Most of the fatalities along the Andaman coast of southern Thailand can be
attributed to the government‘s failure to warn the coastal communities of the imminent
arrival of the tsunami. In fact, thousands of lives could have been saved had a tsunami
early warning system been established in the Indian Ocean (Alverson, 2005). Prior to
the December 2004 tsunami disaster, there was no operational tsunami warning facility
in place in Thailand because the kingdom had never been struck by a tsunami and this
type of catastrophic event was considered to be extremely rare in the area (Tibballs,
2005). However, it is still questionable as to how effective this would have been in
alerting the coastal communities of imminent danger in a country which has poor
communication systems and no awareness of the danger. The lack of precautionary
behavior of the coastal inhabitants, even when noticing the suddenly receding tide that