In 2024, the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) recorded 393 natural hazard-related disasters. These events caused 16,753 fatalities and affected 167.2 million people. Economic losses totaled US$241.95 billion. The year 2024 was marked by extreme temperature events in Asia that caused thousands of deaths, severe droughts in Africa affecting over 25 …
A tsunami museum, the first of its kind in India, has been opened at Alappad village in Kerala's Kollam district. It aims to educate people about the risks of tsunamis and to commemorate those who died on December 26, 2004. The museum was set up at a cost of Rs …
Ever since the 2004 tsunami flattened coastal villages, the Tamil Nadu government has been raising sea walls and protective plantations on a priority basis to blunt the impact of sea waves. It touts the plantations as the first line of defence against tsunamis and cyclones. Ecologists warn it could be …
In the post-tsunami period, in the midst of hectic relief work, the Social Activities for Rural Development Society (SARDS), an NGO working in the Prakasam district of Andhra Pradesh, made a startling discovery. While every government and voluntary agency in the area was bending over backwards to offer relief to …
people living in Sipasarubali near the coast in Puri, Orissa, are under threat. Waves have swept away parts of a beach in this popular tourist spot. While local residents are perturbed and visitors are avoiding the shore, officials seem to be in denial. The district administration has put up sand …
"Why shouldn't salt-making be classed as agriculture?' asks R Potharaju. "Both require land, water and sunshine, and are subject to vagaries of nature,' he reasons. Potharaju is convenor of the Prakasam District Salt Farmers Forum. The forum believes that an official categorisation as agriculture would take care of the many …
Butterflies in the Andaman archipelago have been facing colonisation. The carrier of the colonists was the 2004 tsunami which brought three foreign species of butterflies to the islands, threatening its fragile ecology. Of the three species, two, Danias melanipus camorta and Anitilope anomala, are endemic subspecies from the Nicobar group …
After spending a lot of money on sea walls, the Kerala government is now creating an eco-fence against natural calamities like the tsunami that ravaged the state in 2004. Under the Harithatheeram Project, the government will fence the state's 590-km coastline by planting mangroves, casuarinas, thespesias, pandanus and other species …
India's Tsunami Early-Warning System in the Indian Ocean is close to completion, but authorities are clueless about how to circulate alerts. An interim system has been in place since July 2005 and the new information network got commissioned in October 2005. The National Disaster Management (ndm), which looks after the …
A remarkable fact about the recent debate about Singur is that it is so much about land, and so little about cars. Yet a thousand acres of land is really not very much, given that the state has over 1.3 crore acres of cultivated land, and even Mamata Banerjee cannot …
TWO years after the Asian tsunami, as the images of devastation fade off from global public memory, the disaster persists for villages along the coastline of Sri Lanka's Southern Province. Survivors here have new houses, boats, fishing nets and roads, but face a severe scarcity of drinking water. Unlike flooded …
Disasters often help science researchers to understand natural phenomenon closely, and the Asian tsunami is no different. High waves from the ocean has brought saltwater deep into the land, at places upto 2 kms, which left soil, groundwater saline for a long time. The urgency to manage the crisis has …
It is the saga of callous and pathetic implementation of relief I work and rehabilitation of the tsunami-affected. The tsunami I that hit the Indian coastline on the morning of December 26, 12004, swept away 1,089 villages, claimed over 10,273 lives I and rendered 2,39,024 families homeless. By all accounts, …
The prawn farming industry in Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu has bounced back from the losses of the tsunami of December 26, 2004, causing irreperable damage to agriculture. The tsunami hit farmers of Nagapttinam are suffering the double whammy as the prawn industry chokes-off agriculture. Prawn farming in Nagapattinam district picked up …
At a 31 October gathering of tsunami donors at the United Nations, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the U.N. Development Programme are planning to unveil a 6-year, $62 million initiative called Mangroves for the Future (MFF). It's goal is to rehabilitate ecosystems in 12 tsunami hit nations.
The Mediterranean region, particularly the area around Greece, could be hit by a major tsunami before the end of the century, according to Gerassimos Papadopoulos, a scientist at the Athens Institute of Geodynamics. According to data presented at the recently-held First European Conference on Earthquake Engineering and Seismology, a major …
technology cannot always substitute sound preparedness on the ground; Indonesia learnt it the hard way when a tsunami triggered by an earthquake off the island of Java killed hundreds of people last month. An interim tsunami warning system declared operational in the Indian Ocean region barely a month ago did …
Providing relief after a disaster like the December 2004 tsunami is a great challenge, especially in archipelagos far away from the mainland. But the administration of the Union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands has just shown how to make effective relief even more difficult. Two items
