Soon after a powerful earthquake of 7.4 magnitude hit the island nation of Papua New Guinea on Tuesday, the Indian Tsunami Early Warning Centre (ITEWC), housed in the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) here, issued a no tsunami threat bulletin for India and the Indian Ocean.
While the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued a warning that hazardous tsunami waves were possible within 300 km of the epicentre, the ITEWC, which is one of the three regional service providers for the the Indian Ocean rim countries, ruled out such an eventuality for the Indian Ocean.
In-charge of the ITEWC, T. Srinivasa Kumar, said that technically it was feasible for a large undersea earthquake measuring more than eight magnitude on the Richter Scale to trigger tsunami in the Indian Ocean even if it occurred in another ocean basin like the Pacific.
He said the ITEWC would be normally issuing a threat assessment bulletin if the earthquake’s magnitude was more than 6.5 in such events.
Mr. Srinvasa said that within eight minutes of the quake occurring in Papua New Guinea, ITEWC issued the no threat bulletin.
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