Tsunami
The word ‘tsunami’ is composed of the Japanese word ‘Tsu’ which means harbor and the Japanese word ‘nami’ which means wave. A tsunami is a tidal wave out of the sea and is caused by a seaquake. Besides that, tsunamis can be caused by earthquakes (with the epicenter below sea level), volcano eruptions (below or at the shore) or the suddenly crumbling away of glacier or iceberg.
Pacific Ocean
Tsunamis often occur around the Pacific Ocean because alongside the edges of the Pacific Ocean, the most earthquakes occur. At open sea you will not notice anything of a tsunami. But when a tsunami arrives at low water, the wave can easily be up to 30 meters higher than the normal level. It drags along everything on its way. Not only human, animals and buildings are then victim but also coral reefs get irretrievable damaged.
Tsunami 2004
At December 26th 2004 at 7:58 local time, there occurred a heavy earthquake in the sea near Sumatra. The earthquake registered a minimum magnitude of 9.3 on the moment magnitude scale and took place on a depth of 10 kilometer. Due to this, tidal waves with a speed up till 900-km/ph existed. These tidal waves hit different countries. Totally the tsunami caused the death of 230.000 humans in:
Sri Lanka en Indonesia were hit hardest. These countries are situated around the Indian Ocean. There is no warning system like in the Pacific Ocean.
Help and rebuilding
The tsunami caused a lot of damages and victims. After the tsunami, a lot of countries offered help to the affected areas with money, materials and volunteers. The local communities in the affected areas are slowly processing their traumas. A lot of people lost friend and family. Complete families have been torn apart and communities are vanished away. It will take years for people to return to their normal lives. You can read here more about help after the tsunami.
NABUUR and the tsunami of 2004
One of the projects of NABUUR exists out of the help to parents who can not afford the vocational of education anymore. The people in this village, Kootapuli need their savings for the rebuilding of boats which were destroyed by the tsunami.
If you know of a community that would welcome the assistance of a group of online volunteer to rebuild their community after the tsunami please visit these pages:
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