Thailand, U.S. deploy tsunami warning buoy
Some 220,000 people in a dozen countries were killed by a tsunami that hit off Indonesia on December 26, 2004.
The buoy launched Friday is the first deep sea protection system installed in the Indian Ocean to prevent future tragedies.
"Two years ago, few people really knew what a tsunami was or how powerful and destructive a tsunami could be," U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Ralph Boyce said.
"There were no warning systems then, and most people did not know what to do when they watched the waters recede from the beaches before the waves struck.
"With the launching of this buoy, we are taking a big step forward in better protecting hundreds of millions of people living across the Indian Ocean," he added.
The U.S.-funded Deep-Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) consist of a platform that rests on the seabed to detect seismic activity.
The platform sends a signal to a buoy floating on the surface of the water, which in turn communicates by satellite to tsunami warning centers around the Indian Ocean.
It aims to determine if an earthquake has generated a tsunami, to measure the height of the waves and to predict how long it will take to reach land and how much damage it might cause.
Twenty of the DARTs are already deployed across the Atlantic and Pacific, and two more of the $440,000 devices are set to be deployed near Indonesia. Phuket's governor Nirand Kalayanamitr said that "with the DART-2 system in the Indian Ocean, Thai people will be safer."
"On behalf of six coastal provinces affected by the 2004 tsunami, we commit to work together with the government to protect the lives and property of Thais and tourists who visit Thailand," Nirand said.
Some 5,400 people were killed in Thailand when the tsunami struck. Roughly half of them were foreign holidaymakers.
The ship carrying the buoy is set to leave Phuket around 0700 GMT, and will take two days to reach its destination midway between Thailand and Sri Lanka.