"We want people to be always aware of tsunamis. The purpose of the drill is to prevent a tsunami-like disaster from happening again," said Air Vice-Marshal Pakdiwat Vachirapanlop at the National Disaster Warning Center in Bangkok.

Some 10,000 people are expected to join the drills to be held in the six Andaman coastal provinces of Phang Nga, Krabi, Phuket, Satun, Trang and Ranong, Pakdiwat said.

Last year governments around the region had no way to warn the public of the imminent danger of the December tsunamis, leading to the staggering death toll of around 220,000.

In Thailand alone, nearly 5,400 people were killed on the Andaman coast with about half of the victims foreign holidaymakers.

Pakdiwat said each of Thailand's 62 tsunami warning towers is programmed to blare sirens and broadcast tsunami warning messages in Thai, Chinese, English, German and Japanese.

"The messages will say 'Tsunami is coming. Please evacuate to higher ground'," he said, adding the tsunami warning towers, which stand 16.5 meters (54 feet) tall, each cost the government 1.6 million baht (39,000 dollars).

Thailand has completed more than half of the 62 towers planned for the six tsunami-hit provinces. The rest are scheduled for completion by mid-March.

Set up in May 2005, the National Disaster Warning Center monitors and relays critical information on natural disasters and its network is linked to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii and Japan's Meteorological Agency.

Once the center issues a tsunami warning, the towers can blow sirens and send warning messages to the public within two minutes.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.