In December 2015, the UN General Assembly designated 5 November as World Tsunami Awareness Day, calling on countries, international bodies and civil society to raise tsunami awareness and share innovative approaches to risk reduction.
tsunami essay in kannada
World Tsunami Awareness Day was the brainchild of Japan, which due to its repeated, bitter experience has over the years built up major expertise in areas such as tsunami early warning, public action and building back better after a disaster to reduce future impacts. UN Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) facilitates the observance of World Tsunami Awareness Day in collaboration with the rest of the United Nations system.
Tsunamis are rare events but can be extremely deadly. In the past 100 years, 58 of them have claimed more than 260,000 lives, or an average of 4,600 per disaster, surpassing any other natural hazard. The highest number of deaths in that period was in the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004. It caused an estimated 227,000 fatalities in 14 countries, with Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand hardest-hit.
They also created the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System, which boasts scores of seismographic and sea-level monitoring stations and disseminates alerts to national tsunami information centres.
The word "tsunami" comprises the Japanese words "tsu" (meaning harbour) and "nami" (meaning wave). A tsunami is a series of enormous waves created by an underwater disturbance usually associated with earthquakes occurring below or near the ocean.
Volcanic eruptions, submarine landslides, and coastal rock falls can also generate a tsunami, as can a large asteroid impacting the ocean. They originate from a vertical movement of the sea floor with the consequent displacement of water mass.
A landslide which occurs along the coast can force large amounts of water into the sea, disturbing the water and generate a tsunami. Underwater landslides can also result in tsunamis when the material loosened by the landslide moves violently, pushing the water in front of it.
Although relatively infrequent, violent volcanic eruptions also represent impulsive disturbances, which can displace a great volume of water and generate extremely destructive tsunami waves in the immediate source area.
One of the largest and most destructive tsunamis ever recorded was generated in August 26, 1883 after the explosion and collapse of the volcano of Krakatoa (Krakatau), in Indonesia. This explosion generated waves that reached 135 feet, destroyed coastal towns and villages along the Sunda Strait in both the islands of Java and Sumatra, killing 36,417 people.
Tsunamis caused by extraterrestrial collision (i.e. asteroids, meteors) are an extremely rare occurrence. Although no meteor/asteroid-induced tsunamis have been recorded in recent history, scientists realize that if these celestial bodies should strike the ocean, a large volume of water would undoubtedly be displaced to cause a tsunami.
Czech model and entrepreneur Petra Nemcova is the official UN Disaster Risk Reduction World Tsunami Awareness Advocate, which is commemorated on 5 November every year. Petra Nemcova not only survived the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Thailand but also found a way to continue living and sharing her experience at the service of people affected by disasters.
Photo: Children from a local youth baseball team wave a big fishing flag to welcome the commemorative train near Otsuchi Station after the opening of the Sanriku Railway Rias Line. The JR Yamada Line between Miyako and Kamaishi, which had been closed due to the tsunami, was transferred to the Sanriku Railway, connecting all sections of the line that were closed in Iwate Prefecture after the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. (Source: Kyoto News)
Schools are also critical infrastructures, for their education and community roles, and also because they are commonly used as evacuation centers. Japan has updated seismic resilience standards for schools over time, integrating measures against different risks and vulnerabilities revealed after each disaster, as documented in the report Making Schools Resilient at Scale. After the 2011 GEJE, there was very little earthquake-related damage; rather, most damage was caused by the tsunami. However, in some cases damages to nonstructural elements like suspending ceilings in school gymnasiums limited the possibility of using these spaces after the disaster. After the disaster, a major update was made to the policies on the safety of nonstructural elements in schools, given the need for higher resilience standards for their function as post-disaster evacuation centers[xiii].
Cultural heritage also plays an important role in creating healthy communities, and the loss or damage of these items can scar the cohesion and identity of a community. The report Resilient Cultural Heritage: Learning from the Japanese Experience shows how the GEJE highlighted the importance of investing in the resilience of cultural properties, such as through restoration budgets and response teams, which enabled the relocation of at-risk items and restoration of properties during and after the GEJE. After the megadisaster, the volunteer organization Shiryō-Net was formed to help rescue and preserve heritage properties, and this network has now spread across Japan.[xiv] Engaging both volunteer and government organizations in heritage preservation can allow for a more wide-ranging response. Cultural properties can play a role in healing communities wrought by disasters: in Ishinomaki City, the restoration of a historic storehouse served as a symbol of reconstruction[xv], while elsewhere repair of cultural heritage sites and the celebration of cultural festivals served a stimulant for recovery.[xvi] Cultural heritage also played a preventative role during and after the disaster by embedding the experience of prior disasters in the built environment. Stone monuments which marked the extent of historic tsunamis served as guides for some residents, who fled uphill past the stones and escaped the dangerous waters.[xvii] This suggests a potential role for cultural heritage in instructing future generations about historic hazards.
Effective engagement of various stakeholders is also important to preparedness mapping and other disaster preparedness activities. This means engaging and empowering diverse groups including women, the elderly, children, and the private sector. Elders are a particularly important demographic in the context of the GEJE, as the report Elders Leading the Way to Resilience illustrates. Tohoku is an aging region, and two-thirds of lives lost from the GEJE were over 60 years old. Research shows that building trust and social ties can reduce disaster impacts- after GEJE, a study found that communities with high social capital lost fewer residents to the tsunami.[xxi] Following the megadisaster, elders in Ofunato formed the Ibasho Cafe, a community space for strengthening social capital among older people. The World Bank has explored the potential of the Ibasho model for other contexts, highlighting how fueling social capital and engaging elders in strengthening their community can have benefits for both normal times and improve resilience when a disaster does strike.
Ten years after the GEJE, these lessons in the realms of resilient infrastructure, risk identification, reduction and preparedness, and DRFI are significant not only for parts of the world preparing for tsunamis and other seismic hazards, but also for many of the other types of hazards faced around the globe in 2021. In Japan, many of the lessons of the GEJE are being applied to the projected Nankai Trough and Tokyo Inland earthquakes, for example through modelling risks and mapping evacuation routes, implementing scenario planning exercises and evacuation drills, or even prearranging a post-disaster reconstruction vision and plans. These resilience measures are taken not only individually but also through innovative partnerships for collaboration across regions, sectors, and organizations including public-private agreements to share resources and expertise in the event of a major disaster.
In the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, there was recognition that disaster response involves more than technical expertise and efficiency and consists of more than a delivery of humanitarian assistance. Growing recognition of the need to respect, uphold, and promote the human rights of those affected by natural disasters, whether displaced or not, was the driving force between efforts by the RSG to develop Operational Guidelines for Human Rights and Natural Disaster. These guidelines, which were formally adopted by the InterAgency Standing Committee in June 2006, are presently being used to train disaster responders on ways of ensuring that human rights are protected in the midst of disaster.[18]
[1] Walter Kälin, for example, found that 70% of the tsunami-affected population in one country had lost their documentation. Protection of Internally Displaced Persons in Situations of Natural Disasters: A Working Visit to Asia by the Representative of the Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons Walter Kälin, 27 February-5 March 2005. Washington: Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, 2005, p. 20.
Floods are the most frequent type of natural disaster and occur when an overflow of water submerges land that is usually dry. Floods are often caused by heavy rainfall, rapid snowmelt or a storm surge from a tropical cyclone or tsunami in coastal areas.
Knowing the size of an earthquake is central to predicting whether it can produce dangerous ocean waves known as a tsunamis. By the time a tsunami reaches land, it can be a huge, destructive wall of water. Early warning is crucial in saving lives because tsunami waves move faster than people can run.
It is appreciated that both the knowledge pool and scientific literature specific to the January 2022 HTHH eruption are rapidly growing. In spite of the fact that field-based studies in Tonga have been hampered by the global Covid pandemic, several research groups have already begun looking into many facets of the event from different perspectives, especially volcanological, atmospheric, tsunamigenic, geospatial, and numerical modelling aspects (for example Amores et al. 2022; Burt 2022; Carvajal et al. 2022; Cronin et al. 2022; Harrison 2022; Tanioka et al. 2022; Yuen et al. 2022; Zuo et al. 2022). This spontaneous surge in scientific interest is also evidenced by the dedicated scientific sessions focusing exclusively on the Tongan eruption and tsunamis scheduled at the 2022 conferences of both the European Geophysical Union (EGU 2022) and the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS 2022), in May and August 2022, respectively. Acknowledging this groundswell of interest provides the motivation here. The current aim is to summarise some of the most prominent features of the Tongan volcanic event for science, and at the same time highlight some key gaps that can be identified in field, modelling and theoretical aspects, which are now being addressed by the scientific community. 2ff7e9595c
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