Is the Indian Ocean Ready for Another Mega-Tsunami?

[ad_1] Journal The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami sparked the world’s largest humanitarian and catastrophe restoration effort. However 20 years on, governments nonetheless fail to sufficiently combine catastrophe discount into longer-term strategic pondering.

This yr marks the twentieth anniversary of the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Commemorations are happening across the area for the estimated 230,000 lives misplaced in 14 nations affected by the catastrophe. It noticed the most important recorded humanitarian response, mobilizing assist from native and worldwide responders.

The tsunami’s destruction centered the world’s consideration on the necessity for sustained motion in catastrophe danger discount. Since then, progress has been made, however efforts are waning and in some measures are backsliding amid short-termism and an incapability to sufficiently combine catastrophe discount into longer-term strategic pondering on the nationwide stage.

We have to discover the momentum we had after the 2004 tsunami to ship catastrophe discount within the area.

The 2004 Tsunami

On the morning of December 26, 2004 a devastating 9.2 magnitude earthquake occurred 160 kilometers off the coast of North Sumatra, Indonesia at a depth of 30 kilometers. This got here after many years of stress launched alongside the Burma and Indo-Australian tectonic plates and precipitated a big earthquake in two phases. These lasted a number of minutes over an estimated 1,600 km of fault floor. The seabed rose by a number of meters over a whole bunch of kilometers, pushing an estimated 30 cubic meters of water above sea stage and triggering a tsunami.

The waves had been noticed as far-off as Mexico, Chile, and the Arctic Circle.

Because the wave approached shallower waters, it slowed down, inflicting its measurement to extend to an estimated 30 meters excessive and 200 kilometers huge. It reached Indonesia’s Aceh province 20 minutes after the earthquake, hitting the coastal metropolis of Meulaboh. The wave crashed into the shoreline and killed 10,000 residents and destroyed 80 % of its buildings. It then reached Banda Aceh, residence to 250,000 folks, the place outlying islands precipitated the tsunami to accentuate. Waves of 20 to 35 meters excessive hit the coastal metropolis and reached 3.5 kilometers inland. The waters reached the second flooring of many buildings and claimed an estimated 168,000 lives.

Because the wave progressed, it impacted India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Eyewitnesses recounted that they heard cracking and rumbling sounds that got here from underwater landslides. Large undersea landslides triggered by the earthquake noticed the formation of waves of as much as 15 meters excessive. Because the islands are flat, the tsunami waves had important affect. Fortunately, native communities had an oral custom that handed down data of earlier earthquakes and tsunamis; many within the islands’ neighborhood listened to the warning indicators and evacuated to increased floor.

Nevertheless, the Indian Air Power base positioned alongside the coast on Automotive Nicobar was inundated by the tsunami waves, with residential buildings and its hospital diminished nearly to rubble. 4 oil tankers close by had been displaced 800 meters from the seashore to the air pressure base’s predominant gate.

Because the tsunami wave continued, it reached Thailand’s Phang Nga and Phuket provinces an hour and a half after the earthquake. It claimed the lives of round 5,400 folks, together with 2,000 international vacationers. An estimated 2,500 to three,000 irregular migrant employees from Myanmar additionally misplaced their lives in Thailand. With Aceh bearing the principle brunt of the tsunami, the waves that reached the northwestern states of Peninsula Malaysia had been probably mirrored quite than direct. Nonetheless, 52 folks died and property harm resulted in hundreds of displaced folks.

Mainland India, the Maldives, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka had been subsequent affected by the tsunami. India misplaced 10,800 folks. Sri Lanka suffered the second highest casualty fee, with over 35,000 folks misplaced. The Maldives had graduated from the United Nations’ “least developed” class 4 days earlier than the tsunami. The then-Maldives president, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, mentioned that “practically twenty years of improvement had been washed away” within the tsunami.