Any hope of more survivors being pulled from the wreck of Padang, the earthquake destroyed the city of Sumatra, disappeared yesterday after the government ordered that severely damaged buildings are demolished. The diggers moved as rescue workers frantically tried to find the last survivors. Before the construction of the International Center for Finance, where a woman heard screaming from the ruins at dawn, an Australian rescue worker told the Times that his team had received one hours to arrive before the building was demolished. Exactly one hours later, demolition began. Tracking dogs found no sign of life, but the building fell in a way that many holes that dogs have failed, "said rescue worker, who requested anonymity." There is every chance that is still there, he said that the building began to fall. The order came as torrential rains also threatened by landslides in Padang and surrounding areas hampered rescue. Most organizations that are still in the city, delaying the delivery of much needed food, water and medical supplies for an extra day. Dozens of villages in remote areas devastated by landslides caused by the earthquake of 7.6 magnitude have been without food or water for five days. The death toll stands at more than 600, but is expected to skyrocket when helicopters started arriving in these areas later in the week. The victims are from 200 to 300 guests at a wedding in the village of Jumanak, who were swept away by a landslide after they ran outside when the earthquake struck. The building where the party took place largely intact. Ichi, the 19-year-old woman who died in the landslide, was returned to the village for his marriage, said her 15-year-old brother ISEH. "When the landslide, the party was ready, he said." I heard the loud boom of the avalanche. I ran outside and saw the trees fall. Landslides have started coming in all directions. I ran and ran. " More than 83,000 houses were destroyed or heavily damaged in ten districts around Padang, Indonesia, according to Disaster Management Agency. The conditions in most villages are now terrible. Thousands of people sleeping outside without shelter and drinking from streams that appear floating in them. "I am very worried about what happens in the outer regions," said Dr. Rakhmat Aprandi Fajar, who is in charge of medical care for refugees in the village Tandikat, one of the hardest hit. "People drink water from streams because they are so low. The incidence of the disease, skin infections and respiratory problems will go very quickly. It will be very poor in remote villages and I am afraid that people die without any help there." Some residents are so desperate for food they have taken to looting of aid trucks through, according to Ade Edwar, the director of the Government. "We must arrest those who dishonored our country and to prosecute," said Edwar. The conditions are wild Tandikat. People drinking from open streams and Dr. Fajar is forced to the identification of corpses to an open field next to the tent where the wounded are treated. The identification process is a fundamental business. The Times looked like a body was dumped on the floor next to the medical tent, unpacked and examined for features of a crowd of onlookers gawping. It was the body of a child, black and swollen. Inside the tent, the patients lying on mats on the floor, vulnerable to the rain that filters through their tents. Elsewhere, where it has not arrived, the clinics are still the treatment of patients suffering from serious injuries and traditional medicine. In the village Gagak Sarang, with 100 patients on stretchers in the clinical setting, broken legs are placed in bamboo casings and small operations are performed without anesthesia. "Things are very bad," said Charles Ham, a spokesman for the Hope Foundation, which has sent teams of doctors in the villages. "We have no clear idea of how bad it is, because many of these places are terribly isolated," he said. "We try to help people, but it will take time.
Earthquake of Wenchuan in Sichuan province has caused enormous losses in China and drew widespread concern of nations, not only in Asia but in other parts of the world. Several countries, including Japan and Russia, has sent relief and medical teams to affected areas, while the international community delivered relief supplies and cash donations. Emergency disaster has become a common humanitarian cause of the world as the era of increasing interdependence demands an international relief and reduction system that covers all of Asia.
Natural disasters never respect national borders, or they observe social systems, nationalities, religions or ideologies. For a fairly long period after the Second World War, but international cooperation in disaster relief largely in the form of bilateral aid. Although international organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), UNESCO and institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have played an important role in the organization, coordination and participate directly in efforts international relief in many recent decades a vast system of international disaster relief is not found until the mid-1990s, when international cooperation for disaster relief headed by the UN is finally going to build such a system. In 1994 the first World Conference on Disaster Reduction, organized by the United Nations, held in Yokohama, Japan, and suggested a "Yokohama Strategy" aimed at disaster prevention and building a Strong thereafter. The concept symbolized international efforts in disaster prevention and relief began to move towards systematization.
On January 18, 2005, the Second World Conference on Disaster Reduction begins in Kobe, Japan, as rescue were in full swing for tsunami-hit countries like Indonesia and the host country, Japan was the 10th anniversary of the earthquake of Hanshin. Nearly 4,000 representatives from 168 countries and regions attended the meeting.
The conference proposed the Hyogo Declaration, which embodies the philosophy of prevention of disasters and global plan of action worked Hyogo - A 10-year plan for international cooperation in disaster relief. It should be noted that the Japanese government and the UN have jointly requested the establishment of an international disaster reduction based aid long-term reconstruction after the disaster. He would join the WHO center in Kobe, who was born in response to the earthquake of Hanshin as a basis for international cooperation in disaster prevention.
The new international institution for Disaster Reduction is responsible for formulating effective long-term disaster prevention and reduction of international measures. It was also the intellectual support to the construction of a global disaster prevention and reduction system by hiring experts from around the world to gather useful data on the screens of disasters and site of scientific research.
In fact, China has also played an active role in lobbying for an international disaster prevention and reduction. In August 2007, the Third World Conference on Disaster Reduction held in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province in northern China. It was organized jointly by the Ministry of Water Resources and UNESCO. An international exhibition of rescue equipment and technology took place on the side of the conference and served as a place of international exchange on disaster prevention and reduction of cooperation. The conference was the philosophy of international cooperation in disaster reduction at another level, carried out the strategy for disaster reduction adopted at the Kobe Conference in 2005 and advanced the construction of international cooperation based on the system of disaster prevention.
In light of international aid to cyclone-ravaged Myanmar last month, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an emergency meeting of foreign ministers "last month with the idea of forming a system of disaster relief in the ASEAN with the conditional opening. It was seen as a means of preventing a regional disaster reduction and building.
In a regional perspective, Asia is one of the world most affected by natural disasters because of the vast and long coastline with a wide range of climatic and geographical characteristics. Over the last decade in particular, the tectonic plates in the region have shown increased activity with the number of earthquakes and tsunamis in the elevator, while extreme weather events like floods, droughts and storms snow often took people by surprise. Accompanied by municipal governments and epidemic diseases and even the plague, natural disasters have become a new threat to prosperity in Asia. The construction of a system of regional cooperation for disaster prevention and reduction is more urgent than ever.
In Asia, Japan is a country with frequent earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and hurricanes faces. It is also one of the few developed countries in the region with a rich experience and knowledge to cope with natural disasters through decades of practice, which is an important part of the joint expertise in the prevention and reduction of natural disasters make the region. After the earthquake that struck Wenchuan in Sichuan province Day May 22 earthquake in Japan department immediately provided relevant data to China to confirm the correctness of his own, while the Japanese government has taken the lead in sending professional rescue and medical teams to the disaster area of Sichuan. Other Asian countries quickly offered their support in a flow of humanitarian gestures. This indicates that there is real possibility that Asia may construct an area of disaster prevention and system wide reduction based on mutual support and cooperation.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao suggested that the Japanese government to the high-level meeting on aid operations for victims of the tsunami in Indonesia in early 2005 that China and Japan should strengthen cooperation in disaster prevention and reducing the region. When Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi expressed his support for the proposal of Mr. Wen. Today is the strategic relationship of mutual benefit is the dominant theme of the China-Japan, it will undoubtedly contribute to the common interest of the entire Asian region to build a regional disaster monitoring and Information based on economic and ecological.
Help with flying to Padang our team in response to the earthquake, aerial photography, shows that earthquakes are not the only problem with people, now or in the future to provide for the operation. The landscape is a beauty that is the opposite of the disaster - but the warning signs of a complete reading. The flight along the coast of the city before the circles at home and make our final approach for landing on steep hills, shows telltale signs. Find the city on a vast plain just above sea level. Two occupational hazards. If a future tsunami, as we have seen in landscapes like Aceh and Sri Lanka, the water would go a long way inland. Coastal protection is minimal. Ironically, where stone and some projections of concrete in the sea as a huge parallel ridge to join the coast, there are no mangroves behind them - just stay home. Other areas of mangroves to see if they give better protection behind them. Anyway, even if true temperate climate model projections, rising sea levels threaten the city. With the added risk of more frequent and probably more intense storms, Padang has a lot to protect themselves. Deforestation and unsustainable farming contributed landslides caused by earthquake, which killed hundreds of people. The wheels of the plane around to us in the hills before descending to the ground. We are analyzing landslides reported in the briefing of the UN, and now in the media. It shows how weak tremors might work. Large areas of forest have been felled by the human hand, weakened slopes of the terrain and make the world more sensitive, shifting cultivation, increased the chance of a hill set income.
Under normal circumstances, which have a dangerous subject, there are regular reports of houses washed away, many by landslides after heavy rains slain. The government had already tried a program of financial incentives for the highland people to improve farming practices to run. These are the types of landscapes that climate change is still fragile. Add earthquakes inevitable, as they belt along ALPID dangerous, which is the second most seismic regions in the world with 17 percent of the largest earthquakes in the world to sit and disasters occur.
This does not mean people are helpless. What we need is a disaster to reduce the risk that current and future risks to it and puts it in the context of vulnerability and human activity. Mercy Corps is preparing a strategy for the promotion and integration of the rehabilitation of the earthquake, protect economic stability and sustainable measures for disaster preparedness in these areas.
The indicator of success is how we help communities in the next major disaster, when a spontaneous acute event like an earthquake or a long challenges and chronic conditions such as rising sea levels. Or - as difficult and probably still is - a combination of both.
Four years ago, December 26, 2004, the undersea earthquake in northern Sumatra. Mentawai section along the boundary between the Indo-Australian and Eurasian tectonic plates, which, by the strongest earthquake since the earthquake of magnitude 9.2, as Alaska, March 27, 1964, and the fact second largest earthquake in history, set in the huge ocean waves in motion. The resulting tsunami killed some 230,000 people in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, the Andaman and Nicobar islands, the Maldives and other countries as far as the east coast of Africa. In fact, as Abhijit Ghosh and his colleagues withdrew earlier this month at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, was the earthquake in the Indian Ocean, as it is called, tremors 9000 miles along the San Andreas Fault in California.
Among the dead were about 2,500 tourists from Europe and North America, including a report 543 of Sweden, and hundreds of Germans. Today, four years later, tourists from these countries to return, and daily life of most of its normal contour of the affected area. But scientists have found that the earthquake probably not as an isolated phenomenon, in fact, given the magnitude of events along the top of the lack of maintenance, historically, two or three to do. Several minor earthquakes have been affected area, but the next big elusive. It is to expect a scientific level of at least 8 to meet anytime and anywhere.
In anticipation of this event, reports Der Spiegel, a German research team has developed a system for tsunami monitoring, measuring buoys, seismometers, tide gauges and GPS stations, which "has the German-Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS). There is only one purpose: to save the inhabitants of the basin of the eastern Indian Ocean with the time to seek higher ground, thousands of lives. The system is already built several small earthquakes, to take effect.
