Causes And Effects Of Tsunami

Throughout this unit, the Science in Practice class has been learning about natural disasters and the impact it has on humans and environment. The natural disaster that will be discussed in this report is the Boxing Day Tsunami, which occurred on the 26th of December, 2004. The tsunami took place in the Indian Ocean. Due to, two tectonics plates, the Indo-Australian plate and the Eurasian plate colliding, causing an underwater earthquake. Due to this awful disaster, people were killed, injured, diagnosed with diseases, homes and businesses were destroyed, the environment damaged.

Earthquakes have been recorded throughout history for thousands of years. Even before seismographs in early times, there are records and accounts of mysterious ground shaking. Earthquakes occur when rocks break along an underground fault (UPSeis, 2007). This, in return, causes vibrations through the earth which causes ground shaking. The magnitude of the shaking varies depending on how great the movement along the fault is; the greater the movement, the bigger the earthquake. Some earthquakes are huge and cause significant damage, while others are small and cause little or no damage what-so-ever. Earthquakes are unpredictable, and can happen at any time. It is uncertain where an earthquake will strike, but there is a greater risk

The most common cause of earthquakes is movement along faults. Earth’s crust is divided into tectonic plates, which grind past each other at fault boundaries. As tectonic plates move,

Earthquakes are caused when rock at an underground fault breaks. This release of energy causes seismic waves (Endsley). There are P waves, S waves, and surface waves (Hogan). This is the main cause of earthquakes, though there has been a few, rare occurrences

Tsunamis occur when there is sudden movement in an extensive body of water such as earthquakes, landslides on the sea floor, major volcanic eruptions or meteorite impacts. The most common source of a tsunami is earthquakes, which are another type of geomorphic hazard that is caused by the friction and stress that tectonic plates put on each other. Tsunamis primarily occur in coastal or island regions where there is a tectonic border or what is known as the ring of fire. As shown in the diagram below the ring of fire is located along the coastal and island regions of the world.As a result of the Pacific Plate diving beneath the Eurasian plate, on March 11, 2011, there were 2 geomorphic hazards, a magnitude-9 earthquake struck north Japan, which caused a deadly tsunami that reached heights of 39 meters. The destructive dilemma was dubbed ‘The Great Sendai Disaster’. The earthquake was caused by multiple centuries of stress on the tectonic plates surrounding the island. The earthquake caused a tsunami that reached the height of 39 meters (128 feet). Japanese scientists had previously discovered that there was another tsunami just like the one in 2011 that took place in 869 AD. But their warning was unhindered. The tsunami, which occurred in 869 AD, was caused by the same tectonic fault as the 2011 tsunami. The epicenter of the earthquake was off the northeast cost of Japan leading to a devastating tsunami that killed many and left many wishing they were. The massive earthquake caused an upward wave that headed towards the city of Sendai. Researches have recently uncovered a thin layer of clay that lubricated the fault zone causing the deadly tectonic slip, thus creating a tsunami that could wipe out an entire city as it did in 2011.The aftermath of the 2011 tsunami and earthquake was not pretty; it caused many deaths, injuries, traumas, financial difficulties, destruction of property, health bills and the destruction of the landscape as a whole. The natural disaster caused nearly 16,000 casualties and there are an estimated 2,500 people still reported missing. Although drowning caused most deaths others include, crushed by debris, suicide and diseases caused by nuclear radiation (cancer) spilled from nuclear

The 2004 Indian Ocean and Tsunami, everyone has heard about this tragic experience before. It is the third-largest earthquake ever recorded on a seismograph and had the longest duration of faulting ever observed, between 8.3 and 10 minutes. A Tsunami is a long high sea wave caused by an earthquake, submarine landslide, or other disturbance. For the book, Wave, there was family of four where the brother, mom and dad went to Thailand to spend their winter break. The daughter had decided to spend her winter break in New York City. In Thailand, there was a Tsunami that had struck the resort where the family had been staying at. The dad and his son went out to go and help others while the mom stayed back in the hotel lobby. Or what was left of it.

Earth is a life giving planet. It is also true that it’s never at rest. It is in a daily course of revolution and rotation, making us experience not only night and day, but also seasons. This planet goes through many changes that brings wonders, but also catastrophes. These forces of nature leave damages and deaths all over the world. One of these cataclysm is earthquakes. What exactly is an earthquake? An earthquake is the ground shaking caused by the sudden movement of one block or rock slipping past another along the faults (Lutgens, Tarbuck). There is a process that causes an earthquake to happen. First it involves the heating, followed by

In the article, ¨Indian Ocean Tsunami; Then and Now¨ by Lucy Rodgers and Gerry Fletcher the text says, ¨About 228,000 people were killed as a result of the 9.1 magnitude quake and the giant waves that slammed into coastlines.¨ Anything can happen at any time, and everybody living in that area were not expecting a tsunami to hit out of nowhere, causing 228,000 of them to get killed. On page 48, the text says, ¨For as far as Ruslan could see, Meulaboh had become a lake, clogged with floating debris.¨ Everything in the city was basically gone, all because nobody saw anything coming and nobody was prepared. Finally, on page 78, the text says, ¨A man stared at him with wide, and bulging eyes. Unblinking eyes, rigid with death. Around him were several more corpses, caught in the brush like debris.¨ Thousands people got killed and hurt, because a tsunami hit out of

The word tsunami comes from a Japanese word meaning “Long harbor waives”. Tsunami is much known and very common in Japan because thousands of Japanese have been killed and some suffered in recent centuries. Tsunami waves generally speaking cause a lot of damages such as, killing people, destroying building, and costing million of dollars. Moreover, a tsunami is a series of great sea waves caused by an underwater earthquake, landslide, or volcanic eruption. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake that is located on epicenter off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, is actually one of the worst disasters in the history of Indian Ocean that generated by the most powerful 9.0 magnitude earthquake. An aggressive

It was warm, sunny, and clear. The southern coast of Asia is filled with everything from elegant resorts to poor fishing villages and even some isolated tribes who live amongst themselves with out any outside contact. On this day fishing boats were out on the Indian Ocean and tourists many of who were vacationing from far away as Finland, Sweden and even the United States were out enjoying the water, the beaches, and hotel pools. These local fishermen, tourists, and even the hotel workers had little idea of what was to come. And what was to come was and underwater earthquake and subsequent tsunami unlike anything they had seen or heard of before. As some tourists played in the water and lay on the beaches a few of them noticed that the ocean was acting a bit strange. In some areas the normally beautiful turquoise blue ocean was turning dark. In other areas the water began to recede exposing many fish and ocean material usually not exposed as far from the beach as these were. At first many tourists and locals alike ran out to look at and collect the fish that lay exposed. For some of the local fishermen it was a windfall as all they had to do was go out and fill their baskets and sacks with fish they would normally work hours fishing to catch. They were a few people however that knew something ominous was about to happen. One tourist named Tilly Smith an eleven-year-old

An earthquake is the shaking of the earth by seismic waves radiating away from the disturbance, most commonly fault movement. The great Chilean earthquakes origin was of the coast of Chile at a subduction zone, referred to as a hot spot for seismic activity.

On Friday at 2:46 p.m. local time, near the northeast coast of Japan, there was a magnitude of 9.0 disastrous earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011 (“Poster of the Great Tohoku Earthquake”, 2012). Earthquakes occur at fault when a fracture in the earth along which movement occurs. When strain builds up, the fault slips and earthquake is created. Earthquake, the most destructive natural disasters of all is caused by the movement of the tectonic plates in the lithosphere. The ground shaking is produced by a rapid released of energy and stress in the Earth. When the stress is release, it sends vibrations known as seismic waves that produced at the focus of the earthquake. Honshu earthquake is considered as one of the deadliest earthquakes and

Let us take a look at how this earthquake in Haiti occurred. Earthquakes happen on the Earth’s lithosphere, which is the outer layer of the Earth. There are three types of plate boundaries: extensional (divergent), compressional (convergent), and transform (J. Louie et al.). In a transform boundary, which is more relevant to the topic at hand, two massive plates called plate tectonics lock up against each other laterally preventing further movement and eventually building up pressure on themselves. This pressure buildup stores potential energy which ultimately translates into kinetic energy when the rocks can no longer hold onto the amount of pressure that builds up causing the two plates to horizontally move or slide abruptly, which is what we know as an ‘Earthquake’ (Tom Harris et al.). Earthquakes can also happen along fault lines, which are cracks that develop from the movement of the tectonic plates. Similarly, as with the plate tectonics, there are three types of faults: normal faults— up and down slippage of rocks or plates—, reverse faults— when a plate goes under another as a result of pushing against each other— and finally, the strike-slip faults— when two plates slip past each other laterally. They are usually found near the edges of the plates— such as the San Andreas Fault in California which

An earthquake is caused due to a build up of strain energy from tectonic plates interacting with each other causing them to release this energy suddenly

A failure in the interior of the Earth’s crust is the cause of most earthquakes. Once the stress inside the crust grows beyond the strength for that location of the crust, a failure occurs within the crust and seismic waves, which we know as earthquakes, are radiated outward. It was once thought that this description of seismic activity was the cause for all earthquakes, but now seismologists know the way earthquakes form and start is a very diverse process. Most earthquakes are classified in the category of being brittle failures, which generate strong seismic waves; some earthquakes involve slow slip motion. There is also evidence to suggest that some earthquakes are more of a thermal process due to large amounts of heat generation, rather than large seismic activity. (Scholz 2002) Also, some earthquakes are not the result of faulting however, but caused by large landslides. In the early days of seismology, these differences were noticed qualitatively but the technology available during that time made it hard to accurately tell the difference. Before an earthquake takes place, there is a large buildup of potential energy. The energies involved in earthquakes can be described by the elastic strain energy W, plus the radiated energy Er, the energy mechanically dissipated during an earthquake, Eg and the thermal energy due to heat dissipation, Eh. Since this equation is a description of potential energies, the actual event of an