Sumatra tsunami

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations also defines a third level of crisis—a catastrophe. A catastrophe is considered a disaster in which the community and hospital are overwhelmed and isolated for 3 or more days. This is exemplified by the Sumatra tsunami in 2004 and by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 (Berger, 2006). For our purposes, this category will be considered a disaster. 

On December 26, 2004, the most powerful earthquake in the past 40 years, registering 9.0 on the Richter scale, struck near the northern tip of Sumatra. Tsunamis generated by the quake radiated around the Indian Ocean. Within minutes, Sumatra was pounded by waves more than 32.8 feet (10 m) tall. Somalia, on the opposite side of the ocean basin, was blasted with 13.1-foot (4-m)-tall waves eight hours later. 

Fig. 9.7. Tsunami records in the Indian Ocean for the 2004 Sumatra tsunami for six selected sites Colombo (Sri Lanka) Male and Gan (both Maldives) Salalah (Oman) Pointe La Rue (Seychelles) and Port Louis (Mauritius). Solid vertical line labeled E denotes the time of the main earthquake shock (from Ref. 74).

A. B. Rabinovich, R. E. Thomson and F. E. Stephenson, The Sumatra tsunami of 26 December 2004 as observed in the North Pacific and North Atlantic oceans, Surveys Geophys. 27, 647-677 (2006). 

A. B. Rabinovich and R. E. Thomson, The 26 December 2004 Sumatra tsunami Analysis of tide gauge data from the World Ocean Part 1. Indian Ocean and South Africa, Pure Appl. Geophys. 164, 261-308 (2007). 

R. E. Thomson, A. B. Rabinovich and M. V. Krassovski, Double jeopardy Concurrent arrival of the 2004 Sumatra tsunami and storm-generated waves on the Atlantic coast of the United States and Canada, Geophys. Res. Lett. 34, L15607 (2007), doi 10.1029/2007GL030685. 

The December 26,2004, earthquake off of the northwest coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, triggered a tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 persons in India, Indonesia, the Maldives, Somalia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2006). This earthquake was followed by a second on March 28, 2005. International relief measures were evaluated at 7 months after the tsunami and 3 months after the second earthquake. Among published reports about the tsunami, no specific breakout of morbidity and mortality between children and adults in any of the affected geographic areas was found. 

The quake produced tsunamis that stmck coasts of 12 countries, as far away as 3,000 mUes. Although no one will know the exact death toll, there were more than 131,000 confirmed deaths. In addition, there were 37,000 more missing. The tsunami displaced more than 500,000 people from their homes in Sumatra alone. Overall, estimates indicate as many as 5 million people lost homes or access to food and water. 

Earth Observatmy of Singapore. West Sumatra tectorrics and tsunami hazard. Earth Obser-vatory of Singapore Nanyang Technology University of Singapore. Retrieved on March 15, 2015 fiom http //www.earthobservatory.sg/outreach/natural-hazard-outreach/west-sumatra-... 

The recent severe tsimamis in Japan (2011), Sumatra (2004), and at the Indian coast (2004) showed that a system producing exact and immediate information about tsunamis is of vital importance. Mathematical modeling and numerical simulations are most used instruments for providing a such information. Most suitable physical models related to simulation of tsunamis are based on linear shallow water equations ... 

Earthquake Mechanism and Seafloor Deformation for Tsunami Generation, Fig. 1 Perspective view (NW) of vertical displacement field associated with the 2004 9.2 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, showing uplift (red) near the trench and subsidence (blue) toward the Sumatran shore... 

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