BANGKOK — Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has pressed government agencies to improve Thailand’s emergency alert system following criticism of the delayed SMS warnings during the recent Myanmar earthquake that affected Bangkok and other provinces in central and northern Thailand.
During a meeting at the National Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Command Center on March 29, the Prime Minister questioned representatives from the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DDPM) and the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) about their response to the earthquake.
The DDPM representative explained that their standard procedure is to receive notifications from the Meteorological Department’s Earthquake Surveillance Division before issuing warnings. Since earthquakes cannot be predicted in advance, alerts are only sent after an event occurs.
When the earthquake struck at 1:20 PM, the DDPM sent four messages to the NBTC, with the first being sent at 2:42 PM advising that people could enter buildings if necessary. The NBTC representative reported that they began sending SMS alerts at 2:44 PM immediately after receiving the message from DDPM.
However, they acknowledged significant limitations in their system, which can only send messages to 100,000-200,000 phone numbers at a time, with a required 15-minute interval between batches. Mobile network operators are working to increase capacity to 3 million numbers at once, but this process takes 5-6 hours due to queue management constraints. In total, messages were eventually sent to over 10 million phone numbers.
PM Paetongtarn identified two main problems: “Our SMS system is slow and not comprehensive enough. This needs to be fixed as a priority.” While acknowledging that a new Cell Broadcast system expected in June or July will allow instant message distribution to all phones, she urged authorities to find immediate solutions with telecom providers to increase SMS capacity from 100,000-200,000 to 1 million messages rapidly.
“What citizens still aren’t receiving are SMS alerts, and we need to address whether foreign visitors with Thai SIM cards are included in these warnings,” she stated. “The NBTC and DDPM must coordinate on how to integrate these systems better. You need to answer these questions because I have to answer to the public.”
During the earthquake, PM Paetongtarn was visiting Phuket in the south of Thailand. She then changed her scheduled meeting to address the earthquake response and quickly traveled back to Bangkok.
The Prime Minister admitted her own oversight in not specifying what messages should be sent to citizens during emergencies. She thanked television broadcasters for their quick response in broadcasting emergency information within five minutes of her request.
“I’m like every Thai citizen who doesn’t know how to react in these situations because we don’t live in a country that regularly experiences severe earthquakes,” she added. She noted that during the emergency, people couldn’t access vital information about transportation services, and instructed the Ministry of Transport and the NBTC to improve their coordination to prevent similar problems in future emergencies.
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