metre (50-foot) warning towers along its southern resort beaches that broadcast warnings in six languages and it has staged evacuation drills. Sri Lanka has rigged up a temporary, feeble warning system in a "model village" on the southern coast that is meant to be a prototype for a more extensive system. Indonesia and Malaysia are relying for now on village mosques, which have powerful loudspeakers to call people to prayer, to broadcast warnings. India is using media alerts and will mobilise police and disaster officials to evacuate threatened communities. The system of ocean buoys and sensors will be fully operational by next July when at least 20 of the DART (deep ocean assessment and reporting of tsunami) devices will be deployed. Capable of detecting minute changes in water column pressure, they cost around $300,000 each, have to be replaced every two years and are also expensive to maintain, Bernal said. In addition to the DARTs, nearly 30 solar-powered sea-level tidal gauges, broadcasting data to satellites will be installed by year's end, he said. These are far less sophisticated and cannot determine, for instance, whether a potential tsunami will merely ripple onto a sun-splashed tourist beach or turn into monster waves that will wipe out coastal communities.
