Coping with destruction unleashed by tsunamis

Twenty years after the catastrophic 9.1 on Richter scale earthquake triggered tsunami wave of 57 feet off the coast of Aceh province in Indonesia, which spread to 14 other countries on December 26, 2004 and killed nearly 230,000 people, 130,000 and more in Aceh itself, followed by Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu in India, Thailand, and across the Indian Ocean in Durban, South Africa, the memories of death and trauma remain fresh in the minds of the battered survivors.

It was the first major natural disaster that had its beginnings in the sea, making people aware that earth-quakes in sea-beds can cause enormous destruction. At the time it had happened, catching hundreds of thousands of people, leaving them no time to escape the monster wave. It looked as though Nature’s wrath has been unleashed.

People in Aceh, Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu, Thailand and elsewhere who have lived through the apocalyptic moments have not really moved on. They carry the fear and shock, and the tragedy that broke their lives as family members were swept away, never to be found again.

Thousands of bodies have not been found, leaving the nagging doubt that there are people who escaped but could not reunite with their mourning family members. But it is a feeling. People have been killed and the survivors who remain are the only ones left. On Thursday, people offered prayers, lit candles, observed silence for the dead even as they remained bewildered as to how they were caught in the most destructive episode of their lives.

Experts now recognise that tsunamis are not rare events, and that they happen at regular intervals as the tectonic plates on which continents and oceans float are moving and sliding, causing disruptions which lead to quakes which in turn give rise to enormous waves. Scientists looking at the local history in Indonesia have realised that there was a tsunami event in 1833 and that it was used to predict that there could be another of a similar kind. This was the prediction in 2003 by a seismologist.

It had happened a year later, and it happened in a place slightly away from the predicted spot. But the tsunami had happened. The warning was not taken because even the scientist was not sure about the accuracy of his prediction. And he now laments. The plain fact was that a tsunami was not on the radar screen of the disaster warning experts. It is felt that that even after the enormous destruction caused by the 2004 tsunami, research funds are not sufficiently allocated to find ways to deal with tsunamis.

It is not the case that there have been no tsunamis since 2004. There was one on 2011, off the coast of Japan, with an earthquake of 8 + on the Richter scale which unleashed the tsunami wave that destroyed the Fukushima nuclear reactor that supplied electricity to Tokyo.

Like tropical cyclones, tsunamis are to be expected and there should be preparations to help people to face them. It is not easy stuff because experts confess that it is not easy to predict a tsunami, and the warning time could be as little as 30 minutes. And in densely populated areas like Aceh, it is difficult to evacuate people and take them to safe spots.

But efforts to find ways of managing the destruction unleashed by a tsunami wave has to be continued. There is not much that people and governments can do except to identify the vulnerable spots and build disaster-resilient infrastructure. People cannot be left to live in low-lying areas, and the tsunami warning systems have to be improved as much as they can be. It is a constant battle with the deep rumbles from the depths of the oceans.