Earthquakes and Tsunamis Glossary: Why, How and What Damage Can Be Done By Tsunamis?

How earthquakes cause tsunamis, simply fierce combination. Earthquakes disturbances at ground level and below caused by shifts and collisions of tectonic plates, the geologic structures that form the Earth’s outer layer. Friction between plates causes their edges to stick and build up energy even as the plates continue to move.

That energy is released as an earthquake when the plates come unstuck and slip past each other. Earthquakes can happen anywhere at any time, but they most commonly occur on known fault lines such as the tsunamis occur when a abrupt movement on the ocean floor happens, for example an earthquake or a powerful volcanic eruption nearby or any moving sections of the Earth’s crust under the ocean.

The Earth’s crust and upper part of the mantle are broken into large pieces called tectonic plates. A tectonic plate ( which is also called the lithospheric plate) is a very irregular shaped of  rock, generally composed of both continental and oceanic plates. The plates are always passing each other, however if both the plates collide, slip or just meet.

The Earth’s crust then becomes unstable, unable to hold the plates into place. This after releases huge amounts of pressure causing either a volcanic eruption to a nearby volcano or an earthquake, the earthquake will then create a split into the sea’s surface, causing all the water to go upwards due to the pressure and as there is now a crack within the sea floor.

As the water piles up it creates numerous gigantic waves that proceed towards other parts of the ocean or mainland. As the waves continue to pile up amongst each other they keep on gathering more water, becoming more threatening the more water it reaches, the higher the final wave will be.

What is an earthquake? What generates an earthquake?

How earthquakes cause tsunamis are disturbances at ground level and below caused by shifts and collisions of tectonic plates, the geologic structures that form the Earth’s outer layer. Friction between plates causes their edges to stick and build up energy even as the plates continue to move. Huge amount of energy is releases bellow the water surface.

That energy is released as an earthquake when the plates come unstuck and slip past each other. Earthquakes can happen anywhere at any time in the world, but they most commonly occur on known fault lines such as the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Earthquakes and tsunamis Facts

• Shifts and collisions of tectonic plates cause earthquakes.
• The epicentre of an earthquake is the surface location directly above the quake’s hypocentre, the below-surface location where the rupture of the fault begins.
• The scientific study of earthquakes is called seismology.
• A tsunami can never to be predicted precisely.
• Japan spends over 15 million dollars each year to maintain their tsunami warning systems.
• A magnitude 9.5 earthquake in Chile on May 22, 1960, is the most powerful earthquake in recorded history of human beings.
• The largest-known quake in the United States struck Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 28, 1964, and measured magnitude 9.2.
• Earthquakes below magnitude 7.5 seldom cause tsunamis.
• About 80% of the tsunamis happens in the Pacific Ring of Fire
• The 2004 Boxing Day Sumatra-Andaman Tsunami which hit Thailand which was created by a magnitude 9.1 earthquake near Sumatra, caused widespread damage in over 10 countries.
• Hawaii get hits every year by minor tsunamis.
• 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami is one of the biggest so far in the last 20 years.

 

What Scale of Damage is Caused by Earthquakes and Tsunamis?

How earthquakes cause tsunamis generates major impact and damage all socially, economically and environmentally. Some may cause a bigger impact on only one of the three however most do terrible amounts of all. Like said before, depending wherever the tsunami has struck it might’ve affected socially the most but, I’ll do an overall perspective.

The first major one is loss of people, a tsunami can become much taller than 200ft (the highest being 1720ft, a tsunami that occurred in Lituya Bay Alaska July 9^th 1958) . It can wipe out anyone and everyone in a single country or island, leaving the island uninhabited after the event.

The loss of people can also result to loss of land, this could potentially have a whole country or island under water depending of mass, (especially islands, an example could be the Maldives a small island in the Indian Ocean, they experience many floods.) It can completely get it under water, and no longer exist. With the loss of the land, you have lost all the people and the economy it once had. Socially it can destroy everything that is sitting on land, buildings, vehicles anything.

But it also washes up anything that was picked up along it’s journey.. it could be ships, boats etc. Overall it’ll destroy anything that comes in its way, this impacts the country economically dramatically. If this happens it’ll cost hundreds of millions, if not billions to repair anything, massive tons of debris will be scattered everywhere amongst the land, houses and building will no longer be intact, of course they’ll need to get rid of all of this debris but if millions of people got killed they’ll struggle to find people to help out.

But if they were to re-build the whole city or even country, people need to think about the process and how they’re going to do it, at the same time thinking if the economy will be able to be sustained once rebuilt. If not kept in mind, the economy could end up in a financial crisis and will struggle if they don’t have the money to keep it going after it being repaired, remembering that again they need to keep in mind socially food and water supplies will be limited if not none.

Therefore they’ll need to keep in mind that people who have survived have no food or water, no home and potentially no help until help comes. Many people will have to start scratch completely, and they too will struggle financially. Environmentally, the loss of land and the loss of any wildlife potentially having some animals extinct, like said it’ll leave many parts of debris left over and could damage any specific parts of the country, another example of it affecting all 3 it’ll also destroy farms which sell crops.

With no farms there will be no food, (from farms), and if farmers can’t sell crops they won’t make money. The government would need to think of a plan which will work not only the process into getting everything back to where it was, but will the country be sustainable filled with everyday resources to keep people alive or whether they’ll need to gather help?

How They Have Recovered from Tsunamis?

After a natural disaster has stuck, it’ll take a couple of years possibly somewhere up to a decade depending on the damage and depending whether or not the country was sustained. They’ll need a lot of support whilst having to rebuild everything, as well as possibly some help with neighbouring countries or countries they have a close link with.

Let’s use the Tsunami that occurred on Boxing day in the Indian Ocean, the government built much more houses than needed, from the roughly 14,000 that were destroyed he re-built roughly double that amount however the people would’ve had to wait until they were built, most slept in any houses that made it or in little huts which are much easier and faster to build, others would’ve had to stayed within small camps located in most towns.

Many countries made charities to help for the people there, donating anything to provide food and water to them many countries all around the world helped out along with the plan. More people also got jobs and were determined to keep on going, trying to get back onto a positive note. But the main contribution to the recovery is the people, they all co-operated with each other and they all worked together to get back to the basics of life.

However the government needs to think whether or not he/she needs to think the new placing of the houses, whether or not it’s better to build houses more in-land potentially if they have another tsunami this could be a way to prevent the amount of damage and the loss of people, they need to also think what other things they could possibly do to keep the protection of the country secure. As well as this they need to also need to know how to act properly after such an event and how to speed up the process.