February 8, 2005
Reuters

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico, jolted into contemplating its risk of a killer wave after the devastation in Asia, is studying setting up its own tsunami warning system, the government said on Tuesday.

Despite a history of tsunamis along its earthquake-prone Pacific coast, experts say Mexico's coastal resorts and communities would be ill-prepared for a wave near the scale of December's Indian Ocean tsunami.

While the Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning System should alert the entire region to waves generated by Pacific Ocean tremors, Mexican officials have expressed concern about how quickly word would get to coastal residents.

"From the disaster in South Asia we have learned that we must be prepared to face this type of phenomenon," Interior Minister Santiago Creel said during a meeting on Mexico's part in the tsunami relief effort.

"That is why I have instructed (national disaster centers) to summon experts with the aim of analyzing the installation of a detection, monitoring and early warning service for tsunamis in Mexico, taking into account the distances from our coasts."

Mexico was hit by 49 tsunamis in the 19th and 20th centuries, Creel said, and the idea is to install a system that would detect approaching tidal waves and immediately alert communities at risk.

The system could take years to complete and it is too early to imagine extending it to Mexico's poorer Central American neighbors like Guatemala and Nicaragua, thrashed by a tsunami in 1992, disaster experts say.

"We are only just starting out. It could be extended later, but that's not been talked about yet," said Oscar Fuentes, a researcher at CENAPRED, Mexico's disaster prevention center.

"Tsunamis are not frequent but, well, if something happens, a warning system is good," he added.

Geophysicists drew up recommendations on tsunami awareness in Mexico in the late 1990s, but they had gathered dust in CENAPRED's offices as authorities focused on teaching people to survive hurricanes, which strike more frequently.

But scientists worry Guerrero state, home to the resort of Acapulco, is overdue for a quake that could trigger a wave.

Past tsunamis include a 17-foot wave that hit the Pacific town of La Manzanilla in 1995, and a huge tsunami in 1932 that leveled the fishing village of Cuyutlan.

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