Wednesday's powerful earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra killed more than fear of evil, showing the effectiveness of the warning system introduced after the 2004 tsunami, which had engulfed more than 220,000 people.
"Everything went very well. The system worked as designed": Denis Okello, spokesman of the Jakarta Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UN agency, can not but welcome the Wednesday's earthquake was not more deadly .
Despite a magnitude of 8.6, the quake has only five dead, including at least two due to heart attacks, according to official figures released Thursday morning.
Life was back to normal and in Banda Aceh, capital of Aceh province, not far from the epicenter, was a journalist from AFP. The peasants were returned to their fields and students at school, while no major damage was visible.
The earthquake has not caused less panic among the people, awakening the specter of the tsunami that killed over 220,000 people on December 26, 2004 the entire coastline of the Indian Ocean.
But this time, since the quake, the Indonesian Agency for Geophysics (BMKG) bombed people and authorities of text messages and emails, warning of an impending tsunami. The tidal wave is actually still very limited, with waves up to one meter, causing the lifting of the warning hours later.
But the population of Sumatra was anyway already out of danger after the alert launched by BKMG, "local authorities have sounded the sirens (installed after the 2004 tsunami) and the people went on heights, as they learned to do during fire drills, "said Denis Okello told AFP.
"The classroom walls began to shake. We're all out," recalls Nunik Nurwanpi, a teacher at the head of a class of students aged 6 to 12 years in Banda Aceh, capital of Aceh province located across from the epicenter. "It was rumored among the people on the street that a tsunami warning was issued while we rushed into the hills."
"It took us three minutes before issuing the alert," comments Suharjono, head of the earthquakes in Indonesia's geophysics agency.
The same speed was observed elsewhere along the shoreline of the Indian Ocean. "We started to evacuate people ten minutes after the earthquake," says Namrata Majumdar, an official at the center of disaster monitoring the Indian islands of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which were hit hard in 2004.
After the tsunami of that year, gauges and buoys have been installed on the coast of the Indian Ocean, to monitor any movement of water. Thanks to her, "we knew that a tsunami could strike the coast within 50 minutes," said Suharjono, who like many Indonesians carries only one name.
The system, which cost 100 million euros and was inaugurated in November 2008, "works well", said Wednesday the president of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Electronics is also now more often for help. Indonesia has more mobile phones than inhabitants (250 million against 240) the archipelago is the third country in the world in terms of Facebook users, with 43.1 million accounts.
Therefore, the population is tipped off "instantly," said James Goff.
"Social networks have played a significant role in the distribution of information," confirmed in Thailand Somsak Khaosuwan, head of the National Disaster Warning (NDWC).
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