Tsunami-hit city shares recovery tips with typhoon-hit Philippines

Japan Times: A city in Miyagi Prefecture that was devastated by the March 2011 disasters is sharing its recovery lessons with the central Philippines, which is trying to recover from the damage Typhoon Haiyan inflicted in November.

Shuya Takahashi of Higashi-Matsushima’s Reconstruction Policy Division said the city is trying to become place that can “withstand disasters and is safe, where people can feel secure and live with smiles on their faces, and nurture industries and create jobs.”

Takahashi was speaking Friday at a seminar organized by the Japan International Cooperation Agency and the Philippine Public Works and Highways Department. The two bodies are sharing experiences and strategies on disaster management and reconstruction.

Takahashi disclosed that just a month after the natural disasters, Higashi-Matsushima was able to come up with guidelines for recovery and reconstruction. This was followed by a 10-year reconstruction and development plan through 2020.

Takahashi said that it was very important to get the local community involved in developing the plan and other prudent measures, like setting up evacuation areas and building tsunami defenses. “We adopted a bottom-up approach to our consensus plan
ning,” he said.

Koichi Hashimoto of the Higashi-Matsushima Construction Industry Association and Chamber of Commerce spoke of the value of recycling debris from disasters, citing the city’s 97 percent recycling rate. Not only can natural materials be used for reconstruction, they can also help affected people generate income, thus rekindling the local economy, he said....

An aerial view of Tacloban after Haiyan, shot by Russell Watkins/Department for International Development, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Superstorm Sandy shook the US. Literally

News Center, University of Utah: When superstorm Sandy turned and took aim at New York City and Long Island last October, ocean waves hitting each other and the shore rattled the seafloor and much of the United States – shaking detected by seismometers across the country, University of Utah researchers found.

“We detected seismic waves created by the oceans waves both hitting the East Coast and smashing into each other,” with the most intense seismic activity recorded when Sandy turned toward Long Island, New York and New Jersey, says Keith Koper, director of the University of Utah Seismograph Stations.

“We were able to track the hurricane by looking at the ‘microseisms’ [relatively small seismic waves] generated by Sandy,” says Oner Sufri, a University of Utah geology and geophysics doctoral student and first author of the study with Koper. “As the storm turned west-northwest, the seismometers lit up.”

...There is no magnitude scale for the microseisms generated by Sandy, but Koper says they range from roughly 2 to 3 on a quake magnitude scale. The conversion is difficult because earthquakes pack a quick punch, while storms unleash their energy for many hours.

The shaking was caused partly by waves hitting the East Coast, but much more by waves colliding with other waves in the ocean, setting up “standing waves” that reach the seafloor and transmit energy to it, Sufri and Koper say.

While many people may not realize it, earthquakes are not the only events that generate seismic waves. So do mining and mine collapses; storm winds, waves and tornadoes; traffic, construction and other urban activities; and meteors hitting Earth....

Hurricane Sandy on October 29, 2012, via NASA

Towards a disaster-resilient Bangladesh

Syed Shahnawaz Ali, Safiya Sayed Baharun and M Mizanur Rahman in the Financial Express (Bangladesh):  Bangladesh is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world due to its geological location, high density of population and poverty. Although the international community knows it as a leader in disaster management, with the passage of time, the country's vulnerability to natural disasters is increasing in so far as the possibilities of urban-centred calamities are concerned.

Moreover, climate change adds a new dimension to community risks and vulnerability. Although the magnitude of these changes may appear to be small, they could substantially increase the frequency and intensity of the existing climatic events (floods, droughts, cyclones etc). Current indications are that not only will floods and cyclones become more severe; they will also start to occur outside their 'routine seasons'. Events, such as drought, may not have previously occurred in some areas, but it may now be witnessed in those parts of land.

Seven earthquakes of various magnitudes and several minor tremors have occurred in Bangladesh in the past. Although no major earthquake has hit Bangladesh over the past 70 years, it is located in a seismically active zone and, therefore, highly prone to major earthquakes. Accelerated urbanisation and high population densities amplify the vulnerability of Bangladesh, and this might lead to mass-scale deaths and injuries in case of an earthquake. Sylhet city, for example, is highly prone to natural hazards, mainly earthquakes and floods.

We see the quake-vulnerability of the country with possible urban disasters looming owing to its lack of infrastructure and so many technical problems. The government has a very limited capacity to respond to these shocks and, of course, after all sorts of unplanned urbanisation, it is very difficult to attain the capacity of responding effectively to urban disasters like earthquakes in Bangladesh....

A crowd in Dhaka, shot by Ahron de Leeuw, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Quakes make 2011 a costly year

Prevention Web: For two consecutive years the long-term disasters trend has been bucked by major earthquakes which claimed thousands of lives and affected millions in both 2010 and 2011, according to new statistics published today by CRED and the UN office for disaster risk reduction, UNISDR.

UNISDR Chief, Margareta Wahlström, said today: “The Great East Japan Earthquake and the accompanying tsunami is a reminder to us all that we cannot afford to ignore the lessons of history no matter how forgotten. The many major cities located in seismic zones need to take seriously the probability of return events even if many years have passed since the last seismic event of major magnitude.

“In 2010 we saw this phenomenon as well when over 220,000 people died in Haiti which had not been hit by an earthquake of such strength for almost 200 years. Unless we prepare for the worst then many earthquake-prone urban areas around the world are destined to see even greater loss of life in the future as more and more people move to cities.”

Figures released today by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at a UNISDR-hosted press conference in Geneva showed that 20,943 people lost their lives in earthquakes last year out of a total of 29,782 people directly killed by 302 disasters. The earthquake fatalities included 19,846 who died in Japan while the remainder were largely accounted for by the October earthquake in Turkey.

The year was marked by the fact that major disasters in terms of human impact and economic losses occurred in high and middle-income countries. These included the Brazil floods (January); the New Zealand earthquake (February); the Japan earthquake/tsunami (March); two waves of severe storms and tornadoes in the USA (April and May); Hurricane Irene in the USA, (August/September); floods in Thailand (August to December); the October earthquake in Turkey and the December storm Sendong (Washi) in the Philippines....

Photo of damage to the Sydenham Heritage Church sustained during the 2011 New Zealand earthquake, shot by Peter Walker, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Building codes may underestimate risks due to multiple hazards

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (US Department of Commerce): As large parts of the nation recover from nature's one-two punch—an earthquake followed by Hurricane Irene—building researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) warn that a double whammy of seismic and wind hazards can increase the risk of structural damage to as much as twice the level implied in building codes.

This is because current codes consider natural hazards individually, explains NIST's Dat Duthinh, a research structural engineer. So, if earthquakes rank as the top threat in a particular area, local codes require buildings to withstand a specified seismic load. In contrast, if hurricanes or tornadoes are the chief hazard, homes and buildings must be designed to resist loads up to an established maximum wind speed.

In a timely article published in the Journal of Structural Engineering, Duthinh, NIST Fellow Emil Simiu and Chiara Crosti (now at the University of Rome) challenge this compartmentalized approach. They show that in areas prone to both seismic and wind hazards, such as South Carolina, the risk that design limits will be exceeded can be as much as twice the risk in regions where only one hazard occurs, even accounting for the fact that these multiple hazards almost never occur simultaneously. As a consequence, buildings designed to meet code requirements in these double-jeopardy locations "do not necessarily achieve the level of safety implied," the researchers write.

Simiu explains by analogy: a motorcycle racer who takes on a second job as a high-wire performer. "By adding this new occupation, the racer increases his risk of injury, even though the timing and nature of the injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident or in a high-wire mishap may differ," he says. "Understandably, an insurer would raise the premium on a personal injury policy to account for the higher level of risk."...

Wind zone map shows how the frequency and strength of extreme windstorms vary across the United States. Wind speeds in Zone IV (red), where the risk of extreme windstorms is greatest, can be as high as 250 miles per hour. Credit: Federal Emergency Management Agency

An extreme and exhausting year for US disasters

Seth Borenstein in the Associated Press: Nature is pummeling the United States this year with extremes. Unprecedented triple-digit heat and devastating drought. Deadly tornadoes leveling towns. Massive rivers overflowing. A billion-dollar blizzard. And now, unusual hurricane-caused flooding in Vermont.

If what's falling from the sky isn't enough, the ground shook in places that normally seem stable: Colorado and the entire East Coast. On Friday, a strong quake triggered brief tsunami warnings in Alaska. Arizona and New Mexico have broken records for wildfires.

Total weather losses top $35 billion, and that's not counting Hurricane Irene, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. There have been more than 700 U.S. disaster and weather deaths, most from the tornado outbreaks this spring. Last year, the world seemed to go wild with natural disasters in the deadliest year in a generation. But 2010 was bad globally, and the United States mostly was spared.

This year, while there have been devastating events elsewhere, such as the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Australia's flooding and a drought in Africa, it's our turn to get smacked. Repeatedly. "I'm hoping for a break. I'm tired of working this hard. This is ridiculous," said Jeff Masters, a meteorologist who runs Weather Underground, a meteorology service that tracks strange and extreme weather. "I'm not used to seeing all these extremes all at once in one year."

The U.S. has had a record 10 weather catastrophes costing more than a billion dollars: five separate tornado outbreaks, two different major river floods in the Upper Midwest and the Mississippi River, drought in the Southwest and a blizzard that crippled the Midwest and Northeast, and Irene...

Aerial views of the Missouri River in the Bismarck-Mandan, North Dakota area June 8, 2011. The photos were taken from a North Dakota National Guard (UH-60) Black Hawk. The upstream Garrison Dam is releasing water into the Missouri River at a flow of 140,000 cubic feet per second (cfs). About 850 North Dakota National Guard members are on duty assisting with flooding operations in the Bismarck-Mandan area. (North Dakota National Guard photo by Maj. Gen. David Sprynczynatyk). US Army Corps of Engineers. They posted the photo on Flickr, but since I'm a taxpayer, I'm just using it

Without strategy, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta risks disaster

Raymond Seed is a director of the Delta Vision Foundation and is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. In the Sacramento Bee describes a potential for interlocking failures in the tightly coupled water system of the Central Valley’s water system: Northern California's wet, cold spring may have ruined many a picnic, but it portends a much more serious crisis once temperatures warm up. Across the Central Valley, communities are bracing for a potential onslaught of runoff water brought on by a rapidly melting snowpack. This circumstance would be considered a threat even in places with a robust emergency preparedness plan and a strong infrastructure. For communities near the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a sudden heat wave and resulting flooding could be disastrous.

The two biggest threats to personal safety of Delta residents are flooding and earthquakes leading to multiple levee failures in the region. Despite recent progress in other areas, realistic preparations by the state for response to a flood or seismic event in the Delta are still sorely lacking, with regard to life safety activities including preparation, rescue and response. In addition, the Delta is the heart of the state's extensive water systems, providing water to more than 23 million Californians. In the case of an earthquake or catastrophic flooding, the state's water, transportation and utility infrastructure could well be disrupted for weeks, months or longer.

…Securing the state's water future will require hard work and a mending of wasteful ways. It will require optimizing efficient water use in every way possible, and constructing new facilities for conveyance and storage. It will also require fostering cooperation among all stakeholders to do what is right for the state as a whole. All of this will need to be accomplished while protecting and restoring the Delta ecosystems while also reducing risks to people, property and the state's economy.

The state's water challenges cannot be solved overnight, but there is now an increasingly clear and defined path forward. The Delta Vision Strategic Plan should be implemented without further delay. If it is not, the Delta will continue to be at risk of either a weather-related or earthquake-related disaster – an entirely foreseeable, preventable and unacceptable disaster, and one just waiting to happen….

A levee along the Sacramento River, shot by Indolences

Monsoons change the motion of tectonic plates

Daisy Dumas in Australian Geographic: Long-term, natural climactic events can alter the motion of the earth's tectonic plates, according to new research. An international team - led by researchers from the Australian National University - found that intensifying monsoon activity has sped up the motion of the Indian plate, which crunched into the Eurasian plate to form the Himalayas 40 to 50 million years ago.

Over the past 10-15 million years, monsoons - which increase rainfall in northeast India by 4m annually and cause erosion - have sped up the anti-clockwise motion of the Indian plate by almost one centimetre per year, the researchers say. This is quite fast, considering tectonic plates move about the same rate at which fingernails grow.

"We were very excited," ANU's Dr Giampiero Iaffaldano told Australian Geographic. "This is the first time we have been able to make the link between what naturally happens to climate over millions of years and the motion of tectonic plates," he says. "While it was already known that plate tectonics can affect climate through events such as mountain uplift altering wind and rainfall patterns," Giampiero says. "Now we know that it can also operate the opposite way".

Monsoonal rain, says Giampiero, causes erosion of mountains, which reduces frictional forces along the plate boundary. This essentially allows the plates to move against each other more quickly - although he is quick to stress that it remains, nevertheless, a very slow process, taking millions of years.

Dr Jo Whittaker, a geophysicist at the University of Sydney, says the work has "implications for how scientists understand the forces driving the motion of the tectonic plates" - in particular, it is hoped the results may help to unlock the secrets of earthquake-prone regions…

Tectonic plates of the earth, from the USGS website

Natural disasters 'killed 295,000 in 2010'

AFP: Haiti earthquake and floods in Pakistan and China helped make 2010 an exceptional year for natural disasters, killing 295,000 and costing $130 billion, the world's top reinsurer said Monday. "The high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures both globally and in different regions of the world provide further indications of advancing climate change," said Munich Re in a report.

The last time so many people died in natural disasters was in 1983, when 300,000 people died, mainly due to famine in Ethiopia, spokesman Gerd Henghuber told AFP. A total of 950 natural disasters were recorded last year, making 2010 the second worst year since 1980. The average number of events over the past 10 years was 785.

And in terms of economic cost, insured losses amounted to approximately $37 billion, putting 2010 among the six most loss-intensive years for the insurance industry since 1980. "2010 showed the major risks we have to cope with. There were a number of severe earthquakes. The hurricane season was also eventful," said Torsten Jeworrek, the firm's chief executive.

…The American continent suffered the most disasters -- 365 in total -- with 310 in Asia. A total of 120 natural disasters were recorded in Europe, 90 in Africa and 65 in Australia and Oceania. In 2009, considered a "benign" year due to the absence of major catastrophes and a less severe than usual hurricane season in the North Atlantic, there were 900 "destructive natural hazard events", costing some 60 billion dollars….

A composite image of the 2010 hurricane season

Heavy death toll feared in Haiti quake

Not climate related, of course, but a staggering disaster nonetheless, from Rory Carroll and Haroon Siddique in the Guardian (UK): Thousands of people are feared dead after a powerful earthquake hit Haiti, toppling buildings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and triggering repeated aftershocks. A 7.0 magnitude quake – the biggest recorded in this part of the Caribbean and the largest to hit Haiti in more than 200 years – rocked Port-au-Prince last night, destroying a hospital and sending houses tumbling into ravines.

"There must be thousands of people dead," Sara Fajardo, a spokeswoman for Catholic Relief Services, told the Los Angeles Times. International aid groups are planning a major disaster relief effort. The international Red Cross said up to 3 million people could be affected. The headquarters of the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti has collapsed and a large number of UN personnel are missing, according to Alain Le Roy, the head of UN peacekeeping. At least 11 peacekeepers were reportedly killed – eight from China and three from Jordan.

Le Roy told reporters that UN troops, mostly from Brazil, were trying to rescue people from the wreckage of the five-storey building but "as we speak no one has been rescued from this main headquarters". Gareth Owen, emergencies director at Save the Children, which has about 60 staff in Haiti, said: "We are very concerned about the high likelihood of a significant loss of life because Port-au-Prince is a very densely populated city and the earthquake epicentre was very close to it."

No official estimate of the death toll has been possible but it is clear tens of thousands of people have had their homes destroyed in Port-au-Prince, which has a population of about 1 million, and that many people have perished….