Another tsunami, and again, no official warnings

Hundreds of families crowded into Pangandaran's central mosque Tuesday evening, one day after a series of high waves swept over the Indonesian beach town killing more than 300 people. Other survivors guarded against looters by camping outside their homes, ruined by the tsunami.

Pangandaran residents say the minor shaking from the offshore earthquake that triggered the wave initially failed to alarm most people in this quake-prone region.

"I just woke up when people screamed about a tsunami," says local resident Oji Suhaendi. "My family and I are safe because we ran away to the mosque like everyone else."

The latest tsunami to hit Indonesia has revived debate about how best to implement an early warning system to notify coastal residents of oncoming killer waves. And disaster relief officials here, confronted by the rapid succession of the 2004 tsunami, several major earthquakes, and a threatening volcano, are hoping that Monday's one-two punch of temblor and tsunami will prod the government to pass a stalled natural-disaster bill.

"We heard on the radio some people asking: 'Is this a real tsunami or not?' " says Eko Teguh Paripurno, a natural- disaster rescue worker and volcanologist in Yogjakarta. "An early warning system could have confirmed it."

Officials said 306 people were killed with another 160 or more missing. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck beneath the seabed of the Indian Ocean at about 3:15 p.m. and damaged some 110 miles of the southern coast of Indonesia's most populous island of Java.

The tallest waves were reported in Pangandaran, a sleepy beach-side resort town popular with locals and foreigners. Successive waves swept over the main street carrying with it cars, boats, and the remnants of seaside shops which slammed into adjacent buildings.

Many structures along the shore sustained heavy damage. Tiles under 12-foot high balconies were ripped away by the force of the surging water. Concrete walls showed gaping holes where the waves had swept in and deposited several inches of debris and sand. Debris also covered roads for more than 490 feet inland.

Buyung Hermonto owns the Anis hotel in Pangandaran. He was salvaging mattresses and furniture from remnannts of his hotel on Tuesday night.

"I ran upstairs and saw that the wave was about 6 meters [20 feet] high. The wave hit the walls of my hotel lobby and it collapsed," says Mr. Hermonto. "It was very fast ... by the time the wave reached the wall of the hotel [across the beach] it was 3 meters [10 fee] tall."

The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 – when a magnitude 9.0 earthquake triggered a tsunami off Sumatra island – did a lot to educate Indonesia's 220 million people about the dangers of the sea. The tsunami left more than 170,000 people dead and helped to focus authorities' attention on the need for a better warning and evacuation system.

In local radio and TV reports, some residents said they had fled Monday for high ground after seeing the sea recede – something they learned was a warning sign from TV coverage of the 2004 tsunami. Others said they weren't sure if a tsunami was coming when the quake struck, as there was no official warning, only panicked cries from neighbors.

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