TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) revealed that Sulawesi Island is one of regions with the potential of having tsunami. Therefore, residents are expected to stay alert of the signs of tsunami.
“The cause of tsunami in Sulawesi, including South Sulawesi, is the existence of small faults,” said Muhammad Karnaen, a Geophysics Staff at BMKG station IV Makassar, during the dissemination of BMKG informations in Makassar.
According to Karnaen, among the signs are strong quake that last for more than one minute, sea water suddenly receding, sea birds fly to land, strong wind from the ocean, and wave that looks like black wall approaching the shore.
The first known tsunami occurence in South Sulawesi was, Karnaen said, when the Tinambung quake happened on April 11, 1967. The quake triggered tsunami that killed 58 people, injured 100, and 13 people were missing. There was also a landslide with quake intensity of 7 to 8 MMI. The second tsunami occured on Feburary 23, 1969, that killed 64, injured 97, and destroyed 1287 houses and public facilities.
The BMKG’s Head of Service for Region IV Makassar, Sujarwo, said that BMK uses satelite access to monitor tsunami occurences. This way, information regarding tsunami occurences will be able to be distributed through SMS to the people one hour before the occurence.
“We also rely on media and the Regional Disaster Mitigation Agency to distribute the information quickli to the people,” said Sujarwo.
In addition to the effort, Sujarwo said his team has proposed to have special device called the automatic wheather station (AWS) and automatic rain gauge (ARG) to support the agency’s data collecting.
MUHAMMAD YUNUS