Google has created a 2011 Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami crisis resource centre with emergency phone numbers, a person finder tool and updated public transportation information (in Japanese).

BBC: Resources for travellers stranded by Japanese tsunami

However, as the centre of the earthquake and tsunami was located just a few kilometers off the Indonesian islands of Mentawai, even the very swift warning from Indonesian authorities could not reach the fishing villages on Pagai or Sipora before the tsunami hit the shore.

UNESCO: Social and Human Sciences

They rapidly set up first-aid clinics in three main centres, as well as a hospital in Rostaq, the centre of the earlier earthquake.

ECONOMIST: Afghanistan

In that year, Sian went to Sri Lanka and Thailand, to report live from the Asian tsunami and later that year, the Pakistan earthquake struck and she spent a week at the centre of the disaster, presenting for all the BBC's news programmes, from Breakfast, through to the Ten O'clock News.

BBC: News - Breakfast - Sian Williams

According to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre, the waves this week were triggered by an 8.3 magnitude earthquake that took place some 120 miles (195km) south of the Samoa group of islands (see map).

ECONOMIST: The Pacific tsunami: Paradise rocked | The

Dr Bilham says that the Indian government has even forbidden him to use a gravity meter in the region (such a meter measures whether a point is moving away from the centre of the earth, and therefore indicates a build up of strain that might be released as an earthquake).

ECONOMIST: Earthquakes in India