We are approaching the second anniversary of the Great Indian Ocean Tsunami. Nearly a quarter-of-a-million people in 12 Indian Ocean countries died from the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami cause by a 9.3 magnitude earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
A lot was said about the Tsunami Warning setup and about Tsunami Sensors. A lot of money was pumped into the relief and rehabilitation of the Tsunami victims.
So where are we now. An Indian ocean Tsunami warning system is up and running. A network of 26 national tsunami information centres and 25 new seimological stations have been set up in Indian Ocean countries, capable of receiving and distributing tsunami advisories around the clock.
The first DART buoy is being deployed this weekend.
The DART device will link a water pressure detector 4.5 kilometers (3 miles) under the Indian Ocean seabed with a tethered buoy.
Located at a key point along the area’s main undersea fault line, the Sumatra Trench, the device will note any increased water pressure indicative of a tsunami as soon as an earthquake occurs. It will relay the data to the buoy, which is designed to transmit it by satellite to monitoring stations in more than two dozen Indian Ocean countries within five to seven minutes.
Former US President Bill Clinton on his second visit to India commended the rehabilitation efforts in the Cuddalore district of TamilNadu and proposed this model to emulated elsewhere, even for the rehabilitation of Katrina victims.
So looks like considerable progress has been made in all the three areas. But does this alone mean that we can avoid a repeat of the disaster. I feel that much more needs to be done on the ground rather than under the sea to prevent ourselves from another disaster.
That fateful day I had been on a walk along the shores of North Chennai. This part of the shore does not have wide beaches. A lot of fishing hamlets lie very close to the sea. The roads that lead to these hamlets are very narrow (3 feet at the maximum). Iam not sure how many people can be evacuated from these places at 2-3 hours notice which are typical response times for Tsunami’s in Bay of Bengal. The situation still remains very much the same.
Only way to do that is to stop bypassing environmental safeguards for narrow commercial interests. A Coastal regulation act was passed in 1991 calling for properties to be built more than 500 M away from the sea. All coastal states protested and managed to bring it down to 100 M. Finally Supreme Court intervened and made it 200 M. The effect of that was that more and more people started having properties close to the sea. Fishermen who used to occupy those places were pushed closer to the sea. Remember that most of the dead are children and women residing close to the sea. The magnitude of the calamity would have been lesser had we adhered to the originally proposed limits.
On the other hand, in Royapuram, in order to curb sea water erosion, artificial stone structures called Gyrones have been constructed. In fact from a bridge overlooking one of these Gyrones, one could see the raging sea far ahead lashing in while within the gyrone the sea was much more calm. It is also said that Pondicherry escaped much of the brunt because of stone structures in front of the main beach. Same is the case with Male also. Gyrones can be one more line of defence.
Mangroves form an effective barrier against such giant tidal waves. We have been systematically destorying mangroves along the east coast. We should try to improve the mangrove cover.
Prof. Hawking thinks human have to set up colonies outside our Solar System if mankind has to survive. He talks about disasters like Asteroid collision, Nuclear wipe out etc. But by systematic destruction of Nature’s own balances, we have been setting up ourselves for large scale human and property losses with disasters like Tsunami which are many orders of magnitude less than catastrophe that Prof. Hawking is talking about.
