It was very sad to read about children missing amid the chaos of tsunami threat in Lae. I believe it serves a lesson for schools and relevant government agencies to introduce disaster response drills, a pamphlet on what the dos’ and don’ts when such circumstances arise. I also suggest the PNG geophysical observatory under the Department of mining to dramatically improve their information distribution during such situations. I also call on the government to create an Oceanography agency either under the fisheries department or Environment and conservation department. If you have a look at the warnings sent out from Pacific Tsunami Warning Center based in Hawaii, the time from the occurrence of Tsunami and the calculated time for it to arrive in PNG was approximately 3hrs. If our radio stations got the information on time, I believe the chaotic scenes in Lae would have been prevented. If you are interested to receive earthquake occurrences in the Pacific under Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, you can use the following link on the Internet
http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/subscribe.php.
Also my apologies, I got the email warning early but due to time difference, me sleep yet.
cheers
kolwan