Natural Disasters

IGP: National tsunami alert system will take a year to install

A national tsunami alert system that Peru’s government is planning to purchase will take at least a year to install, according to the chief of Peru’s Geophysical Institute, or IGP.

“The most optimistic is one year because it is not a system that you can find on a shelf, you have to wait for it to be manufactured,” IGP President Ronald Woodman told state news agency Andina. “As well, at the same time we will begin to prepare the land for its installation which will take approximately three months.”

The tsunami alert system will include six seismometers installed throughout the country that will be able to measure and report seismic waves during an earthquake. Woodman said the instruments will communicate seismic events by satellite to determine the quakes epicenter and magnitude.

“It is an integral system that includes the seismometers, reflector stations, satellite communications stations and the service of a satellite,” Woodman said.

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami alert for Peru last Saturday after a massive magnitude-8.8 earthquake hit neighboring Chile. The epicenter of the quake occurred offshore about 200 miles south of Santiago. Chile’s government had said that more than 800 people were killed, but reduced that number to 279 on Friday, daily El Comercio reported.

Peru’s government was criticized for failing to purchase a tsunami alert system requested by the IGP after the magnitude-8 earthquake leveled the country’s southern coast in 2007. Cabinet Chief Javier Velásquez said this week the executive would authorize the transfer of 3 million soles, about $1.1 million, to the IGP to purchase the system.

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