Tsunami is a natural disaster that happens all over the world in oceans and seas. Tsunamis are caused by earthquakes, underwater volcano eruptions, underwater landslides, and huge icebergs breaking off from glaciers. A big tsunami can flood coastal villages, causing the water to become undrinkable, people to be stranded on rooftops, supplies non-existent, trees uprooted, houses smashed. Here are a few things you should know about tsunamis, it is the Japanese word for harbor waves. They can travel up to 450 miles per hour and can get up to 100 ft high. About 80% of all tsunamis happen in the Ring of Fire in the Pacific Ocean. At top speed a tsunami can cross the entire Pacific in one day. Away from land tsunamis are only a foot high and look the same like any other wave, but in a tsunami the top part of the wave travels faster than the bottom, causing it to grow higher. If you are on a beach and you see the water being sucked into the ocean a tsunami is coming and quickly warn others and go to higher ground. This is how a little girl saved hundreds of people that would listen to her, and got in the news. But don’t be the religious family of four, who got in the news by watching the water get sucked away and followed it until they were crushed by tons and tons of water. A tsunami is made of many waves, so if the first one hits there could be more to come, and most importantly, NEVER PANIC.
The most practical and most used way to survive a tsunami is to flee to higher ground, and to do this the people have to be prepared, which is why scientists have had to invent a special alarm that starts sounding a siren when it detects a tsunami approaching because before tsunami’s reach land they are just as high as a normal wave so people in boats can’t tell the difference, and only show themselves when they near shore and the water is shallower, when it is already too late for the people still there.
Some warning systems work by using a seismograph to record an earthquake, then it would send the data for the earthquake to officials if there is enough force to cause a tsunami. Then the officials decide whether to sound an alarm or not, but with this system there are many false alarms because sometimes even if there is a big earthquake there might not be a tsunami or the waves could go in the other direction. This system was also repeatedly unable to detect a tsunami which was why the people in Hawaii had no warning when a tsunami came to land and this cause devastation in 1946 and 1960. This caused scientists to try and develop a more reliable tsunami detector so when the next tsunami comes people will be ready for it. Another way people were able to have warnings for a tsunami was from watching animals. In 2004 when India was hit by a tsunami all the elephants ran to higher land due to their more sensitive hearing ability. Another way scientists have been able to tell when there is going to be a tsunami is by putting sensors on the ocean floor which will detect if there is a wave moving too fast or having too much energy. If it detects an alarm will be sent to officials who will decide whether it’s a false alarm or not. These sensors can go to 7000 meters under water and is self sustainable for up to 4 years, so it won’t be too expensive and it won’t cause too much environmental damage.
In 2004 the biggest earthquake in 40 years had just happened in the Indian ocean, the people at the Indian Meteorological Department recorded the earthquake and sent a warning by fax but the warning was not issued until after the tsunami hit the Indian coast. This tsunami cause 230,000 deaths and according to newspapers could have been avoided if the alarm had been issued on time. This is why now scientists and governments are trying to get enough finding to install reliable tsunami systems in poorer countries to prevent what happened in 2004 from repeating. I think that if there were more tsunami warning systems tsunami’s would no longer pose as such a threat to people in countries on the coast, this way it could save thousands of lives.
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