Ring of Fire WARNING: Nations prepare for OVERDUE devastating tsunami

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The test will examine the tsunami response warning system for the ring of fire.

Nations around the ocean rim will test their capacity to handle a major tsunami in an emergency exercise from February 15 to 17.

The crucial demonstration is to identify possible shortcomings in a system designed to forewarn of an impending disaster from the Pacific Ocean that could threaten hundreds of thousands of lives.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System was set up by UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC).

Dubbed PacWave17, the exercise foresees several scenarios for earthquakes off the coasts of Chile and Peru, Colombia and Ecuador, the Philippines, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu.

It will follow two scenarios: The first concerns a tsunami off the coast of the Philippines affecting Brunei, Darussalam, China, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

UNESCO spokesman

"Alerts will be sent to the national focal points of each country taking part from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) in Hawaii (USA) and the Northwest Pacific Tsunami Advisory Centre (NWPTAC) in Japan.

Populations will not be evacuated during the exercise, but a series of relay systems set up to transmit the warnings to each area will be tested.

A UNESCO spokesman said: "It will follow two scenarios: The first concerns a tsunami off the coast of the Philippines affecting Brunei, Darussalam, China, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

"The second scenario focuses on a tsunami occurring off the shores of Indonesia impacting Malaysia and the Philippines."

UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission established the Intergovernmental Coordinating Group’s Pacific Tsunami Warning System in 1965, five years after a deadly tsunami hit the coasts of Chile and the USA, where it led to the death of 61 people in Hawaii, Japan, where it killed 142 people, and the Philippine, where at least 21 died.

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The spokesman added: "The purpose of the Group is to coordinate the establishment of tsunami warning systems in the Pacific and promote national risk assessment programes, the dissemination of alerts, and countries’ ability to respond to and mitigate tsunami incidents locally."

About 76 percent of the world’s deadly tsunami occurrences take place in the Pacific Ocean and connected seas.

On average, one destructive local tsunami occurs in the region every year or two while a Pacific Ocean-wide tsunami hits the region several times per century.

Five deadly tsunami have hit the region over the past eight years: Samoa and Tonga were hit in 2009, Chile in 2010 and 2015, Japan in 2011 and the Solomon Islands in 2013.

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