The Pacific Ring of Fire

(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

“Overseas this continues to be a devastating week in the Pacific region for natural disasters. Tsunamis, a typhoon and now thousands of people are reportedly buried in the rubble of an earthquake that hit the Indonesian island of Sumatra today.”
 
Over the past few weeks, the Asia-Pacific region has seen natural disasters of epic proportions. All the affected countries sit on what some call “the tectonically rambunctious” Ring of Fire. It’s the meeting point of the world’s largest tectonic plates and where 90% of the world’s earthquakes occur.

Media coverage from around the world is looking at whether countries in the volatile Pacific Ring are doing everything they can to protect themselves from Mother Nature.

We get insights from the Wall Street Journal, Australia’s ABC News, Canada’s CTV, New Zealand’s TV3 and Al Jazeera English.

Pacific islands near the Ring of Fire are protected by technology that warns for approaching tsunamis. But a Wall Street Journal editorial says it’s irrelevant because Samoa and its citizens didn’t follow through with a sound evacuation plan.

“A large scale evacuation exercise in Samoa in 2007…identified different areas where permanently fixed ladders would assist rapid access to high ground, but the ladders reportedly were never installed due to lack of funding. During the tsunami, people tried to evacuate by car, instead of on foot, as during the drill.”

But Australia’s ABC News says the citizen’s actions didn’t matter because tsunami alerts only warned them minutes before it hit. The tsunami was travelling as fast as a jumbo jet.

“…by and large, these warning systems are mainly effective for regional and distant tsunamis that you really need a fair bit of lead time in order to detect and characterize an earthquake, but especially to get the message out to communities, get the warning out to the people who actually need it….local tsunamis which arrive within about 20 or 30 minutes from the earthquakes occurrence and that's much more difficult t to warn for. I think it is difficult to argue that the current systems are effective for that.”

Canada’s CTV has insight into why Mother Nature wreaks so much destruction in this area of the world.

“There are several subduction zones in Southeast Asia that not only trigger earthquakes but spark volcanic eruptions and stir tsunamis…Plus, poverty and dire circumstances has forced hundreds of people to live close to the water, putting them and their shelter in immediate danger of being destroyed.”

New Zealand’s TV3 News traveled to Samoa and found perhaps this disaster has taught them a valuable lesson.

“We never want to go back, we never want to see the ocean anymore.” “I think there are another tsunami coming in the future that’s why we come up here and leave all our lives.” “New homes are being built on hills all along the devastated coast.”

Finally, Al Jazeera English talks to an Australian seismologist who believes it’s imperative Samoans and others in the Pacific Ring of Fire take action now. He says more and larger earthquakes are on the way and it’s all thanks to a single day in history – December 26, 2004.

“We don't know exactly how often extremely large earthquakes do occur, but because of the 2004 event it has obviously modified some of the stresses and pressures in that region and they're being released now in these larger earthquakes.”