EWA BEACH, Hawaii -- Saturday marks five years since a tsunami killed more than 200,000 people around the Indian Ocean.

Many lives may have been saved had a warning system been in place, much like the one we have here in Hawaii. KITV 4 meteorologist Justin Fujioka went to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center on Wednesday to find out what has changed since that deadly disaster.

Since that tsunami, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has received more than $225 million to better warn and protect the nation and the world for future tsunamis.

On Dec. 26, 2004, a series of destructive waves spread across the Indian Ocean.

At that time, there was no international coordination of tsunami information outside of the Pacific. The catastrophe would change that.

"We detect events. We assess their destructive tsunami potential and then we send out messages. Those messages go to the emergency management officials or the civil defense agencies or their equivalent in these countries and they make the decision whether or not they need to evacuate their coastlines," Pacific Tsunami Warning Center Assistant Director Stuart Weinstein said.

In addition, the country's two tsunami warning centers -- one in Alaska, the other at Ewa Beach -- have since expanded their area of responsibility to include the Indian Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean.

"Now we have 12 staff scientists. So now, there's always one person who can physically respond to an alarm in a matter of seconds," Weinstein said.

The tsunami also accelerated a U.S. government sponsored program to better measure tsunamis. Five years ago, there were just six deep-ocean sensors, or DART buoys in the Pacific. There are now 39 of them across three oceans.

"It is important to understand what the tsunami is doing in deep water because that also is a very important indicator of whether it's going to be destructive as it goes across the ocean," Weinstein said.

That is just one of many advances in technology that better prepares Hawaii for the next tsunami.

"We're in the process of upgrading our sea level instruments. So yeah, not just the global observing networks have been improved, but also the local observing network has also been improved. So, I think we're in good shape," Weinstein said.