Possible Tsunami Off Thailand Again?

Posted on March 12th, 2006.

Recent undersea volcanic activity has been increasing in the Andaman Sea off the coast of Thailand, prompting authorities to be on alert for the possibility of another tsunami

Before I write anything else, I should stress there is no imminent threat of a tsunami about to occur, so cancelling travel plans etc is NOT what you should do if you are coming to Thailand soon. What's happened, as far as I understand it, is that there has been a distinct increase in underseas volcanic activity in the Andaman Sea recently , which is either the easing of stress around a fault point or the prelude to an undersea volcano erupting - if the latter happens, it might trigger a tsunami. As you can tell already, there's a lot of ifs and buts, and as with so many strong forces of nature, even the best scientists have no way of predicting what will happen. Here's the original Breaking News alert from The Nation newspaper and there is a long discussion thread on ThaiVisa.com where the news reports are quoted and analysed by board members - lots of intelligent commentary. The National Disaster Warning Centre in Thailand is in an uneviable position - by mentioning the possibility of a forthcoming tsunami they run the risk of scaring tourists away - but leave it too late and they might lose all ability to evacuate people from areas that would be affected by another tsunami.

Hopefully the activity is simply going to quiet down and nothing will occur. Monitoring will continue, and you can be sure they will be keeping a close watch over the next few weeks. If I hear anything more, I'll post it here.

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