South Asia 'hit by new tsunami within 50 years'

Another earthquake and tsunami can be expected to strike the area of south Asia devastated on St Stephen's Day within the next 50 years, a British Government minister warned today.

International Development Minister Gareth Thomas is among politicians and scientists from virtually every country in the world attending a conference in Japan on dealing with natural disasters.

The conference will discuss an early warning system for tsunamis in the Indian Ocean, which Mr Thomas said could avoid loss of life on the scale seen last month at a cost of as little as €28-42m.

He pledged that the government would make good on all of its promises of assistance for the relief effort in southern Asia, following reports that aid agencies were concerned that some international donors may not deliver.

The St Stephen's Day tsunami, which killed more than 160,000 people and ravaged vast stretches of coastline from Thailand to Somalia, was set to dominate the conference in Kobe, on the 10th anniversary of an earthquake which destroyed the Japanese city.

Mr Thomas told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “It is about trying to get better early warning systems in place, not least because we think there will be another earthquake and possibly another tsunami in the same part of the world at some point in the next 50 years.

“Obviously, we want to be better prepared for that.

“Also, we know that an average of 60,000 people die a year from natural disasters. Many of those lives could be saved, not only if there were better early warning systems in place, but also if countries were better able to respond to these disasters.”

The conference will discuss solutions ranging from advanced seismic technology to detect earthquakes in the oceans to simple communications networks to ensure that coastal villagers are warned to move to higher ground when a wave is on its way.

Villagers in countries like Sri Lanka and India would have had several hours to move inland if they had received warning of the December 26 tsunami in time.

The price-tag for an early warning system was “a relatively small amount of money… in the context of the number of lives that were lost in the most recent tsunami”, said Mr Thomas.

Oxfam has expressed concern that some of the billions of pounds promised by governments around the world may never reach the victims of the monster wave in Asia.

But Mr Thomas insisted that Britain would not go back on its promises.

“We have a record of delivering and I hope that NGOs (non-governmental organisations) like Oxfam will continue to put pressure on other countries to deliver on their commitments.”