Hazards and disastersTrine Rasmussen & Denisse

Thome Geography higher level

L ´AQUILA ITALY EARTHQUEAKE 2009

• On Monday 6 April 2009 at 03.32 local time an earthquake of magnitude Mw=6.3 and hypocentral depth 8.8 km occurred with an epicentre a few kilometres southeast of the city of L'Aquila (population 73,000).

• This earthquake was caused by movement on a NW-SE trending normal fault according to moment tensor solutions.

• The central part of the Italy has been characterized by extensional tectonics since the Pliocene epoch

• Poor building standards or construction materials seem to have further contributed to the large number of victims.

Human response:• All Italian mobile companies and some Mobile virtual network operators,sent free

minutes and credit to all their pre-paid customers in Abruzzo.• Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi refused foreign aid for the emergency, saying

that Italians were "proud people" and had sufficient resources to deal with the crisis• Five hours after the main earthquake, a group of UK scientists began preparing to head

out to Abruzzo• Coordination of the relief effort was impressive and rapid. Within a short time, the

authorities had deployed 12,000 rescue and support workers from across the country• Aid was offered by Austria, Brazil, Croatia, the European Union, France, Germany, Spain,

Greece, Slovakia, Israel, Portugal ,Iran ,Macedonia, Mexico,Russia, Serbia,Slovenia,Switzerland,Tunisia,the Turkish Red Crescent,Ukraine,and the United States.Aid was also offered by various organisations, companies, sport clubs and celebrities.

Impacts: • The epicentral region saw dozens of significant aftershocks following the main

earthquake. The strongest, which hit on 7 April at 19:47 CEST local time, measured magnitude 5.3 ML and caused further damage

• L'Aquila suffered the greatest damage• The earthquake caused damage to between 3,000 and 11,000 buildings• Several buildings also collapsed. 297 people died in the earthquake

Before the event:• Overnight six Italian scientists and a government official were found guilty of

manslaughter for underestimating the risks of a killer earthquake in the town of L’Aquila in 2009. All seven were members of the Major Risks Committee and were sentenced to six years in prison for failing to warn the population of the risks just days before

During and after the event:• A further 1.5 c m of vertical movement was recorded over 124 days after the

earthquake• Within eight 4500 new dwellings had been designed, planned or build on eight sides ,

providing accommodation for 12,000 displaced people.

Haiti earthquake 2010On 12 Jan 2010, Haiti was hit by the most powerful earthquake to strike the country in 200 years. The earthquake occurred at 16:53 local time with a magnitude of 7.0.The initial quake was later followed by twelve aftershocks greater than magnitude 5.0. Structures of all kinds were damaged or collapsed, from shantytown homes to national landmarks•86% of people in Port au Prince were living in slum conditions - mostly tightly-packed, poorly-built, concrete buildings.. •80% of education in Haiti was provided in often poor-quality private schools, the state system generally provided better education but provided far too few places. •Half of people in Port-au-Prince had no access to latrines and only one-third has access to tap water

Processes:• The island of Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, is seismically

active and has a history of destructive earthquakes• The quake occurred in the vicinity of the northern boundary where the Caribbean

tectonic plate shifts eastwards by about 20 mm per year in relation to the North American plate

• Focal mechanism suggested that the January 2010 quake was caused by a rupture of the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault, which had been locked for 250 years, gathering stress.

Impacts: More than 220,000 people were killed; 300,000 injured and more than one million made homeless. •Over 188,383 houses were badly damaged and 105,000 were destroyed by the earthquake. •After the quake there were 19 million cubic metres of rubble and debris in Port au Prince •4,000 schools were damaged or destroyed.

Human response:•1000s of earthquake-affected families were provided with agricultural assistance during the past three cropping seasons, this included 4,000 tons of crop seeds, 2,378 million roots and tubers, 179,000 banana plants, 16.5 tons of vegetable seeds, 239,000 hand tools, 24,000 tons of fertilizer and 170 tons of compost• As of June 2011, 1.2 million people had benefited from water provision receiving more

than 4,200 cubic metres of water daily• 6,000+ latrines and 2,800 showers are functioning in displacement sites .• A million children receive daily meals through the National School Feeding Programme• Nearly 500,000 people have been provided with improved temporary shelter

Before the event:

• Sixty per cent of the Haitian public had no access to even basic health care services.

Nearly half of the children in Haiti were unvaccinated, and close to 90 per cent suffered from water-borne diseases and intestinal parasites. • The average Haitian lives on less than $2 per day, and 80 per cent of the country

lives in severely impoverished conditions.

• All of these statistics were taken from reports completed prior to January 2010 before the earthquake. They give insight into why the earthquake was so devastating in the first place, and why the ongoing crisis continues to deepen.

During and after the event:• Three years on from this

devastating earthquake, over one million Haitians are still in need of humanitarian aid according to the United Nations.

• This includes the 358,000 people still in camps, 500,000 people who are food insecure and around 73,500 children under 5 years of age facing malnutrition.

Drogth in the horn Africa

The Horn of Africa denotes the region containing the countries of Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia. It covers approximately 2,000,000 km² (770,000 sq mi) and is inhabited by roughly 100 million people (Ethiopia: 85 million, Somalia: 9.3 million, Eritrea: 5.2 million, and Djibouti: 0.86 million).

Ethiopia • Two successive seasons of poor rains left eastern Ethiopia in drought• Poor rains have left millions of people struggling to get food as hundreds of thousands

of livestock have died and crops have failed.

ImpactsClose to 14 million Ethiopians — 20% of the country's total population — now have difficulty finding enough to eat, including, according to UNICEF, 62,000 children under five in the worst-affected areas who received treatment for severe acute malnutrition during the first half of 2009.

Human response• Humanitarian agencies have requested US$2.48 billion to address the crisis, but as of 1

August have secured less than half that amount. The European Union announced it would provide €5.67 million to help millions of people affected by the drought.

Before the event

During and after the event• By 15 September, 2011, more than 920,000 refugees from Somalia had reportedly fled to

neighboring countries.

Kenya

Kenya's worst drought in 60 years has left millions of people desperate for food and water as food prices skyrocket, hundreds of thousands of head of livestock have died, and lack of basic sanitation needs have led to the world's worst food crisis.

Impacts• The ground is hard as a rock, the rivers are drying up, livestock and wildlife are

feeble, emaciated, and are dying in numbers as worthless bags of bones and people everyday.

Human response:• The Government of Kenya’s response to the drought crisis was focused on

humanitarian relief, but was slow to be implemented and poorly coordinated on the ground.

• East African countries prone to drought have traditionally have relied on food aid provided by international humanitarian agencies and Western governments, but little has been done to tap local sources of relief.

Kenya before the drought:

During and after the event: Food prices have risen substantially in the region, pushing many moderately poor households over the edge.

Australia's Murray Darling Basin

• The south-eastern part of Australia is currently (late 2008) in a drought that has lasted more than seven years.

Impacts• About 40% of Australia's agricultural produce has come out of the Murray-Darling

Basin in the past.• A report made by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO indicates that annual rainfall

in the Murray-Darling Basin is likely to decline by from 2-5% by 2030. Significantly, most of this decline will be in winter and spring.

Human response• The Basin Plan includes enforceable limits on the quantities of surface water and

groundwater that can be taken from the Murray-Darling Basin water resources• An SDL adjustment mechanism has been included in the Plan which potentially allows

for some of environmental outcomes to be delivered through improved use and management of environmental water

Before, during and after the eventThe graph on the right shows that mean temperatures have been rising for a number of years; it appears that the rate of rise is also increasing. As temperatures rise the water needs of plants increase and evaporation rates increase, so less water flows down streams into storages and less water is available for irrigators while the plants they grow need more water due to the higher temperatures.

Tropical cyclone Nargis • Northern Indian Ocean (surges in Myanmar, came ashore across Irrawaddy

river and went northeast coming close to Bangladesh.) • 27 April- 02 May 2008• Maximum wind speed: 135 mph• 3-4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale.• Floodwaters penetrated between 40-50 km inland. • Formed by a low pressure system in the Bay of Bengal then turned into

Tropical Depression. • 2.4 million people severely affected, over 90,000 deaths, over 55,000 missing. • Over $10 billion (USD 2008) in damage. • They refused to accept international aid at first but then UN was asked for

help. May 19th aid was accepted finally. • Prevention: early warning system, stronger facilities and infrastructure, storm

resistant roads and shelters.

Hurricane Katrina • USA; Central Gulf coasts (New Orleans, LA, Gulfport, AL, Mobile and MS).

It developed as a tropical depression in the Bahamas. • 28th August, 2005: 170 mph (category 5) • Central pressure of 920 mb (milibars). • Over 5 inches of rainfall in southern Florida = flood• 125 mph (category 3 hurricane on Saffir-Simpson scale)• Almost 80% of New Orleans flooded. Some areas under 20 feet of water. • Mississippi and Alabama also flooded by storm surge. • Oil production in the Gulf of Mexico was reduced by 1.4 million barrels

per day. • Over 1.7 million people lost power as a result of the storm. • Cost: exceeded $100 billion with over $34 billion in insured losses. • Aid by: China, Cuba, EU, France, Germany, Mexico, etc.

Chernoby Nuclear Explosion• Chernobyl, Ukraine. (affected Belarus, Scandinavia, Russia and Ukraine). • April 26, 1986 (lasted about 10 days active) • Around 30 deaths, but many people developed cancer caused by the extreme

radiation. • A reactor was handled the wrong way and it became very unstable until it

broke down and caused a huge steam explosion, and then a second one a bit later.

• The number of gases released reacted with each other and caused a series of fires which caused the radioactivity to spread faster.

• This resulted of people having physical deformities. • Radiation range over 20,000 millisieverts. • About 200,000 people involved in the cleaning of the disaster (these people

received small amounts of radiation).• The was not enough pre 1986 data to determine the exact effects but the

radiation carries a cycle which in the end reaches the human (through food, rain, air)

• People weren’t prepared because this disaster was not expected. • About US $400 million used to improve Chernobyl reactors safety.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_L'Aquila_earthquake

• http://emergency-planning.blogspot.mx/2009/04/earthquake-at-laquila-central-italy.html

• http://www.oxfam.org/en/haitiquake

• http://thesheaf.com/2011/02/04/haiti-a-disaster-area-long-before-the-earthquake/

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_of_Africa

• http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1915544,00.html

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14007181

• http://digitaljournal.com/article/311033#ixzz2J89grbg

References

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/28/africa-drought-kenya-somalia-famine

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Haiti_earthquake#Background

• http://www.dec.org.uk/haiti-earthquake-facts-and-figures

• ttp://photography.a24media.com/index.php/photogallery/85-draught-in-kenya-affects-wildlife

• water.nsw.gov.au/Water-management/Law-and-policy/National-reforms/Murray-Darling-Basin-Plan/murray-darling-basin-plan

• http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=19764

• http://www.africaportal.org/articles/2012/07/11/improving-policy-responses-and-finding-sustainable-solutions-drought-kenya

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/chernobyl/inf07.html

http://history1900s.about.com/od/horribledisasters/p/Chernobyl.htm

http://library.thinkquest.org/26026/History/the_chernobyl_nuclear_disaster.html

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/special-reports/katrina.html

http://www.disasterdiplomacy.org/katrina.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9282598/ns/us_news-katrina_the_long_road_back/t/foreign-aid-us-katrina-relief/#.UPRNAGHdW9s

http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/ni200801.asp

http://weather.about.com/od/hurricanes/qt/nargisfacts.htm

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2700587/