THE tsunami warning sirens are not automatic, says the Mineral Resources Department principal technical officer Sakaraia Malodali.
“After verifying the event, analysing the threat and consulting the National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) then we press the button here which triggers all the 13 sirens between Kinoya and Lami.
For any impending threat to Fiji, we will firstly verify with the director NDMO before we actually trigger the siren.
“We need to clearly verify whether it’s a real threat or just for information or advisory like the one we had (Friday morning),” he said.
He said a team of staff members were working round-the-clock to monitor and activate the sirens in times of need. He said sirens were not activated before as it did not pose any threat to the country.
“(On Friday), we only issued an advisory to the public because we saw that according to the readings that we had from the target stations, there was no need for us to panic or for the public to evacuate,.”
He said the department conducted siren tests every month.
“We conduct siren tests on the fifth day of every month like we were supposed to do it (Friday) but because of the advisory released we were not able to do it.”
