Disaster plans still not good

       Authorities last week showed their best side when they declared an alert for approaching Typhoon Ketsana. While there was never any apparent major threat to the country,the decision to place relief services, including the armed forces, on standby status was a major step forward.
       In November 1989, Typhoon Gay swept down on Chumphon province, and lack of foresight left residents to deal with the devastation on their own. Twenty years on, and the improvement is evident. At the same time,disaster planning still has weak spots that need immediate addressing.
       The attention paid and the response of the National Disaster Warning Centre (NDWC) to approaching Typhoon Ketsana was positive. Because of geography,Thailand is not generally vulnerable to the brunt of typhoons from the Pacific and South China Sea. By the time the cyclonic storms blast Vietnam and encounter the mountains of Laos, they have lost the power of actual typhoons. But the storms and weather depressions from a dying typhoon continue to dump huge amounts of rain. They also include winds which are potentially deadly even though they are well below the 120 kilometres per hour of an actual typhoon.
       The question, rather, is whether typhoons qualify as real "disasters". The storms can be predicted days in advance. One might argue that a true disaster is by definition unpredictable. In general, then, it would be somewhere between difficult and impossible to judge the preparedness of the NDWC. But there are occasional events which reveal whether the disaster planning is really up to confronting an earthquake, an air crash or a tsunami. Here is an example.
       A little less than three years ago, and two years after the Dec 26 tsunami that struck southern Thailand and the Indian Ocean rim, authorities launched a buoy in the deep ocean, around 1,100 kilometres off Phuket. It was part of the Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART), part of a network installed under the supervision of - and with considerable aid fromthe US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
       In mid-June, the buoy went off the air; it simply stopped broadcasting. This left Thailand's Andaman Sea coastline almost as vulnerable as in 2004, when it also had no early warning of a tsunami. Two months after it went silent, the buoy began broadcasting again.And again, because no maintenance crew visited the tsunami-warning buoy, no one knew why. Officials now that the buoy is on a backup battery, with a life of about 30 days. Then the warning buoy will definitely stop working again.
       Phuket has thus been without a reliable tsunami warning system for four months. There is no actual timetable for the NDWC to repair or replace the defective buoy. The centre has issued a statement saying it will be fixed "as soon as possible".
       That is not particularly comforting to the southern region, still nervous about the threat of tsunamis. Clearly,getting to the faraway buoy during the monsoon season is not simple. But neither is any disaster relief planning.By its very nature, it requires quick decisions and fast action to move into the disaster zone.
       The National Disaster Warning Centre has clearly made huge strides since Typhoon Gay. It has made even greater progress since the 2004 tsunami. But as the faulty buoy demonstrates, there is still much to be done to protect the country against both natural and man-made disasters.