On December 26, 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami occurred. the largest natural disaster of the 21st century, which left more than 220,000 deaths in 14 countries (170,000 in Indonesia alone) and material damage worth 13 billion euros. The tsunami was caused by a magnitude 9.1 underwater earthquake.
Waves 50 meters high at 800 kilometers per hour
The report published in 2006 by the Tsunami Assessment Coalition explains the impact of the natural disaster on the different affected areas. For example, India had to rebuild a large part of its fishing sector, In Thailand and the Maldives, tourism was tragically affected… But in places like the Indonesian province of Aceh, more than three decades of armed conflict between the guerrillas and the Government ended after reaching a peace agreement in Helsinki a year later. .
The province of Aceh was, without a doubt, the most affected. Waves up to 50 meters high and moving at 800 kilometers per hour reached Banda Aceh twenty minutes after the start of the earthquake. “One of the most difficult statistics to accept is that the province of Aceh was hit by waves up to 50 meters high that flooded the province from the coast to three kilometers inland,” reported a subsequent evaluation by the National Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. .
The earthquake, which started at 7:58 arrived during the next hour and a half to Sri Lanka (35,000 dead) and Thailand (8,200 dead). Two hours later he arrived in Indialeaving more than 16,200 dead. Even South Africa, 8,000 kilometers from the epicenter, The impact was felt seven hours later: two people died.
At that time, the internet was hardly developed
A third of the victims in the most affected areas were minors. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) has recalled that the longest fault ever recorded ruptured: 1,500 kilometers, longer than the state of California.
In those moments”Internet access was not as widely available. And the dissemination of that information via the web, particularly for disaster management, was in question due to its speed and unreliability at the time,” explained the executive director of the Pacific Disaster Center (PDC). , Ray Shirkhodai Also, the first notice came by fax on a holiday “So maybe there were no people in the office when he arrived,” he added.
Warning systems are larger and more sophisticated
The situation in the affected areas has improved. Two tsunami detection stations have been installed in Thailandwhile the Malaysian system has 83 sirens deployed throughout the country that are activated with the SMS message service and media alerts.
The person in charge of the PDC, although he recognizes that the services have improved, warns that “the early warning systems for multiple risks are still out of reach of the majority of the population world”.
“Some schools are located very close to the sea, but disaster preparedness is completely absent,” he said in an interview with BenarNews. For his part, the director of the Aceh Development Planning Agency, Ahmad Dadek, has assured that “our resilience index (post-catastrophe recovery capacity) remains very low.”
Everyone agrees that the biggest danger is the inability of the authorities to raise awareness to the population that such a catastrophe can happen again.
