The eruption of the volcano on the island of Krakatau on Aug. 27, 1883, generated a massive wave that swept over the shores of nearby Java and Sumatra, killing 36,000 people.

The tsunami warning center issued a tsunami warning bulletin over the weekend and tried to warn the countries in the path of the tidal waves but lacked the right contact numbers. There is no tsunami warning center for the Indian Ocean.

The Pacific has an underwater tsunami-detection system of five buoys nestled strategically on the ocean floor at depths of up to 18,000 feet. Three of the devices are off the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, one is off Vancouver, British Columbia, and one is off Oregon.

Most tsunamis occur in the Pacific basin because it is encircled by the "Ring of Fire," the necklace of the world's most tectonically active spots.

But rogue waves can rise in any ocean, and Sunday's disaster renewed attention on the vulnerability of major coastal cities like New York City.

In 1999, scientists at University College London reported that if a volcano in the Canary Islands erupted with sufficient force, it could cause a massive landslide on the island of La Palma and trigger a "mega-tsunami" that would inundate the East Coast of the United States and the Caribbean with a wall of water more than 164 feet high.

But other researchers in Britain discounted the prediction as the product of a speculative computer model.

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Contributing: Janis Magin, Associated Press; E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com