The tsunami that struck the Solomon Islands shows the importance of educating people who live in susceptible regions about the dangers they face, scientists said yesterday.

Though the Pacific Ocean has the world’s most advanced tsunami warning system, which issued an alert 15 minutes after the earthquake, this came too late for the town of Gizo, which was struck within five minutes.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre’s inability to tell the islanders that they were at risk underlines the need for people to be aware of the danger signs so they do not wait for official warnings, seismologists said.

People living on the coast in any geologically active region should move to higher ground whenever they feel a significant quake, because when a tremor occurs close to land it is impossible to determine quickly whether or not there will be a tsunami.

The two earthquakes that struck off Sumatra in 2004-05 illustrate this well. While the 9.2 magnitude Boxing Day quake caused a tsunami that killed up to 300,000 people, a second event at the end of March that measured 8.7 on the Richter scale caused only small waves. Magnitude alone cannot predict whether a tsunami will be generated: this also depends on the geology of the sea floor, and of the kind of rupture that starts the earthquake.

David Rothery, senior lecturer in earth sciences at the Open University, said: “People living on the coast so close to the earthquake’s epicentre need to ‘self-evacuate’ to higher ground as soon as they feel an earthquake because earthquakes strike without warning and it takes time to determine whether a quake has triggered a tsunami.”

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