We were at fault, says US tsunami warning centre

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii has said it was at fault for the way it communicated yesterday's aborted tsunami alert for New Zealand.

The centre issued a tsunami alert for Fiji and New Zealand after a massive quake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale was recorded off the coast of Tonga at 3.26am NZT.

The alert for New Zealand was withdrawn 15 minutes later, but the message did not get through to overseas media, including CNN and the BBC, which continued to report that a tsunami could hit New Zealand around 6.20am.

Meanwhile, hundreds of East Coast residents spontaneously evacuated their homes.

Manager of the centre Gerard Fryer said it had in fact put in "multiple calls" to the BBC, but was hit by a barrage of media calls, which meant some reporters may have had difficulty getting through.

It appeared that some media outlets who received the initial alert did not receive the follow up.

"We had a slight messaging mix-up too which distracted us from getting it absolutely right," he said.

The centre planned to change the language of its messages to make their meaning immediately obvious "to the average person on the street".

He said on Radio Live today: "Our messages are designed for scientists and emergency managers but in the modern world, everything we do gets out into the public immediately...

"So in a sense it was our fault."

He said the final decision on whether to issue a warning was up to individual countries, and New Zealand authorities were "eminently qualified".

New Zealand Civil Defence had been in "continuous contact" with the centre yesterday, but failed to pass on that information to the public.

"They were guilty of the same error we were -- we have to take it upon ourselves to communicate better with the news media."

More serious than the over-reaction in New Zealand, was the lack of warning in Tonga.

Due to a power failure, probably caused by the quake, together with some software failures at the centre, Tongan authorities missed out on the initial warning, which "could have been very serious", Mr Fryer said.

Fijian authorities also had problems getting the message to outlying islands.

While there were satellite phones in Tonga, the centre did not have the numbers.

"We will be getting that information in a couple of days."

The warning centre is the heart of the Pacific Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System, established after the 2004 earthquake-driven tsunami off Indonesia left more than 216,000 people dead.

Yesterday's debacle comes as members of the Intergovernmental Co-ordination Group for the PTWMS meet in Melbourne this week to plan an upcoming trial of the system on May 16 and 17.

- NZPA