Topic 1 Case Study Flashcards
Category, Place and Date of Hurricane Katrina:
Category: Category 3 at landfall (reached up to Category 5)
Place: South-East USA
Date: 29th August 2005
Positives and Negatives of Hurricane Katrina Forecasting
Positives:
- The USA has a sophisticated monitoring system to predict if and where a hurricane will hit.
- The National Hurricane Centre (NHC) in Florida tracks and predicts hurricanes using satellite images end planes that collect weather data on approaching storms.
Negatives:
-They were not able to tell where the Hurricane would go, or what it would do once it reached land, making it more unpredictable.
Positives and Negatives of Hurricane Katrina Warning & Evacuation
Positives:
- The NHC issued a hurricane warning on 26th August for Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. It continued to track the hurricane, updating the government on where and when it would hit.
- Mississippi and Louisiana declared states of emergency and 70-80% of New Orleans residents were evacuated before the hurricane reached land. This reduced the number of people killed because lots of people had left the areas where the hurricane hit.
Negatives:
- Some evacuation routes got cut off by the sheer amount of traffic due to people trying to leave these areas, resulting in some not getting out in time
- This resulted in people dying, which could’ve been avoided if they left sooner (however, the evacuation scheme saved a lot more lives than ones that were lost)
Positives and Negatives of Hurricane Katrina Defences
Positives:
- There were flood defence systems, sea wall and e.c.t in place, which mostly done their job of stopping most flooding
- There were sufficient warnings issues in advance of these events.
Negatives:
- The city of New Orleans was very badly damaged - flood defences e.g. embankments) that were supposed to protect the city failed.
- This caused widespread flooding (over 80% of the city was underwater).
- The Levees of New Orleans had not been maintained and the pumping stations didn’t work, meaning clean water was not available.
Positives and Negatives of Cyclone Nargis Forecasting
Positives:
-They relied on Indian Weather agencies to tell them about any Forecasting to do with cyclones, meaning they had some kind of prediction, but a very ineffective one
Negatives:
- Myanmar doesn’t have a dedioeted monitoring centre for tropical cyclones.
- Myanmar doean’t have a radar network that can predict the height of storm surges and waves caused by cyclones.
Positives and Negatives of Cyclone Nargis Warning & Evacuation
Positives:
- Indian weather agencies warned the government of Myanmar that Cyclone Nargis was likely to hit the country 48 hours before it did.
- Warnings were issued on the TV and radio
Negatives:
- Warnings were issued on the TV and radio, but they didn’t reach people In poor rural communities. This meant more people were killed because they didn’t know what to do or where to evacuate to.
- There were no emergency preparation plans, no evacuation plans and the country didn’t have an early warning system.
Positives and Negatives of Cyclone Nargis Defences
Positives:
-There were a few mangroves that were left in place which protected the coast from floods a little
Negatives:
- Mangrove forests protect the coast from flooding, but loads had been chopped down in the decade before Nargla hit, reducing the natural protection.
- Houses were made out of weak materials (wood)
- Aid agencies were refused access to Myanmar for a week after the disaster due to the lack of transparency in the Government.
Japan Tohoku Earthquake (-Time/Date -Magnitude -Place -Focus -Epicentre)
Time/Date: 2:47pm 11th March 2011
Magnitude: Magnitude 9 Earthquake
Place: North-East Japan, Pacific Plate subducted under Eurasian Plate at the Japanese Trench, triggering a Tsunami
Focus: Focus around 30km below the seabed
Epicentre: Epicentre 130km East of Sendai the coast
Haiti Earthquake (-Time/Date -Magnitude -Place -Focus -Epicentre)
Time/Date: 4:53pm 12th January 2010
Magnitude: Magnitude 7 Earthquake in Haiti
Place: Conservative plate boundary between the North American Plate and Caribbean plate
Focus: A shallow Focus of only 13km deep
Epicentre: Epicentre 25km South-West of the capital Port-Au-Prince
Japan Earthquake Primary Impacts:
- 1 Dam Collapsed, along with 2 nuclear power stations being fractured.
- US $235 billion worth of damage was caused by this, making it the costliest disaster in history
- Between 667 and 1479 death occurred directly from the Earthquake
- The motorway was badly damaged and the airport had to shut.
- It caused liquefaction which turned the ground to sludge, therefore sinking buildings
Japan Earthquake Secondary Impacts:
- Hundreds of thousands of buildings were completely destroyed, leaving 230,000 homeless.
- The tsunami cut off power supplies to Fukushima nuclear power plant plant, creating a meltdown.
- 93% of deaths were caused by drowning
- Road and rail networks suffered severe damage, e.g 325km of rail washed away.
- Homelessness, disrupted schooling, unemployment and increased fincancial stress/pressure lasted for years to cope with the damage, while there was no tourism to bring in money.
Haiti Earthquake Primary Impacts:
- Around 316,000 people died with more than 300,000 also left injured by it.
- Many houses instantly collapsed, making around 1.5 million homeless (180,000 homes destroyed).
- All 8 hospitals in the area either collapsed or were badly damaged, with another 5,000 schools left destroyed and damaged too
- The port, communication links and major roads were damaged beyond repair with rubble from collapsed buildings, meaning roads were blocked alongside rail links
Haiti Earthquake Secondary Impacts:
- The water supply system was destroyed - a cholera outbreak killed over 8,000 people in the following months
- Aid was harder to get in because, because the poet was destroyed too.
- Haiti’s important clothing factories were damaged, (They provided 60% of Haiti’s exports) meaning 1 out of every 5 people lost their jobs.
- By 2015 most people displaced by the earthquake had been re-housed.
- Looting and crime increased as the government and police forces crumbled.
Japan Earthquake Short Term Relief:
- Japanese aid and search and rescue teams were bought in.
- Rescue workers and soldiers were sent in to help deal with the aftermath
- Power supplies were restored in a few weeks after the earthquake
- Transport and communication links were to be restored after a few weeks
- Broken sea walls, flood defences and other defence systems that were destroyed by the earthquake and Tsunami were fixed.
Japan Earthquake Long Term Relief:
- International aid and support came in and were mobilised and brought into action.
- Countries sent teams over to help with the re-build and to get life back to normal as swiftly as possible
- Tens of thousands of pre-fabricated temporary houses were set up.
- A further 140,000 people were evacuated round a 20km radius of the Fukushima Power Plant
