The Senate on Monday took the government to task for what it said was a slow response to Friday’s earthquake in Myanmar that saw strong tremors sweep across Thailand.
Senator Romsit Wiriyasan tabled an urgent motion calling for an Upper House debate on the issue, after which they would present their suggestions to the government and relevant agencies.
He said that hectic evacuations from several buildings, traffic chaos which hindered rescue workers’ access to areas affected by the tremors, and text messages warning people about events that took too long to reach people reflected poorly on the government’s ability to manage emergency situations.
“Immediately after Friday’s earthquake, no one saw the government leader step up and take command of crisis management,” Pol Gen Maj Romsit said.
Lt Cdr Wutthipong Pongsuwan, another senator, said that emergency planning has improved little since the tsunami struck in 2004 and called on authorities to make emergency disaster drills a regular practice to prevent massive casualties in the future.
He also called on the government to speed up the implementation of the so-called “cell broadcast service (CBS) system”, which allows emergency weather and natural disaster warnings to be disseminated via mobile phone messages.
Senator Nantana Nantavaropas said that two previous natural disasters that hit Thailand — the 2004 tsunami and the 2011 devastating deluge — should have served as lessons.
“But the government seemed unprofessional and struggled to communicate effectively in a crisis. State agencies were too slow to respond,” she said.
Regarding the new State Audit Office (SAO) building in Chatuchak district, which collapsed as the earthquake shook Bangkok, Sen Premsak Piayura said that if the building belonged to other agencies, the SAO would be expected to organise a probe.
“But since the building belongs to the SAO, who will investigate it?” Dr Premsak said.
SMS alerts
Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra chaired a meeting on Monday with state agencies to address the delay in text messages warning people about Friday’s earthquake. Representatives of mobile phone operators such as Advanced Info Service and True Corporation also attended.
The premier asked the mobile phone operators whether SMS alerts could be sent shortly after a quake.
Chakkrit Urairat, chief corporate affairs officer of True Corporation, said that SMS is not a main channel, and it is not the only channel to alert people about natural disasters, adding that mobile phone numbers of users must be identified before alerts can be sent.
However, Ms Paetongtarn said that while SMS alerts are not the only option, they are a proactive approach to managing disaster response.
Passakorn Boonyalak, director-general of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DDPM), previously said the department had sent the first text message to the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) for dissemination at 2.42pm after the quake struck at 1.20pm on Friday.
The message informed recipients that it was safe to return to buildings to collect their belongings.
Trairat Wiriyasirikul, acting secretary-general of the NBTC, said the message was broadcast at 2.44pm to some 10 million mobile phone numbers, in batches of 200,000 at a time, across Bangkok and three surrounding provinces.
The same message was later resent to recipients in all 76 provinces, he added.
But Ms Paetongtarn said at a meeting on Saturday that it took far too long for these text messages and told both the DDPM and NBTC to find a way to overcome the technical limitation that currently restricts each broadcast to a maximum of 200,000 recipients.
She urged them to increase this capacity to 1 million recipients per broadcast while awaiting the full implementation of the NBTC’s cell broadcast technology, expected in June or July.
