PHUKET: The tsunami warning buoy that had drifted from its installed location some 340 kilometres northwest of Phuket in the Andaman Sea has been recovered and brought back to the mainland for inspection.
The buoy, Station 23461, ceased transmitting data on July 31. By last Thursday (Aug 3), Chaowalit Nitharat, Director of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DDPM) Region 18 office, based in Phuket, announced that efforts were underway to recover the buoy.
At that time, the buoy was reported to be some 44km from its original position, and was floating in the sea some 198km north of the Surin Islands, Mr Chaowalit said.
The DDPM has now reported that the Royal Thai Navy offshore patrol vessel HTMS Prachuap Khiri Khan departed the Royal Thai Navy Third Area Command base in Phang Nga at 8:30am yesterday (Aug 6) to recover the buoy.
By 2:20pm yesterday the HTMS Prachuap Khiri Khan had located the buoy about 30km northwest of the Surin Islands.
The tsunami warning buoy has been recovered, and the HTMS Prachuap Khiri Khan returned to the Phang Nga Naval Base at about 8am today.
The buoy will be kept at the Phang Nga Provincial Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Office and inspected to determine how it had been dislodged from its mooring.
Among the list of reasons given by the DDPM as to why a tsunami warning buoy might cease transmitting data was that a buoy being displaced more than two kilometres from its installed location would break its tether to the bottom pressure recorder (BPR) on sea floor, thus rendering the buoy unable to record measurements of wave heights.
The DDPM assured that its officers were working on rectifying the problem and to have the tsunami warning redeployed in its original location as quickly as possible.
Meanwhile, the other tsunami warning buoy maintained and operated by the DDPM, Station 23401, located about 965km west of Phuket, remains functioning normally, the DDPM reported. Station 23401 forms part of a multinational tsunami detection network in the Bay of Bengal.
