by a Thinker, Sailor, Blogger, Irreverent Guy from Madras

Tiny Tsunami for India, lots of Quakes for Mother Earth


While the world has been attuned to the 8.9 Richter Earthquake off the Sumatra Island in Indian Ocean, over the last couple of days there have been six other earthquakes measuring between 3 and 7 Richter scale worldwide.
  • The first was the 5.8 magnitude quake off the Western coast of Africa, near Ascension Island on Tuesday.
  • The second was the minor 3.4 magnitude quake off the coast of Mumbai in the Arabian sea, around noon, yesterday.
  • The third was the 8.6 magnitude quake off the Banda Aceh province in Sumatra Island, which triggered a Tsunami alert.
  • There are reports of 2 more quakes in North Indian ocean, with magnitudes 7 and 6.8, which are suspected to be the aftershocks of the Aceh quake.
  • The fourth and fifth were the magnitude 5.9 quake off the coast of Oregon, US and a 5.3 quake off the coast of California, yesterday.
  • The sixth to round off was the magnitude 7 6.5 trembler in Western Mexico, this time on land, today; a second quake with magnitude 6.9 has also shaken Western Mexico, in Baja California.
BTW as per USGS, every year there are more than 500,000 earthquakes which are ‘detectable’.  About 1/5th of them can be ‘felt’ by us.  About 100 quakes an year are capable of causing damage.  Which means there is a probability of a ‘damaging’ quake every 3 to 4 days, somewhere around the world.  So don’t take above series of quake chronicles to heart and start shaking (no pun intended).

To me the lasting image of this Tsunami scare would be the frightened and shaking cute Indonesian girl.

quake_shaken_cutie

If you like, here is the Youtube link (http://www.ksl.com/?nid=235&sid=19944346) from KSL.com - the shaking cutie appears around 1.10 into the video.
:-)

The Aceh quake set off a Tsunami warning, but thankfully, the waves which reached Chennai in the evening were no more than 8 to 10 cm high and the Tsunami alert was lifted.  Here is an explanation on why there was not a bigger Tsunami.

The Indian and US warships engaged in Malabar 2012 war games were initially alerted but went ahead with their scheduled exercise, unfazed.

There is mixed response to the Tsunami alert and the disaster management procedures adopted after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.  Some say that the systems and procedures worked, while others hold that we still lack adequate systems
.
Whatever it was, the decision  by the rail authorities in Chennai to halt the suburban trains at 3 0’clock in the afternoon when the urgent need was to evacuate as much people as possible from the commercial hub of Parry’s Corner, is questionable at the minimum.

If I had been the man in charge, I would have run shuttle services between the Beach Junction and Egmore junction from 3 to 4 p.m. to clear out maximum number of people from the vulnerable Beach/Fort/Parry’s area.

Something which the National Disaster Management Division, Ministry of Home, GoI to think and act on.

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