Washington, November 5 (Prensa Latina) Today, humanity celebrates World Tsunami Awareness Day, which was declared by the United Nations General Assembly to highlight the importance of preparing and providing warning systems that protect lives and prevent damage.
A tsunami or tsunami is a successive series of giant waves caused by some underwater disturbance, usually caused by an earthquake on the ocean floor, although they can also be caused by landslides on the coast, volcanic eruptions, or landslides beneath Water or even a meteorite impact in the sea.
Tsunami waves cause devastating effects if they reach the coast and there can be an interval between them of five minutes, but also an hour.
After the first wave, which is usually not the largest, the sea recedes, leaving the bottom visible, and subsequent waves can be even more deadly.
In the past 100 years, 58 tsunamis have been recorded, killing more than 260,000 people, more than any other natural disaster.
The largest number of deaths was recorded in 2004 in the Indian Ocean (227 thousand deaths), when a phenomenon of this type affected 14 countries, and the countries most affected were Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand.
Just three weeks later, the international community gathered in Kobe, Japan, where the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015, the first major global agreement on disaster risk reduction, was adopted.
A warning and mitigation system for these phenomena has also been established in the Indian Ocean, which includes dozens of seismic and sea level monitoring stations.
This celebration is closely linked to another official United Nations date, the International Day for Disaster Reduction, which is celebrated on October 13 every year.
More than 260,000 people have been killed by tsunamis in the past 100 years, and many more have lost their homes and livelihoods due to this natural disaster.
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