2. Where and When ?? The Indian Ocean Tsunami happened on the 26th December 2004 – Boxing Day. It happened at 12:59 GMT, midnight. It started 240km off the coast of Sumatra at a boundary between 2 tectonic plates A 1200 km trench called the Andaman-Sumatran subduction zone.
4. Why ?? At the same speed as fingernails grow, the lower tectonic plate (carrying India) was being forced underneath the upper plate (carrying the majority of South East Asia) causing huge stresses to build up. These ‘stresses’ were then released on the 26th December causing an earthquake that lasted 8minutesin total. Subduction earth quakes last a lot longer than ‘strike-slip’ earthquakes. The earthquake was a magnitude of 9.3. Some experts say that these stresses had ‘been accumulating for around 100years.
5. How did the tsunami start?? The tsunami started from the earthquake...but no one had any idea that the earthquake would cause something on as big a scale as this. Billions of tonnes of seawater was forced upwards by the movement of the tremors and flowed away from the fault line in a series of huge waves.
6. Immediate effects There were lots of immediate effects after the tsunami.For example: People were left homeless-around 430,000 homes were destroyed. Around 5million peoples lives ‘were thrown into jeopardy’. Deaths – the tsunami killed around 200,000 people and left many injured.
7. The tsunami also wiped out hospitals which meant that there was nowhere for the injured to go and be treated, they had to make do with remaining buildings and wait for help to come to them. This meant there was a higher death toll than should have been necessary, not only did the tsunami kill but the lack of medicines adn attention available was also a major problem.
8. Long term effects Not only were there the immediate effects of deaths and injuries etc, there were also many long term effects that are still causing problems to the countries affected today. The fishing industry that many of the countries rely on was badly damaged meaning that no money was coming into communities and countries. Many fishing boats were destroyed making it impossible to bring in food for residents. People had to rely on aid charities bringing in food. This loss of money for the countries was not good as it meant they had less money to start to rebuild themselves. Not only did the fishing industry lose the countries, such as Indonesia, money but the tourism industry also crashed. People who had heard about the disaster didn’t want to visit the countries anymore for fear it might happen again. Many of the countries shops, hotels and beaches were destroyed leaving nowhere for tourists to go even if they did come. This meant money wasn’t coming into the countries this way either so the country could not develop or bring in medicines badly needed by the people stranded in the country. They had to rely heavily on charities and aid workers which meant the country was dependent which is not a situation a country wants to find itself in.
9. Other long term effects were property damage as lots of people were left homeless. This left people vulnerable to lots of things such as diseases, injuries form sleeping with no shelter and infection of injuries. This meant more people would be dying and becoming unable to work. This means that there are also less people to help in the recovery effort of building the country again.
10. The amount of people that died is also bad for the country, not only because people grieve, but also because it means that there are less people of working age to try and earn money but... there are also less children to fill the adults shoes once they become working age so there will be less economically active people. The amount of serious injuries means that there is a larger dependant population.
11. Why was it so devastating ?? It was devastating because it happened in such a short pace of time and with practically no warning. It meant nobody had time to prepare for it and get to safety. Also it was thought that it would only hit some countries, if any. But it changed course and hit lots of countries that were not expecting it at all.
12. How did the fact that these countries are LEDCs make the situation worse ?? This made the situation worse because the country (Sri Lanka) was trying to develop with the little money it had but, then the tsunami happened and it instead had to spend its money on building back up the country to where it was before. There also wouldn’t have been a limited amount of education as most children were trained to work on farms etc and weren’t properly educated. This meant that when the tsunami came, first of all nobody really could read the signs e.g., water receding from the beaches. Then, after the tsunami no one knew how to deal with it and how to treat survivors with injuries. Also Sri Lanka already had a limited supply of doctors (1,800 people per doctor) and these were spread even thinner as some got swept away by the wave and others had to deal with huge amounts of injuries. As the country was an LEDC it probably wouldn’t have had the funds to pay for a high tech tsunami defence systems.
13. How will his affect the countries development ?? This will affect the countries development because it will have had to spend its limited amount of money first on getting aid to its people, then on trying to rebuild the country. It has also lost many of its people that were probably of a working age which means less people working to bring money onto the country. It’s tourism industry has also crashed as many of its hotels, harbours, beaches and shops have been destroyed by the wave so people do not want to travel there anymore or at least for a long while.
