Tsunami Detection Improves

Saving lives, livelihoods and property from tsunamis

Despite the incredible damage wrought by the March 11th Great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami which struck the Pacific Coast of Japan’s Honshu Island, and which appear to have taken the lives of at least 14,000 people, the fact is that many more could have died.

Tsunami detection systems put in place since the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 appear to have been vastly improved, helping save the lives of multitudes in Japan and other area.

Fears in the immediate wake of the disaster were that unknown numbers of people could die on the islands and atolls that dot the Pacific Ocean and beyond as the teletsunami (as long-distance tsunamis are known) rolled across the Pacific Ocean. Only one person died, a 24-year-old man foolish enough to try to photograph the wave near the mouth of the Klamath River at the upper tip of Northern California. The damage has been limited to property and some livelihoods although colonies of albatrosses nesting on Midway Atoll have suffered badly. Despite earlier fears, there has been nothing on the scale of the damage caused by the local tsunami in Japan.

Asia Sentinel