Bougainville joins tsunami alert exercise

By STEPHANIE ELIZAH
THE Autonomous Region of Bougainville will be part of a nationwide tsunami warning exercise using the PACWAVE 11 system today, Bougainville disaster and emergency coordinator Franklyn Lacey says.
The exercise will be conducted by the Pacific Warning Centre in Hawaii in collaboration with the Port Moresby Geophysical Observatory and the National Disaster Centre.
Lacey said the aim of the exercise was to test the effectiveness and efficiency of the early warning and communication systems of each respective emergency centre and, on a larger scale, each country in the Asia-Pacific region and South America.
He said it was to test the new products the centre in Hawaii would now be employing to monitor earthquakes and issue tsunami warnings.
“All district executive managers throughout the autonomous region have been notified and are on standby to receive and disseminate the warnings to all respective recipients within the districts,” he said.
Lacey said the different district contacts in the region had been warned to ensure that the recipients were advised in advance of the exercise to avoid any unnecessary panic among the local communities.
He said a feed-back and evaluation exercise would be conducted immediately after the alert exercise to get the views of the public.