A man prays for dead children during a funeral in tsunami-hit Pangandaran, Indonesia, July 19, 2006.  According to the latest official statistics, 531 people were confirmed dead and more than 270 others remained missing after tsunami struck onto southern coastal areas of West Java and Central Java and Yogyakarta provinces on Monday.  (Xinhua Photo) Gallery>>  [Watch video]

    JAKARTA, July 20 (Xinhua) -- an official of the Indonesian government has said that there was a warning of the tsunami that hit the southern coast on Monday, but it was issued too short notice to alert local communities, the Jakarta Post reported on Thursday.

    State Minister for Research and Technology Kusmayanto Kadiman's comments on the tsunami occurred on July 17 were made here Wednesday after media's criticism of the lack of a warning.

    "The warning was issued about seven minutes before the tragedy," Kusmayanto said, adding "however, there wasn't enough time to alert all the residents in the area."

    The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) also received the warning, and sent it by short message service to 400 government officials and mass media, he noted.

    "Most importantly, (it was sent) to electronic media," he said, adding that the alert originated from countries equipped with high-technology warning systems, such as Japan, Australia and Germany.

    However, the giant waves took only 20 minutes before inundating coastal areas, while the BMG had spent seven minutes to alert the officials and the media, and was thus unable to reach the local communities, he said.

    A BMG official said on Tuesday that it announced there was no danger of a tsunami about 30 minutes before it struck.

    Kusmayanto said that the distribution of information was inevitably time consuming, and that even the fastest early warning system developed in Japan still could only alert the public 13 minutes before an incident.

    "Indonesia needed to install tsunami early warning devices every 10 km along the country's waters facing subsection zones, where ocean floor movements might trigger tsunamis," Kusmayanto said.

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