TRAGIC

Indonesia Toll Climbs to 408

Warning system did not cover remote islands.

Four days after a 7.7-magnitude earthquake sent a tsunami hurtling toward Indonesia, the death toll stands at 408 and could nearly double with another 303 people reported missing. Nearly 13,000 people have also been displaced. First reports placed some of the blame for the high casualty rate on a buoy designed to monitor water levels off the coast of the hard-hit Mentawai islands, saying that it had been vandalized. But the Guardian reports that was not quite the case. The problem was far more deep-seated. The way the early warning system worked, limited as it was by financial constraints, it was only able to cover more populated areas. After the 2004 tsunami killed more than 200,000 people, Indonesia could only afford to install 10 of the high-tech buoys.