JapanDisaster: Tsunami: Destroys California harbor USA

CSM (Mar11,2k11)

Christian Science Monitor materials posted by Politicarp.
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California harbor 'destroyed' 

by Japan tsunami, but damage 

less severe elsewhere

The tsunami created by Japan's 8.9 earthquake has now hit the
West Coast USA.

Early reports suggest that two California towns – Crescent City
and Santa Cruz – have been hit hardest.

by Daniel B. Wood, Staff writer, Gloria Goodale, Staff writer / March 11, 2011

Santa Monica, Calif.

The tsunami waves unleashed across the Pacific by an 8.9-magnitude earthquake off the Japan coast have destroyed boats and docks in a few isolated places along America's West Coast, but early reports suggest little widespread damage.

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  Gallery: Japan's 8.9 earthquake

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Crescent City, Calif., near the Oregon border appears to have been hit hardest so far, with the tsunami crushing the city's docks and as many as 35 boats, according to local reports. "The harbor has been destroyed,” City Councilman Rich Enea told the Times-Standard.

Farther down the coast in Santa Cruz, Calif., one 30-foot boat sank, and a dock "just blew up. It buckled and splintered" in the waves, an eyewitness told the San Jose Mercury-News.

IN PICTURES: Japan's 8.9 earthquake

Parts of the Hawaiian islands also reported a seven-foot ocean surge – in one case inundating a Big Island hotel lobby – in the early hours of the morning, though things were now "rapidly becoming business as usual across the state," according to the Hawaii Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Many coastal areas of Hawaii, California, and Oregon were evacuated early Friday morning. But as the day wore on, gawkers gathering along the West Coast have claimed that there was little to see. Surfers were even in the water not far from Santa Cruz, the Mercury-News reported.

Yet scientists caution that tsunami waves could continue to grow for as many as 12 hours. Wednesday afternoon, a tsunami warning – which suggests coastal evacuation – remained in effect from Point Concepcion, Calif., north of Santa Barbara to the Oregon-Washington border.

RELATED: Five of the world's biggest tsunamis

For its part, Crescent City is particularly prone to tsunami damage because the topography of the sea floor off the coast concentrates and funnels waves toward the town. But the appearance of calm along the rest of the West Coast was a significant concern for emergency personnel.

In Santa Monica, Calif., near Los Angeles, where a tsunami advisory was still in effect as of Friday afternoon, people openly scoffed as a lifeguard in a yellow van shuttled between camera-toting bystanders, telling them to leave the beach.

“No one here is taking this seriously,” the life guard says. “I have to keep circling and telling them over and over. ”

The attendant at Sea Mist Skate and Bike Rentals just off the boardwalk wasn’t buying the warnings.

“The authorities have totally oversold this danger,” he quipped. “I was here in 1983 when 20-foot waves crashed through the pier, and I lived to tell about it. Six foot wave warnings don’t even concern me.”

But scientists say tsunamis are not normal waves and should not be dismissed lightly. Even a wave as small as six inches high can “grab your feet and knock you down,” says Paul Huang, a seismologist at the Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer.

That’s because “the entire ocean is pushing a tsunami wave.” In contrast, he says, waves created by the wind might go down 10 or 20 feet, “but the rest of the ocean is still.”

Eyewitnesses in Santa Cruz compared the surge there with a massive river. "It was like a 10 to 15 mile an hour current," resident Michael Sack told the Mercury-News. "It started slow and came up about five feet."

This points to one of the challenges of tsunami emergencies, says former FEMA administrator Carlos Castillo. “People underestimate the danger because they don’t see the big picture,” he says.

They look out their window and see a calm sea or a pretty blue sky and say to themselves, "How bad can it be," he says. "That’s why officials with more information put out warnings and advisories, and people need to pay attention to what they say."

Part of the disconnect is that people don’t immediately grasp the local connection to a seismic event half a world away. The initial tsunami wave moves across the ocean at about 650 miles an hour – the speed of jet plane – and thus takes about 12 hours to cross from Japan to the US West coast. Following waves travel nearly as fast.

IN PICTURES: Japan's 8.9 earthquake

Related stories

• Japan nuclear plant in state of emergency, as cooling power runs low
• Japan earthquake eyewitness: Skyscrapers were 'like trees blowing in the wind'
• US Navy poised to help Japan earthquake relief effort

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japanDisaster: Earthquake Tsunami: BBC, Australia Tsunami Research Center, video of tidal wave floods Japan

BBC News (Mar11,2k11)

Japan hit by tsunami 

after massive earthquake

11 March 2011 Last updated at 02:34ETHelp

A massive earthquake has hit the north-east of Japan triggering a tsunami that has caused extensive damage.

Japan's TV showed cars, ships and even buildings being swept away in the Fukushima prefecture, after the 8.9 magnitude earthquake.

Officials said a wave as high as 6m (20ft) could strike the coast.

The quake struck about 250 miles (400km) from Tokyo at a depth of 20 miles, shaking buildings in the capital for several minutes.

Chris Ryan, head of the Australian Tsunami Warning Centre, describes the impact of the Tsunami.

Read More

• Tsunami after massive Japan quake

Indonesia: Twin Natural Disasters: Tsunami and Volcano strike the Indonesian archipelago

Updated (Oct27,2k10):

In ticker feed reports, Associated Press via Yahoo! News carry the bad news of two natural disasters hitting the country within hours of each other.  Slamet Riyadi sends his dispatch from Mount Merapi, Java, the largest of the country's 17,500 islands.  These territories include more than 129 active volcanoes which the gov tries to watch to give advance warnings of an over-the-top eruption.  About 20 people were badly burned by hot ash from the live volcano.  But the count may be incomplete; fatalities, so far, have not been mentioned.

In the same breath, as it were, the same source carries another report from yesterday (Oct25,2k10) by Niniek Karmini, from Jakarta,  about a powerful earthquake that has "triggered a 10-foot (three-meter) tsunami that pounded remote island villages in western Indonesia, killing at least 113 people and leaving scores more missing...."  The cluster of Mentawi islands, a 12-hr boat ride from Sumatra, were the worst hit in this round.

Earthquake, fire and flood.

Updated (Oct27,2k10)

by Sara Schonhardt,  Correspondent / October 27, 2010 Jakarta, Indonesia

Christian Science Monitor

Days after a tsunami hit the Mentawai Islands in western Indonesia, the government has put a relief plan into action that includes emergency air drops and tons of aid supplies. But the fact that the string of islands off the coast of Sumatra is so remote, is posing challenges for large-scale relief efforts.  ...

Large cargo ships, which can handle rougher weather, can take up to 48 hours to make the more than 150-mile journey from Sumatra. ...

The latest figures count 272 people dead and more than 400 missing. The Ministry of Health will deploy a medical team of 15 doctors by helicopter tomorrow, but for now Soetrisno said the number of severely injured victims remains low [compared to the 2k04 tsunami of Northern Sumatra which killed 160,000].

Still, on Wednesday evening President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announced that the national and local governments were capable of responding to the disaster.

-- Owlb

War: Sri Lanka: The civil war drives thousands out of their homes

The left Anarchist Christian email newsletter Ekklesia reports "Sri Lanka conflict forces thousands to flee their homes" (Apr13,2k7)

Christian Aid partners are working to help displaced people in Sri Lanka after renewed fighting has forced more than 155,000 civilians to flee their homes in recent weeks.

A surge in violence in Batticaloa district in the east of the country has driven people from their towns and villages either into camps for displaced people or to stay with friends and relatives in safer areas.

There are around 292,000 people displaced in Sri Lanka due to the conflict, according to the latest United Nations figure from March 2007.

Christian Aid partner organisations have been working in some of the camps in Batticaloa and in Trincomalee districts. Partners say that many of these camps are no longer entirely safe as some were recently targeted by shelling and others are being visited by armed groups.

There have been cases of people being arrested, or threatened, while families fear their children could be forcibly recruited by paramilitary groups.

In March, a group of people from Trincomalee who had fled to the camps in Batticaloa, were forced by the authorities to return to their homes in Muttur without adequate provision being made for their safety and welfare, according to Christian Aid partner OfERR, which works with refugees and tsunami survivors.

A group of international agencies including Christian Aid together with a local partner is due to assess the situation in Muttur town in April in order to give help to returnees and those families that remained throughout the clashes.

This is not always possible in places like Sampor in Trincomalee district, as militarisation, mining and unexploded ordnance make it difficult for civilians to return home.

South Asia > Sri Lanka

Jaffna in the north of the island has been virtually cut off since August last year when the main road connecting it with the rest of the island was closed after a stand off between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). There have been food shortages and a rise in the price of basic essentials. Education is also being affected as schools and universities have to close down.

The fighting is destroying basic infrastructure such as schools, places of worship, roads and houses including those built for and by tsunami survivors, while electricity supplies are unreliable in many locations. In many eastern and northern districts boats are not allowed to go to sea as they are seen as a security risk, making life difficult in coastal areas where fishing is the backbone of the economy.

"There is no alternative to a negotiated agreement," said Laurent Viot, Christian Aid’s representative in Sri Lanka. "In the meantime we need to remind parties to the conflict of their moral and legal responsibilities towards civilians in war zones and offer as much physical and psychological support to the safe and voluntary return of displaced people and more generally to all civilians affected by this conflict".

In 2002 the government and the Tamil Tigers signed a ceasefire to end Sri Lanka’s 20-year civil war which had cost 65,000 lives. Despite the truce still being in place on paper, more than 4,000 people have been killed in the past 15 months, according to European ceasefire monitors.

The article fails to mention that the Tamil Tigers are a terrorist organization and that most of the misery they cause is against their own people, doing so in the name of a special brand of Hindu-Marxism. They want an apartheid separation of Tamils from the other peoples of Sri Lanka, where a self-serving Theravada Buddhist leadership has proved historically to be permanently intractable to Tamil r+ts and needs. I don't fawlt Ekklesia for self-sensoring on this theme because having given a picture from a Christian Aid point of view, it becomes necessary to hold back on crucial facts in order not to render Christian Aid itself a special target of the terrorists.

More info:

Bishop cites Sri Lanka's cricket team as model of unity

UPDATE:

Amnesty International delivers a "politically-correct" slap at Sri Lankan bishop who cited inter-ethnocreligious cooperation among cricket players [Le journal chretien (Apr14,2k7)].

Disaster: Tsunami: 1,000-islands chain in SouthWest Pacific recovers slowly, miraculously from natural event

ReliefWeb's Amy Bennett reports "Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea reeling from recent tsunami" (Apr5,2k7):

New York, USA – A strong undersea earthquake that struck the South Pacific this week left the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea directly in the path of a deadly tsunami, which swept through coastal villages killing at least 34 and leaving many more homeless.

More than 900 homes were destroyed and reports tell of entire villages being washed away. Aerial surveillance revealed flattened homes and people wandering along the coast. Roads were clogged with debris and boats that had been hurled ashore.

UNICEF and its partners responded within hours of the 8.1 earthquake and tsunami with pre-positioned emergency medical supplies for up to 10,000 people.

UNICEF is working to distribute medical kits including emergency drugs, to provide immunisation against measles for children aged six to 59 months, as well as Vitamin A supplementation. Water tanks and food sources have been destroyed so meeting the basic needs of many of the displaced will be a challenge.

With some 5,500 people displaced, families will be vulnerable to hunger and the spread of disease. Lack of access to safe water is a serious concern. Standing water is an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes and malaria is endemic in the area.

In collaboration with partners and the authorities, UNICEF will assess the damage to water and sanitation infrastructure and coordinate the distribution of water purification tablets, jerry cans and water tanks, and hygiene kits as well as the establishment of latrines and water points as necessary.

Aid workers in some areas have pointed out that relief efforts are lacking in resources while the risks to health and human life are mounting.

In any disaster, it is children who suffer most. Of the estimated 50,000 people affected by this crisis, approximately nearly 30,000 are children, and 15,000 are under the age of five. Vulnerable to hunger, disease and trauma, children and women in the affected areas require urgent life-saving assistance to survive.

Three days later,AP via International Herald Tribune describes the damage in the Solomon Islands's main center Gizo, "Among Solomon Islands' debris, an open-air maternity ward continues to operate" (Apr8,2k7). The reporter interlaces a family's personal ordeal amidst a fact-filled overview of the situation which resulted in at least 28 deaths, but not the wipe-out many feared.

GIZO, Solomon Islands: As flies buzzed around a basket of bloody gauze, Moana Saito nursed her newborn daughter, delivered in an open-air maternity ward near the center of the Solomon Islands' earthquake and tsunami disaster.

"It's lucky it's not raining," said the attending nurse, Vaelin Gagahe, who delivered Saito's baby on Saturday. The nurse has delivered three babies in two days in the makeshift network of tarpaulins and tents that has sprung up to replace Gizo's hospital, partially destroyed by the tsunami last Monday.

Health officials warn that without proper sanitation, the number of child deaths in the disaster zone could rise significantly. Unhygienic conditions and a lack of clean water have contributed to isolated cases of diarrhea and dysentery in some refugee camps. International aid workers were scrambling to dig latrines and set up water purifiers.

Last week, the United Nations warned that up to 30,000 children could be affected by the disaster, including 15,000 under the age of five.

"These children are highly vulnerable to hunger, disease and the disruption of their normal lives and protective social systems, and require urgent lifesaving assistance to survive," the UN said in a statement.

SW Pacific > Solomons & Papua NG

Saito's husband, a ship captain, was helping to unload relief supplies from a boat that arrived in Gizo early Saturday and had not yet seen his daughter, the couple's first surviving child. They had a boy in 2004, but he died shortly after birth.

The 23-year-old mother went into labor just before dawn in the hillside camp where she and hundreds of others have taken refuge away from their low-lying homes, many of which were badly damaged by the 8.1 magnitude quake and the killer waves that followed.

Saito's home was only partially damaged, but like many others, she has been afraid to return because of the many aftershocks - including several registering magnitude 6 or higher - that have shook the region since last Monday.

She and her husband have no tent, and have been sleeping in the open air. She is not sure whether they will return home now that their baby daughter has arrived.

According to the UN, an average of 20 children die per 1,000 live births in the Solomons - a rate that exceeds many South Pacific nations, but is well below that of neighboring Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu.

There were no official estimates of the number of diarrhea and dysentery cases. Stefan Knollmeyer of an Australian aid group, AusAID, said he was optimistic that basic sanitation measures - like pit toilets, water purification tablets and soap - could contain the problem.

The United Nations has set the death toll from the disaster last Monday at 34 people, while the Solomons' official toll is 28. However, many villagers have been burying the dead as they find them, and some deaths may never be reported to officials.

Knollmeyer said the current estimates seemed accurate based on AusAID's survey so far.

He said that up to 7,000 people had been left homeless by the disaster, far fewer than originally feared. Last week, the premier of Western Province, Alex Lokopio, said that as many as 40,000 of the region's 90,000 people may have lost their homes.

Meanwhile, aid continued to flow into the region after days of delays caused by transport bottlenecks and government bureaucracy.

Two large boats docked in Gizo early Saturday carrying supplies and about two dozen troops from Australia and New Zealand, including five medics and six sanitation experts.

More than 2,500 tarpaulins and 1.2 tons of rice have been distributed to the camps around Gizo and some of the surrounding islands, with more supplies on the way.

Relief has been slow to reach the region's outlying islands, however, and villagers have complained that they are running low on food, shelter and other emergency supplies.

At least one island was raised out of its seabed by the underwater earthquake, reports The Times of India (Apr8,2k7):

RANONGGA, SOLOMON ISLANDS: The seismic jolt that unleashed the deadly Solomons tsunami this week lifted an entire island metres out of the sea, destroying some of the world's most pristine coral reefs.

In an instant, the grinding of the Earth's tectonic plates in the 8.0 magnitude earthquake Monday forced the island of Ranongga up three metres (10 feet).

Submerged reefs that once attracted scuba divers from around the globe lay exposed and dying after the quake raised the mountainous landmass, which is 32-kilometres (20-miles) long and 8-kilometres (5-miles) wide.

Corals that used to form an underwater wonderland of iridescent blues, greens and reds now bleach under the sun, transforming into a barren moonscape surrounding the island.

After the havoc wreaked in recent years affecting many nations, principallly Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Aceh, Indonesia, and more recetnly Japan, the word "tsunami" has come to signify massive numbers of deaths as a result of earthquakes, tidal waves, and floods. It seems the Solomons and Papua New Guinea have been spared the worst, but bad is bad enuff.

Terrorism: SouthWest Pacific: Indonesia and Australia avert a massive 2nd Bali, Solomon Islands disaster, Tamil separatists 'airforce"

Here are three brief items from Christian Science Monitor email newsletter (Apr4,2k7):

Indonesia/Australia joint anti-terrorist action:

Joint action by the security forces of Indonesia and Australia averted an action plan by jihadists of an extreme Muslim grouping to double the kill rate of vacationing Aussies and other foreign tourists in Bali in recent days.

Solomon Islands disaster lacks relief due to aftershocks:

The first emergency teams arrived in the Solomon Islands to help survivors of the earthquake and tsunami that battered the South Pacific archipelago Monday. The first priorities, officials said, would be to restore communications, then treat the injured and distribute food and supplies. At least 27 aftershocks were reported, forcing thousands of residents to remain on high ground for safety and causing authorities to warn of additional tsunamis. [CSM, Apr3,2k7] A second report a day later stresses that relief is not getting thru yet, and that victims of the flooding caused by the tsunami lack shelter, drinkable water, and food.

Sri Lanka's separatist Tamil Tigers go airborne:

LTTE, the organizational name for the ruthless separatist movement in Tamil areas of Sri Lanka have put an airplane in the sky to bomb forces of the national Sri Lankan military.