Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has praised officials for their quick reaction to the tsunami threat after a violent earthquake hit Indonesia on Monday night.
"We can now tell the world we have learned from past experience, and the country has done much better as far as tsunami alert is concerned," Thaksin was quoted by Bangkok Post newspaper as saying Wednesday.
The tsunami warning was issued to six coastal provinces in southern Thailand about half an hour after the 8.7 magnitude quake struck the Sumatra island of Indonesia, said Chalermchai Ekkarntrong, the acting chief of the Meteorological Department.
Locals and tourists in the affected region were bombarded with tsunami alert by television and radio broadcast along with the wailing of evacuation sirens.
People were evacuated to higher ground and the warning was dropped three hours later as no tsunami was reported.
No casualties from the quake have been reported in Thailand but some buildings in the South have small damages.
Thailand will press ahead with building its own early warning system which, in the future, would be linked with the international network, said the prime minister.
However, Smith Dharmasarojana, assistant to the Prime Minister' s Office minister, said there were still flaws to the country's warning system as people should not have been evacuated to only one location while many fishermen could not be convinced to take their boats to safety areas off shore.
Thaksin said the preliminary warning system, which could sent alerts to mobile phone message and television and radio stations, will be completed next month in the six provinces hit by the Dec. 26 tsunami.