Early Wave Warning

The system took just five minutes to send out a tsunami alert after the massive undersea earthquake that occurred off the island of Sumatra on Wednesday, Sept. 12.

"There actually was a tsunami," Jochen Zschau, director of the geophysics department of the GFZ earth sciences institute, told German news service DPA. "Fortunately it was only about one meter (three feet) high when it made landfall on the Indonesian west coast. Even a little bit bigger would have been quite dangerous."

Time of the essence

Zschau said a first automatic alert from the GFZ-installed seismographs and buoys arrived in Jakarta and Potsdam near Berlin, enabling his team to inform Indonesian officials earlier than other scientists.

"It took us just five minutes to find out the epicenter and strength," he said.

The old tsunami warning system took 15 minutes to issue an alert and US seismologists, who use data from that system, didn't send out a warning message until half an hour after the quake occurred. The tsunami tidal wave of December 2004, which killed more than 220,000 people, reached the Indonesian coast after 20 minutes.

While the German system is still not completed, Zschau said it will be completely up and running in place by the end of next year. The buoys record abnormal waves and other phenomena in the water to indicate if the ocean is shifting.

The German government financed the system after the great Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, which killed some 230,000 people. Wednesday's epicenter was close to the same place as in 2004.