While the UN-backed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported
that there had been no damage to Japan’s nuclear facilities after an 8.8 magnitude quake was recorded off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, coastal communities have been taking no chances and evacuating to higher ground or moving further inland.
Alerts were sent out within a few minutes of the Russia quake, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) confirmed. Although the authorities have now downgraded the threat across Japan as waves of 1.3 metres (4ft 2in) have been recorded, the advice is for people to stay in shelters until the danger diminishes from continuing sea surges.
“It is very complex; we are observing the tsunami data in real time, so we need people to stay at the shelter until the tsunami is completed,” said tsunami engineer Professor Fumihiko Imamura from Tohoku University.
Deadly legacy
In the Asian island nation, memories are still raw from the 11 March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami which killed more than 18,000 people.
Just last year, the 7.6 magnitude Noto quake left approximately 500 dead and damaged 150,000 homes.
The disaster in 2011 also caused a major accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes.
Today’s developments come amid reports that the latest earthquake was among the 10 most powerful ever recorded, hence why the authorities are monitoring its impact so closely.
So far, alerts have been triggered off the west coast of the United States, in South America from Chile to Mexico and from Papua New Guinea to Vanuatu in the Pacific.
“A 8.8 magnitude earthquake is a very large earthquake,” explained Kamal Kishore, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction.
“As you go from magnitude eight to nine, or seven to eight, at every step the strength of the earthquake increases exponentially. So, an earthquake which is magnitude eight as opposed to seven would be 30 times bigger.”
Faster than a jet liner
Speaking to UN News, Mr. Kishore highlighted the huge distances tsunamis can cover, picking up enormous energy they then dump on coastal communities.
Their progress can be as fast as a passenger jet and can be tracked by deep sea pressure change sensors, or tsunameters, that are connected to surface buoys which relay information in real time to satellites. This data is then modelled by national weather centres, influencing whether alerts are issued.
“It’s a real threat because the tsunamis travel really fast from one coast to the other,” continued Mr. Kishore. “The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 was one of the most devastating in our memory, which travelled from all the way from the coast of Indonesia to the Sri Lankan shores within a little over an hour.”
Lessons learned
At the time of Boxing Day 2004 Indian Ocean disaster, expert forecasts of the 9.1-magnitude earthquake that went on to cause waves as high as 51 metres (167 feet) were hampered by the lack of data stations.
In 2005, nations convened under the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC-UNESCO) to establish the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (IOTWMS). Today, 27 national tsunami warning centers can issue alerts within minutes of seismic events.
In addition to the joint coordination role of UNDRR in the UN Secretary-General’s Early Warnings for All initiative alongside the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), another key player in the international prevention network is the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the UN agency for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO-IOC).
The IOC’s role is critical in making sure that countries that use tsunami-tracking instrumentation follow the same standard.
“The system in 2004 was just a few stations in real time, and it took quite a while to get an idea of how big the earthquake is and what extent that it might have ruptured,” said Laura Kong, Director of the International Tsunami Information Centre, UNESCO-IOC. “Today we can know and have an idea of what the tsunami impact in terms of a forecast probably within 10, 20, 30 minutes.”
In Sendai City, Japan, drones were used to issue tsunami warnings and evacuation orders at 8.37am, just two minutes after the Russia earthquake happened, UNDRR said. “Many people evacuated to evacuation towers and shelters…but all have returned home already,” the UN office noted.
Today, one in three people – and mainly in least developed countries and Small Island Developing States – lacks access to adequate multi-hazard early warning systems.
“Tsunami prevention really highlights how important it is to have multilateral action” such as sharing data to run the algorithms behind wave modelling systems, insisted the UN’s Mr. Kishore.
“There are countries which are separated by thousands of kilometres of ocean, but they are affected by the same hazard,” he continued.
“If you do not share information on observing these hazards, not just in the location where they have occurred, but on what is happening in the intermediate locations in the ocean…we will not be able to warn our citizens.”
