American’s Tsunami, Are we Next?
The word tsunami comes from a Japanese word meaning “Long harbor waives”. Tsunami is much known and very common in Japan because thousands of Japanese have been killed and some suffered in recent centuries. Tsunami waves generally speaking cause a lot of damages such as, killing people, destroying building, and costing million of dollars. Moreover, a tsunami is a series of great sea waves caused by an underwater earthquake, landslide, or volcanic eruption. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake that is located on epicenter off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, is actually one of the worst disasters in the history of Indian Ocean that generated by the most powerful 9.0 magnitude earthquake. An aggressive movement of the Earth's tectonic plates creates an enormous amount of water (probably 30 feet long), sending powerful shock waves in every direction.
The result of megathrust event is sudden rise in the ocean floor and it is trigger a powerful and massive killer waiver.2- A Tsunami is very deferent from a normal wave, in normal waves only the water o...
Imagine if a 9.0 earthquake struck the West Coast today, resulting in a giant tsunami. Coastal towns would be washed away or completely isolated, and electricity would be lost (FOX5). There would be $70 billion in damage and people would only have 15 minutest to evacuate or move to higher ground resulting in 10,000 deaths (FOX5). This sounds like a plot for a scary movie, but this is actually a reality. The Oregon Coast in located on a subduction zone, which makes it very susceptible to major earthquakes and tsunamis. With the Cascadia subduction zone running along he West Coast the threat of a major tsunami is very real.
Tsunamis can kill 230,000–280,000 people and rogue waves kill very little people. The only similarity they have is they are destructive and they’re formed in
... the catastrophic event into an opportunity for the future. Even though the tsunami of December 2004 ended in a huge death toll, ongoing trauma and homelessness of millions of Asians, still they can recuperate from this entire horrific event. If any good at all is to come from this adversity on a human scale, it will certainly be considered by the compassion and generosity that the world reveals to the survivors. I must admit that I find very difficult to let it sink in my brain the fact that it can happen to all of us anywhere and any time around the globe. It might not be a tsunami that these citizens have experienced, but there are other natural disasters we can stumble upon as well. Surely, it has been a great experience for me to write this paper and to discover the truth about the tsunami and the total effects of what these people have to deal with.
The author states that before the mega-quake actually hits, there is a compression wave that is detected by animals. It has received a wide debate as to the relationship between animals and the compression waves. It is said that animals start to react very strange and then two minutes later, there is a boom of a massive mega quake.
An earthquake is the shaking of the ground caused by sudden release of energy inside the earth's crust. It's the breaking and moving of tectonic plates along a fault line. Earthquakes can range in size from weak where we don't feel them to extremely violent where they actually thow people around and destroy cities. They may be a result of geological faults or other activites such as volcanoes, landslides, mine blasts and nuclear tests. An earthquake is not always naturally caused.
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami took place on December 26th, 2004 and had a magnitude of 9.15. The cause of the Sumatra Tsunami was due to the sliding of two tectonic plates. Sumatra, an island in Indonesia, is situated on the boundary of the two plates; part of Sumatra is situated on the India/Australian plate and the other part is on the Eurasian plate. The Indian/Australian plate and Eurasian plate connect on the ocean floor at the boundary, a little over 100 miles off the short of Sumatra. Sumatra was one among the many countries that was impacted by these natural disasters. To fully understand the Sumatra Tsunami one must examine the events that led up to it, what a tsunami is, and the damage caused.
TOHOKU, Japan, Friday, Mar. 11 -Yesterday, a 9.0 magnitude Earthquake struck the east of Tohoku, Japan. The epicentre of the earthquake was located approximately 72 km east of Tohoku (38.3 degrees North latitude and 142.4 degrees East longitude), or 130 km east of Sendai as shown by the X in figure 3 below. The focus of the earthquake was 24.4 km under the epicentre. The earthquake therefore caused a tsunami due to the displacing of water above the Pacific Plate. The earthquake and tsunami together have caused approximately 20,000 deaths, 6152 injuries and 2500 people missing. Approximately 90% of these deaths were by drowning. Approximately 140,000 people have been displaced and over 500,000 buildings and structures have been destroyed or damaged. The early warning system of Japan stopped many bullet trains, and many residents received texted warnings of the earthquake and tsunami on their mobile phones giving them time to evacuate. Figures 1 and 2 show exactly how destructive the tsunami caused by the Tohoku Earthquake was.
Tsunamis caused by the Earthquake leads to flooding along the coastal environment. This damages any homes. Flooding caused new lakes or sag ponds on the land. Increasing groundwater flow from springs and displacing stream channel. ("Flood Consequences")
The effects caused by earthquakes are devastating. They cause loss of human life and have effects on infrastructure and economy. Earthquakes can happen at any time anywhere. In January 12, 2010 an earthquake of a magnitude of 7.0 hit the nation of Haiti. An estimation of 316,000 people were killed, and more than 1.3 million Haitians were left homeless (Earthquake Information for 2010). Haiti was in a terrified chaos. After the earthquake, families were separated because many of the members were killed. Homes, schools, and hospitals were demolished. People lost their most valuable belongings. It will take time for the country to recover from this terrible disaster. The long damages are economic issues, health-state, and environmental issues that effect in the beautiful island of Haiti.
Gammon, Crystal. "Massive Sea-floor Shove Triggered Japan's Tsunami." LiveScience. TechMedia Network, 02 Dec. 2011. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.
Natural Disasters can occur anywhere at anytime. Some are more predictable than others, but they all bring hardship to everyone’s life. Examples of natural disasters are Earthquakes (Haiti 2010), Tornadoes, Tsunami, Hurricanes, Wild Fires, Winter Storms, Heat waves, Mudslides and Floods. Regardless of what kind of disaster occurs, bottom line, everyone needs to be prepared mentally and physically to deal with the aftermath. Education is the first step to prepare you to deal with any major disaster. Three of the major disasters that can potentially disrupt normal day to day operations in our lives, are Hurricanes, Tsunamis and Tornadoes.
The earthquake with magnitude 9.0 and tsunami hit many regions of Japan and destroyed everything on its ways. The effects could feel over the world. Tsunamis hit Pacific coastal lines in many countries. Numerous people died, missing, or homeless. People lived in shelter, without clean water, power, telecommunication, etc. Japan is still recovering from the damages with the help of foreign relief. Radioactive from the meltdown and the aftermath debris affects the global environment. Learning the mega-thrust earthquake will help us improves the warning system that could save people and avoid serious
Unlike a tsunami being a giant wave that sinks a piece of land, a flood is a temporary overflow of water on usually dry land. Floods can come from heavy rain, storm surges, waterway block and many more. They can occur in a slow pace, taking days, or happen at an instant, becoming a flash flood (Flood).
As the tectonic plates slide over each other, they cause earthquakes. Earthquakes produce various damaging effects, this includes damage to structures of buildings, bridges and other standing formations which then result in injuries and people getting killed, wildlife getting disrupted as well as humans. An earthquake can affect the earth as it’s easier to let the lava come out of the earth. Tsunamis- Can cause financial problems such as home loss, job loss which will then result in being homeless, loss of crops and food supplies which causes a lot of harm to us ‘humans’. A tsunami is a series of waves that send surges of water that can travel thousands of miles.
There was a multitude of causes of the disaster in Japan. The first cause was a 9.0 magnitude earthquake that occurred off the coast of Japan. Japan is located in “The Ring of Fire,” an area in the Pacific Ocean that has multiple faults and earthquakes (Pedersen 13). Tectonic plates shifted off the North Pacific coast of Japan and created a massive earthquake. The next cause was a thirty-three foot wall of water that swept over cities and farmland in Japan (Branigan 2). Martin Fackler, a journalist, stated, “The quake churned up a devastating tsunami” (Fackler 3). The tsunami reached speeds of 497 miles per hour while approaching Japan (Fackler 3). The third and final reason of the disaster was that the cooling systems at multiple nuclear power plants failed. At Fukushima, a nuclear power plant in Sendai, Japan, the radioactive rods began to overheat due to the absence of water, which cools it. Explosions occurred at three of the reactors, which spewed radiation into the air (“Comparing nuclear power plant crises”). In conclusion, the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant issues were the causes of the disaster in Japan, but they also had a myriad of effects.