13/02/2021
Serious questions are being asked in Fiji and Vanuatu, after their tsunami warning systems weren't activated, with potentially disastrous consequences.
The populations of both countries were largely oblivious after a magnitude 7.7 undersea earthquake struck some 400 kilometres from Vanuatu just after midnight local time on Thursday morning.
A tsunami alert was issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre and the tsunami waves that were generated were only small.
But many people have raised concerns that if the worst had happened, the consequences would likely have been deadly.
In the Fijian capital, Suva, youth activist Dylan Kava got an alert from an app on his phone, but was unable to verify it through the social media pages of the National Disaster Management Office, and warning sirens in the city were not sounded.
"If I decided to move to a safe space, I'd have to break the [COVID-19] curfew. I wanted to verify whether there was a tsunami or not, so I would have that on my side if I was stopped by the police," he told Pacific Beat.
Fiji's Minister for Disaster Management, Inia Seruiratu, issued an apology on Thursday and said the siren failure would be investig*ted.
However Dylan Kava is most concerned that many people were oblivious.
"The minister said 'oh, we have to understand that this happened at a very odd time'. I mean, this is the National Disaster Management Office we're talking about, surely they have contingency plans. Surely they have someone looking at these things 24/7," he said.
It was similar in Vanuatu, where no sirens were sounded and a text messaging alert system wasn't activated.
The Manager of the Meteorology and Geo-Hazards Department in Port Vila, Fred Jocklee, said his duty forecaster called the national disaster office but no-one answered the phone.
"So there was no SMS that we would normally issue whenever there is a tsunami or tropical cyclone," Mr Jocklee said.
"So if there had been a potentially destructive tsunami, it could have been worse because no one would have received the messages we send out, people were asleep."
