Disaster Awareness
World Tsunami Day 2019
Natural disasters like Tsunami are rare and adverse events resulting from the natural processes of the Earth along with the mismanagement of the natural resources by the human race.
Tsunamis around the world have been leading to lost various lives, property damage, destroy telephone and electricity lines which means it knocks the whole ecosystem and infrastructure down at the coastal area.
The World Tsunami Awareness Day is designated on November 5 by the UN General Assembly in the year 2015.
It is the brainchild of Japan which has been a key area experiencing the repeated and bitter effects of the tsunami and hence over the years, they can build up major expertise in areas such as tsunami early warning, public action and building back better after a disaster to reduce future impacts.
The major reasons for the formation of tsunamis include earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions and meteorites and asteroids. Rapid industrialization and growing tourism in tsunami-prone regions are playing the role of a boosting agent causing more harm.
According to the UN, "In the past 100 years, 58 of them have claimed more than 260,000 lives, or an average of 4,600 per disaster, surpassing any other natural hazard.
The highest number of deaths in that period was in the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004. It caused an estimated 227,000 fatalities in 14 countries, with Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand hardest-hit."
The international community came together and created the Hyogo Framework for Action Plan, the first-ever comprehensive global agreement on disaster risk reduction was adopted by the governments known as the 10 year Hyogo Framework for Action.
It is a plan towards building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters (HFA) to explain, describe and detail the work that is required from all different sectors and actors to reduce disaster losses.
As an initiative to reduce disaster risk – governments, international agencies, disaster experts and many others developed and agreed upon the plan.
The plan includes 5 steps including ensuring that disaster risk reduction is a national and a local priority with a strong institutional basis for implementation. The second step includes Identifying, assessing and monitoring disaster risks and enhance early warning.
Once identified, disasters can be reduced with 3 parts of the action plan using knowledge, innovation and education to build a culture of safety and resilience at all levels.
Then the work is focused on reducing the underlying risk factors. Strengthen disaster preparedness for effective response at all levels.
They also created a system that boasts scores of seismographic and sea-level monitoring stations and disseminates alerts to national tsunami information centres known as the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System.
The day promotes the target of "Sendai Seven Campaign" which focuses on reducing disaster damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services.
The 50 per cent of the world will be living exposed to the risk of floods, storms and tsunami, by 2030, which is a critical state by the UN to look forward to and makes the importance of awareness for the disaster more important.
The governments are investing in resilient infrastructure, early warning systems, and education is critical to saving people to protect the interest of the people along with protecting the assets against the risk of the disaster.
Follow us on Google News