Dubai: The tsunami warning. which was issued by local municipal authorities in Karachi, Pakistan on Tuesday, initially created panic amongst the public, but it turns out that it was false. A senior official of the District Municipal Corporation (DMC) made the announcement and said that it was the result of a ‘typo’ or typographical error, as reported by The Express Tribune, a Pakistan-based English newspaper.
The report goes on to state that the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) and National Seismic Monitoring Centre had earlier issued a press release regarding the Indian Ocean-Wide Tsunami exercise, in which several governmental bodies in Pakistan were invited to participate along with 20 other countries around the Indian Ocean. These were meant to be mock tsunami scenarios.
But, this official statement was misinterpreted by the DMC and they immediately issued a warning for “scattered rain/thunder showers/tsunami with isolated heavy rainfals expected from most parts of Sindh, including Karachi”.
The revelation that it was a mistake did not go down well with social media users in the country. Many tweeps immediately started sharing news reports published on Pakistani news websites regarding the false warning.
Tweep @Millennial_Rule shared one of the news articles and wrote: “It turns out the #Tsunami_Warning for Karachi was false and the met office is calling it a ‘typo’.”
@AliArqam tweeted: “#Tsunami #warning issued by District East in #Karachi. Do you even know the meaning of a tsunami?”
Tweep @NaeemAshraf82 posted a quirky comment in Urdu: “After a little rain in Karachi, water starts seaping out of the manholes and it seems like a tsunami. Maybe that is why they issued a notice.”
@norbalm added: “ROFL in a country where people don’t know what to do in normal rain, this claims to have access to a Tsunami Service Provider. If Karachi were to ever be hit by a tsunami the only way to survive would be a flight out of here.”
Pakistan participated in the mock tsunami scenarios on September 4 and 5, as stated in a report by ARY News, Pakistani news channel. Pakistan has previously also participated in similar exercises in 2009, 2011, 2014 and 2016.
