Thursday, December 30 2004 13:48 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: US scientists say they knew killer waves could be speeding towards Asian coastlines on Sunday (Dec 26, 2004) on the heels of an earthquake they detected, but they had no way to alert the possible victims.

"We knew we had an earthquake, and we issued a bulletin 15 minutes later. But the magnitude of the earthquake initially was 8.00, which is not a guaranteed tsunami-producer," Jeff LaDouce, director of the National Weather Service's Pacific Region and head of the US tsunami programme, told The Washington Times from his Honolulu office.

"Our business," he said, "Is not to guess, so we did not guess there would be tsunamis. The first we learned of tsunamis were press reports about casualties in Sri Lanka two and a half hours after the earthquake hit."

No additional data was available, because there was no tsunami-warning centre for the Indian Ocean, he said.

Ken Hudnut, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey in Pasadena, California, bemoaned the lack of information Federal officials had available to them in advance of Sunday's catastrophe, given the lack of a warning centre.