Natural+Disasters+-+The+Force+of+Nature

The Indian Ocean Earthquake- 2004 //Written by Tommy Nielsen =)//

The huge earthquake in the Indian Ocean occurred on December the 26th. I used this as an example to talk about the natural disasters. That something like this could happen is almost unbelievable. It was an undersea earthquake that began the whole thing. How did the undersea earthquake start in the first place? Subduction is the word that we need to look closer at. That is when one tectonic plate slides under another and releases an enormous force. In this case, this earthquake started several others and even a tsunami. The whole planet seemed to vibrate for 1cm. You need a lot of power to make something like that happen. How big where the casualties? What was it that caused the largest damage? I will get deeper into it further in the text.

When you see a wave that is 3-7 times higher than you are coming right against you, I doubt you want to jump into it. The tsunami made the largest damage when the Indian Ocean Earthquake shivered the earth. When a tsunami approaches land the height of it enlarges. Even though it enlarges, it is hard to see out in the open ocean, because the height of it is very low. To warn that a tsunami approaches may be hard without special warning systems. If you are going to detect it, you need a network with sensors. We should have learned out from this that we need to focus on safety systems around the world to rescue lives. For some, this equipment could be easy to get and install, but it may be hard for others to do the same. Then I am talking about the poor areas in the world. These are the most exposed when it comes to security against the nature. For instance, Japan has fortified their large skyscrapers against earthquakes and this shows us that their economic reaches a higher level than others.

We found the epicentre outside the west-coast of Indonesia. The epicentre is the spot above where the earthquake began. As I mentioned before, the whole earth shivered and the magnitude of the earthquake was somewhere between 9.1 and 9.3. This is the second largest earthquake that has been recorded on a seismograph. A seismograph is a device to measure the size of an earthquake. After the Indian Ocean Earthquake several aftershocks occurred. An aftershock is an earthquake that appears after a previous earthquake. One of those aftershocks measured a magnitude of 8.3 on the seismograph. So even if an earthquake is over, you should not be calm yet.

The people got a big surprise when the wave was close enough to see it. Maybe some saw the wave and managed to run, but so many did not even have a chance to run. It is hard to tell the correct numbers, but the resources tell that more than 250.000 people were killed. People from more than eleven countries have been confirmed dead after this awful happening. One thing that I did not mention earlier is that the wave hit the inland with a height of 30m. This caused that many people where missing. Many countries worldwide provided much money to the people that suffered this incident. This was sent so that they could rebuild their lives.

Another impact hit the economic. When something like this occurs, we loose something. The fishers lost their boats and gear. This hit the economic hard, because this is a fisher community. It was about 66% of the fishing and industrial infrastructure the waves destroyed when they hit the inland.

To reconstruct the damage that has been done, will take several years. The memories of this will be remembered for a long time, and those who suffered out from this, will most likely remember and think of it through their whole lives. Mother Nature has shown us what damage she is capable of to do. We need to be prepared. We need to develop knowledge about the forces Mother Nature can cause, to survive.

Kildeliste:

//2004 Indian Ocean earthquake// (24 February 2009) URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake [Lest: 21.02.09]

//Jordskjelvet i Indiahavet 2004// (23. feb 2009) URL: http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordskjelvet_i_Indiahavet_2004 [Lest: 21.02.09]

  Nice work, Tommy. Good content and you have got a lot of good facts. Try to edit some of your sentences; in some of them, it seems like you are "thinking Norwegian language" when you write. - The sportsgroup!