Natural Disasters

Abstract

The UN launched the World Disaster Reduction Campaign before the magnitude 9.0* earthquake and induced tsunami hit the northeast coast of Japan on March 11th 2011, killing 28,050, directly affecting 492,000 and with an estimated damage to the economy of $309 billion.² The earthquake itself was the biggest in Japanese history, one of the five most powerful earthquakes since modern records began in 1900, and triggered massive tsunami waves of up to 38 meters high that reached 10 kilometers (6 miles) inland. For sure, when nature decides to invoke its wrath, the human cost can be staggering:^†

Every hour the toll keeps climbing. White coffin after white coffin is brought into a bowling alley in the town of Natori, lost life after lost life. Tatsuya Suzuki was searching among the names for his wife, Izumi… She [had] handed [her] two children to her mother-in-law who pulled them inside just as the tsunami reached them. Izumi was swept away by the waves. “The kids keep smiling every day,” says Tatsuya, with his little son perched on his lap. “They keep saying, ‘Let’s go and find mummy today.’”³

There were shortages of essential supplies, but people in the city would queue calmly for up to two hours at a time rather than taking from the empty shops. “Psychologically we had a common sense of not wanting any more confusion or panic, or any further peril, so we all helped keep public order,” Machiko Konno says. “The queues at stores show that people are uneasy,” she says…” In Japan people smile with their face and cry Inside…”⁴

“Disasters effect on average 200 million people every year… Earthquakes and droughts remain the main killers, but floods, hurricanes, cyclones and storms are the hazards that affect most people worldwide. Crowded cities. Unsafe constructions. Lack of urban planning. Destruction of natural buffers. Climate change. These all combine to expose more people to disasters… We are all at risk.”

2010–2011 World Disaster Reduction Campaign, United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR)¹