“Twenty years ago, I was in the hills and I saw the ocean swallow up my village of Bireuën in a few minutes… This nightmarish vision still haunts me sometimes today, but life has returned to normal. » Azul Namploh, 40, born in the province of Aceh, in the north of the Indonesian island of Sumatra where the 2004 tsunami killed more than 120,000 people, still fears the wrath of the land and the ocean.
“But enormous awareness and prevention work has been done for years in Aceh, thanks to international aid, explains the man who now works in South-East Asia for an international NGO. Anything can happen, but we are better prepared than in the past to deal with it. » As in the entire Indian Ocean, from Thailand to the Indian coasts via Sri Lanka.
Exercises under the auspices of the UN
Proof of this can be seen in the latest prevention exercise carried out in Aceh on November 15, in order to anticipate and avoid the worst in the event of a new disaster. This type of training consists of simulating a repeat of the 9.1 magnitude earthquake of 2004. Under the aegis of the UN, these simulations brought together hundreds of schoolchildren and volunteers who rushed to shelters in the clearly identified heights.
These exercises took place as part of a summit organized by UNESCO on the tsunami, bringing together hundreds of experts from around the world. “We must ensure the next generation is informed, prepared and resilient”explained to Agence France-Presse Ardito Kodijat, responsible at Unesco and director of the Indian Ocean Tsunami Information Center, for whom “ensuring community readiness requires regular exercises”. They are held every year in many countries threatened by tsunamis around the world.
“Tsunami Ready” communities
Upstream, over the last two decades, UNESCO has worked to establish the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System (Satoi) by developing a vast network of cutting-edge monitoring infrastructure. Today, tens of thousands of seismometers, approximately 1,200 active sea level stations, submarine cable observatories and deep-water tsunami detection buoys make it possible to detect and measure tsunamis from large scale with sufficient time to alert distant coasts.
“The real-time availability of seismic data allows the development of even faster warning systems to prevent the arrival of seismic tremors,” explain, in an article published on December 22 on the site The Conversation, Zacharie Duputel, seismologist in charge of research at the CNRS, and Luis Rivera, professor of seismology at the University of Strasbourg. While remembering that it is still impossible today to predict the triggering of an earthquake or to anticipate the power of a tsunami.
This is why, during the conference in Aceh, UNESCO called on States and civil society to significantly increase their investments and efforts in order to achieve 100% “Tsunami Ready” communities. ) in the world by 2030. This collective commitment has enabled the Tsunami Ready certification of new communities in the region, including 26 in India and 12 in Indonesia. Achieving this goal on a global scale is crucial because more than 700 million people live in coastal regions vulnerable to tsunamis. And “there is still much to do” concluded in Aceh, Audrey Azoulay, Director General of Unesco.