby Banten province opted to spend the night outdoors.
Indonesia's Geophysics and Meteorology Agency promptly raised the alarm about a possible tsunami in areas like Anyer Beach, Serang, Tangerang, North Jakarta, and Banten, all densely populated areas. Shortly afterwards, the US tsunami alert agency based in Hawai put these fears into perspective, saying the seaquake had occurred too deep to cause another freak wave.
Controversies are raging about false or absent alerts in the wake of the tragedy on 17 July which, like the tsunami on 26 December 2004, came unannounced. The three-metre high wave, generated by another underwater earthquake, destroyed the tourist resorts of Cilacap and Pangandaran in southern Java, killing to date 528 people. The US and Indonesian agencies had immediately raised the alert but Jakarta admitted it had been unable to relay the message to the coastlines and that anyhow, even if it had managed, there were no sirens or alarms in the area.
"Our system is not capable of working properly," said the Transport Minister Hatta Radjasa. And while some are calling for the resignation of officials in charge of disaster management, there are others like the Research and Technology Minister, Kusmayanto who charge donor countries with not completing projects promised years ago. "Germany," he recalled "said it would supply 10 tsunami alert units within three years but so far we have only seen two."
