tsunamis and earthquakes.docx

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Iesha Clark

Sociology

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Tsunamis and Earthquakes

In Sendai northeast of Japan, a quiet, small fishing port called Minamisanriku

was hit by an earthquake at 2:46 p.m. The earthquake was about 80 miles in the Pacific

Ocean with a 280 mile long block of the earths crust that had moved to the east, some

of it even moved 80 feet. It happened along a fault that was buried deep under the

seafloor. A man name Sato had just finished in a meeting talking about tsunami

defenses when he and the people that were with him felt an earthquake occur two days

earlier. Scientist realizes that the earthquake that happened on March11 was the largest

in Japans history.

After five brutal minutes, the ground stopped heaving leaving Minamisanriku

intact. But the sea started to heave and move. Sato and the people that he had a

meeting with decided to run next door to a three story disaster-readiness center to take

cover. A 24 year old broadcasting woman name Miki Endo that was working on the

second floor broadcasted a warning over the towns speakers saying Please head to

higher ground! Sato and most of the people that were left over from the meeting

headed up to the roof of the disaster-readiness center. Sato and the people that were

with him, watched the tsunami pour through the town 18- foot- high wall. They listened

to the tsunami as crushed and sweep everything in its path. Wood frames snapped on

houses and steel girder groaned. Then the water sweep over the disaster- readiness

centers roof top and Miki Endos broadcasting abruptly stopped.


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More than 16, 000 people died that day an 4,000 are still missing, most of them

from along hundreds of miles of the coast in the Tohoku region. The tsunami destroyed

several towns and villages a left hundreds of thousands homeless in Tohoku. Because

of the tsunami an earthquake in 1896, between 16,000 and 20,000 people died. In 2004

in the Indian Ocean a deadly tsunami killed nearly 230, 000 people. In the next 30

years, some in Indonesia forecasted that a tsunami will happen. In 1960 when Sato was

eight years old, he survived a big tsunami that killed 41 people in Minamisanriku. It is

said that an tsunami will strike almost anywhere every year, and giant ones will have

arguably changed history. In 1755 an earthquake and tsunami killed tens of thousands

of people in Lisbon.

In 15th century B.C. Thucydides (a Greek historian) was the first person to

document a connection that is between earthquakes and tsunamis. Thucydides quoted

Without an earthquake I do not see how such things could happen. Most tsunamis

including the Tohoku one are mainly caused by seafloor earthquakes are along the

faults called subdivision zones and most of the earthquakes are in the Pacific and

Indian Ocean. A quake started last month off of Japan that began miles below the

seafloor, and then it spread up through the sloping contact that is between the plates to

the Japan Trench seafloor. In 1960 in Minamisanriku 41 people died by a tsunami that

was triggered by a magnitude 9.5 earthquakes that was off of Chile and it was the

largest quake on record.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) by the United States has

developed a new tsunami- detecting system that detects a tsunami before it happens

sometimes. The system contains an instrument that is anchored on the seafloor called


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the tsunameter, and it measures the pressure that causes change by a passing

tsunami. When a tsunami passes the device will send a signal to the surface buoy,

which will then send the data to a satellite, and then it will broadcast the information to

all of the warning centers around the world. By the year of 2004 only six detectors

where deployed in the Pacific Ocean and there were none in the Indian Ocean. Now

there are 53 detector buoys in the oceans operating in the Pacific Ocean, and 6 out of

27 are planned to be in the Indian Ocean.

The detector system that is run by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) did

not work properly in March. The first crucial estimate while the ground was still shaking

was an earthquake magnitude at 7.9, then later another earthquake started and it was a

magnitude 9; which was 12 times stronger. After the quakes, a tsunami hit that had

started out as a ten foot wave, but when it reached Minamisanriku it was 50 feet.

Seismologist was shocked from of the earthquake an tsunami. The quake that

happened in Indonesia erupted thousand miles of fault, and the Tohoku quake only 280,

but the latter produced a magnitude 9 quake. The last tsunami in Seattle that happened

in Puget Sound was the last one about thousand years ago.

My concept for this article is that a lot of tsunamis and earthquakes happen and a

lot of them are going to still happen. Most all tsunamis happen from under the seafloor

and then spread through the ocean, and make the ocean heave the water back. Then

after that the water surges upward creating a tsunami. From what Ive read a lot of

people have always died from the tsunamis and earthquakes.


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APA Works Citation

Folger, T. (2012, February 3). The Calm before the Wave. National Geographic.

tsunamis and earthquakes.docx

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