Viet Nam will hold a tsunami exercise in the central city of Da Nang to prepare for an earthquake occurring in the western region of the Philippines.

The exercise would take place on September 1 and planning was underway with city authorities, National Committee for Search and Rescue chief Pham Hoai Giang said.

The exercise was to check the operation of the country’s tsunami warning system and to improve skills of the various groups and authorities in responding to a disaster, Giang said.

It was assumed that an earthquake in the west of the Philippines would cause a tsunami to strike the central coast of Viet Nam, he said.

“We cannot wait until the disaster happens, then find ways to respond,” Giang said.

An early warning and fast response were necessary as it would take only two hours for a tsunami to hit Viet Nam after a magnitude 8 earthquake in the west of the Philippines, he said.

Coastal province authorities would be invited to watch the exercise to draw experiences and the same exercise would be repeated in other localities vulnerable to tsunamis, Giang said.

Viet Nam Institute of Geophysics’ Earthquake and Tsunami Warning Centre deputy director Nguyen Hong Phuong said the institute had created 25 scenarios to prepare for tsunamis.

Those scenarios were based on nine tsunami sources which could affect the country’s coast, Phuong said. The most dangerous source was the subduction zone Manila in the west of Philippines.

The two other dangerous areas were the fault lines off south-central Viet Nam and the Riukiu area of Taiwan, he said.

The scenarios addressed regions that were prone to tsunamis, predicting the directions of tsunamis, the time when they hit the regions and their height, Phuong said.

According to scientists, a magnitude 8.3 earthquake in Manila could cause a 6.2m tsunami in central Quang Ngai province and a 2.1m tsunami in central Khanh Hoa province’s Nha Trang city. A magnitude 9.2 earthquake could cause 10m and 5m tsunamis in those two places respectively.

Viet Nam had set up 10 tsunami warning stations to announce the risk as soon after an earthquake as possible, Giang said.

Source: VNS