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PHUKET, Thailand: Rescuers on speedboats plucked tourists out of the sea and sirens blared on Thailand's sun-drenched beaches on Wednesday in the first full-scale test of the country's tsunami warning system.
Thousands of residents and foreign tourists took part in the hour-long drill, in which rescuers saved "victims" while sunbathers fled the white sands of Phuket's famed Patong Beach to move to higher ground inland.
Phuket and five nearby seaside provinces were hit by the deadly Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, which killed 5,400 people in Thailand alone – half of them foreign holidaymakers.
A total of 220,000 people in a dozen countries were killed by the tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake that struck off Indonesia.
Since then, Thailand has installed a high-tech warning system designed to reassure tourists and businesses that the country's beaches are safe.
The government has installed 79 warning towers along the coast, which are linked to the National Disaster Warning Centre in Bangkok.
Officials in the capital monitor reports of earthquakes while studying data from a US-donated deep-sea buoy that registers changes in the sea level.
During the drill, the disaster centre acted on a mock report of an 8.5-magnitude earthquake off the Nicobar Islands in the Andaman Sea.
The centre then activated sirens on the coastal warning towers, which broadcast a warning in five languages for people to leave the beaches for higher ground.
"The drill today is to give confidence to tourists about their safety in southern provinces," disaster centre chairman Smith Dharmasaroja told reporters in Bangkok.
The area rakes in about eight billion dollars a year from tourism, he said.
The exercise went off without any technical problems, but Smith said that Thailand was still working to install additional warning towers and better equipment in order to analyse earthquake data more quickly.
"We need more modern equipment to help analyse earthquakes quicker, so people will have enough time to evacuate," Smith said.
- AFP/so
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