Antara News, Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The House of Representatives (DPR)`s Commission V plans to evaluate the performance of the National Meteorological, Climatology, Geophysics Agency (BMKG), a legislator said.
"We will call BMKG officials after our recess to evaluate the performance of BMKG regarding information on tsunami in Mentawai," Lasarus, at Parliament Building, here, Wednesday.
He criticized BMKG for giving wrong information on the Mentawai tsunami.
When a magnitude-7.2 earthquake hit Mentawai Island on Monday evening (Oct 25), BMKG issued a warning that the earthquake could trigger tsunami. However, not long after that, BMKG issued information that the earthquake did not have the potential to cause tsunami.
"As an official government institution, BMKG is considered to have given the publlic misleading information which led to the deaths of hundreds of people. It`s obviously misleading. Why was BMKG so careless?" he said.
He also asked legislators from West Sumatra to react to the misleading information.
The House`s Commission V had fully supported BMKG so far, especially regarding the budget so that BMKG could work optimally to anticipate possible disasters and to correctly inform the public, he said.
The tsunami hit Mentawai islands, West Sumatra Province, following a 7.2 magnitude undersea earthquake on Monday night.
By Tuesday night, the death toll in the disasters rose to 112. At least 502 people were missing and thousands of others evacuated to safer grounds following the tsunami.
Aftershocks continued to happen in Mentawai, West Sumatra, following the magnitude-7.2 quake . A quake measuring 5.5 on the Richter Scale followed at 10 pm at a depth of 22 kilometers, 89 kilometers southwest of Pagai Selatan.
Another quake was also recorded at 5.0 on the Richter Scale at 10.31 pm at a depth of 34 kilometers, 51 kilometers southwest of Pagai Selatan.
