AFP Yahoo News 19 Sep 08;
Singapore, one of Asia's wealthiest cities, is not completely immune from a tsunami and should prepare for the possibility, an expert on coastal areas warned Friday.
The island-state can be hit by a tsunami generated from three locations and the waves could damage key coastal infrastructure without being too high, said Professor Wong Poh Poh of the National University of Singapore geography department.
"It's not that we are totally immune. No, we are not immune," Wong said.
He was speaking at a news conference to launch a report, by the aid and development organisation World Vision, on the impact of climate change on poor people.
To cause damage, waves hitting Singapore need not be as huge as the ones that devastated Indonesia's Aceh in December 2004, killing 168,000 people, Wong said.
Aceh was struck by a wave about 10 metres (33 feet) high.
"We don't need 10 metres. The problem with Singapore is... we have a lot of infrastructure on the coast. All you need is a very low wave to just come in and hit certain areas," he said.
"Changi Airport will be very vulnerable," he said, adding the man-made island of Jurong which houses a sprawling petrochemical complex is also at risk, and urged the government to commission a study on tsunamis.
Singapore not tsunami-proof
Antara 20 Sep 08;
Batam, Riau province, (ANTARA News) - Singapore is not at all free from the risk of being devastated by a tsunami, an expert from the National Geography Department of the University of Singapore, Professor Wong Poh Poh, said here Saturday.
"It doesn`t take a tidal wave as high as the one that engulfed Aceh to destroy many key infrastructures in Singapore," he said in a talk with Channel News Asia monitored by Antara here.
Almost four years ago (December 26, 2008), a tsunami (10m high) hit Aceh and killed 168,000 people.
The problem in Singapore, said Wong, was that most of its infrastructures were located near beaches.
"It will only take a low tidal wave to hit and destroy those infrastructures and the areas around them," he said.
Prof Wong said Singapore`s international airport (Changi) could be easily destroyed by a tsunami, and so could housing complexes in the Petrokimia area, Jurong Island.
Besides Singapore, tourist resorts and residential areas on Batam Island`s beaches (about 20 km from Changi and Jurong were also vulnerable to the destructive force of a tsunami, he said. (*)
