which also says,

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Sunday's wall of water that hit coasts in Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka and other countries was spotted by US seismologists.

However, they said they had no way to warn local governments even though the tsunami hit shore up to two-and-a-half hours after the mega-quake off the island of Sumatra in Indonesia.

"We tried to do what we could," said Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Honolulu centre. "We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world."
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wish they could make local embassies aware of the situation.