NEWS IN FOCUS!!! WILL INDONESIA BE READY FOR THE NEXT TSUNAMI? Ten years after catastrophic waves lashed Sumatra, Indonesia has rebuilt. But the risk of another devastating tsunami is high!!! Ten years ago, one of the deadliest natural disasters in history killed 227,898 people in 14 countries around the Indian Ocean, nearly 170,000 of them in Indonesia. It began on the morning of December 26, 2004, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) off the west coast of Sumatra, when a magnitude 9.1 earthquake, the third largest since 1900, ruptured the ocean floor. Within eight minutes the fracture spanned 700 miles (1,127 km), releasing 23,000 times more energy than the atomic bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, Japan. Parts of the seabed shifted 30 feet (9 meters) to the west-southwest. But that was not the worst of it. Some segments of the fault also surged upward by tens of feet, and they lifted the whole column of seawater above them. At the sea surface, that set in motion a wave, a tsunami that traveled around the Indian Ocean. When it hit Sumatra, it was 100 feet (30 meters) high along parts of the northwest coast. IT WAS the TSUNAMI that DID the KILLING. When the next tsunami strikes the Indian Ocean, and scientists are certain that another large one is inevitable, probably within the next few decades, will the region fare any better??? Looking Back Hardest hit on that terrible day ten years ago was the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh, on Sumatras northern tip. More than 60,000 of its 264,000 residents perished, about 35 percent of the total lost in Indonesia. The water was warm, black, oily, and filled with debris. Ten years later Banda Aceh has been rebuilt, and its population has climbed back to 250,000, almost what it was before the disaster. With smooth new highways and vibrant late-night cafés, the city has been transformed. Aside from a number of immaculately groomed mass graves, and a few intentional reminders of the disaster, such as the presence of a large ship marooned in a city park, most signs of the tsunamis damage have been erased. Like other countries ravaged by the 2004 tsunami, Indonesia is now linked to a tsunami detection system in the Indian Ocean. Once an earthquake has occurred, that system of seafloor sensors and surface buoys relays signals via satellite to government warning centers around the world, alerting them that a tsunami might be on the way. A decade ago such detectors existed only in the Pacific. Had they been deployed in the Indian Ocean in 2004, some of the 51,000 people who died in Sri Lanka and India would have been spared: The tsunami took two hours to cross the Indian Ocean, and timely warnings, or any warning at all, would have saved thousands of lives. But Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world, is in a less fortunate situation. It borders a number of dangerous seismic faults, especially a long, arcing one called the Sunda megathrust, which parallels the islands of Sumatra and Java. The 2004 tsunami that began on that fault struck the Sumatran coast within 30 minutes of the earthquake. Even with a near instantaneous tsunami alert, many residents wouldnt have had enough time to reach high ground. Faced with such an unforgiving margin between life and death, Indonesia has struggled to improve public awareness and preparedness. A handful of evacuation shelters, three-or-four-story buildings, some of them with open ground floors to let the wave pass through, have been built in Banda Aceh and other threatened cities. Theres a network of sirens to warn residents that a tsunami is imminent. But much remains to be done, as the response to a recent earthquake made painfully evident. Many locals attribute the survival of the Rahmatullah mosque, on the outskirts of Banda Aceh, to divine intervention, but the mosques open ground floor may have helped, by allowing the tsunami to wash through. Geologists say: Its not at all clear how often earthquakes repeat, and whether the fault that broke in 2004 spent everything it had on that earthquake, or whether theres something left in the bank. Padang a city of one million on Sumatras west coast, is a next-shoe-drop kind of place. Past tsunamis suggest that the segment of the Sunda megathrust that lies off Padang, may be overdue for an earthquake. Government officials in Indonesia and Padang are aware of the risk. As in Banda Aceh, evacuation routes have been planned and emergency shelters built. But in Indonesia and other countries along the rim of the Indian Ocean, such measures may be insufficient to protect the hundreds of millions of people who live along the coasts. Even with the best warning systems and evacuation plans, there are simply too many people in harms way. In Southeast Asia alone, more than ten million people live within a mile of the coast. Short of moving Banda Aceh, Padang, and every other threatened coastal city miles inland, theres no fail-safe defense against future tsunamis. Is good work being done? Yes. There are people trying to educate; there are people trying to build vertical evacuation structures. But will it solve even 10 percent of the problem? There are doubts!!! https://facebook/masih.walid#!/groups/1492114921018482/
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 21:53:08 +0000
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