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Introduction

The aim of the module is to provide disaster management knowledge and skills to enhance students understanding of good (and bad) disaster preparedness and response and their reasons for them. This module introduces participants to the main principles of disaster management, with a focus on disaster response in the developing world. The course will promote the sharing of relevant technical skills and knowledge and will equip participants with adequate analytical skills through developing key understanding of disaster management procedures, assessment methods, humanitarian principles and values, working with military during emergencies, working with refugees and IDPs, and adhering to agreed international standards. HAO India a service motivated Organization, has got great Historical Acts, with dedicated minds and with strong beliefs. It has given the utmost help during the difficult t times by the poor and needy. Our Organization stands as Guide for their upliftments of lives. HAO India is always with great compassion in conferring its shoulder to wipe out the tears of the people, who are affected by the natural calamities and disasters. Our organization has Administrator honoring conducted many awareness programs were conducted and made the people known to be away from the affect of any disaster that imbalances their lives.

What is disaster management?


Disaster management can be defined as the organization and management of resources and responsibilities for dealing with all humanitarian aspects of emergencies, in particular preparedness, response and recovery in order to lessen the impact of disasters.

Types of disasters
There is no country that is immune from disaster, though vulnerability to disaster varies. There are four main types of disaster. Natural disasters. These disasters include floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and volcano eruptions that can have immediate impacts on human health, as well as secondary impacts causing further death and suffering from floods causing landslides, earthquakes resulting in fires, tsunamis causing widespread flooding and typhoons sinking ferries Environmental emergencies. These emergencies include technological or industrial accidents, usually involving hazardous material, and occur where these materials are produced, used or transported. Large forest fires are generally included in this definition because they tend to be caused by humans. Complex emergencies. These emergencies involve a break-down of authority, looting and attacks on strategic installations. Complex emergencies include conflict situations and war. Pandemic emergencies. These emergencies involve a sudden onset of a contagious disease that affects health but also disrupts services and businesses, bringing economic and social costs. Any disaster can interrupt essential services, such as the provision of health care, electricity, water, sewage/garbage removal, transportation and communications. The interruption can seriously affect the health, social and economic networks of local communities and countries. Disasters have a major and long-lasting impact on people long after the immediate effect has been mitigated. Poorly planned relief activities can have a significant negative impact not only on the disaster victims
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but also on donors and relief agencies. So it is important that physical therapists join established programmes rather than attempting individual efforts. Local, regional, national and (where necessary) international organisations are all involved in mounting a humanitarian response to disasters. Each will have a prepared disaster management plan. These plans cover prevention, preparedness, relief and recovery (see below).

Disaster prevention
These are activities designed to provide permanent protection from disasters. Not all disasters, particularly natural disasters, can be prevented, but the risk of loss of life and injury can be mitigated with good evacuation plans, environmental planning and design standards. In January 2005, 168 Governments adopted a 10year global plan for natural disaster risk reduction called the Hyogo Framework. It offers guiding principles, priorities for action, and practical means for achieving disaster resilience for vulnerable communities.

Disaster preparedness
These activities are designed to minimise loss of life and damage for example by removing people and property from a threatened location and by facilitating timely and effective rescue, relief and rehabilitation. Preparedness is the main way of reducing the impact of disasters. Community-based preparedness and management should be a high priority in physical therapy practice management.

Disaster relief
This is a coordinated multi-agency response to reduce the impact of a disaster and its long-term results. Relief activities include rescue, relocation, providing food and water, preventing disease and disability, repairing vital services such as telecommunications and transport, providing temporary shelter and emergency health care.

Disaster recovery
Once emergency needs have been met and the initial crisis is over, the people affected and the communities that support them are still vulnerable. Recovery
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activities include rebuilding infrastructure, health care and rehabilitation. These should blend with development activities, such as building human resources for health and developing policies and practices to avoid similar situations in future. Disaster management is linked with sustainable development, particularly in relation to vulnerable people such as those with disabilities, elderly people, children and other marginalised groups. Myths and Realities of Disaster Assistance2 summarises some of the common misunderstandings about disaster management.

Earthquakes Management
WHAT ARE EARTHQUAKES?

An earthquake is sudden motion or trembling of the ground produced by the abrupt displacement of rock masses. Naturally occurring earthquakes:

Fault types: Tectonic earthquakes occur anywhere in the earth where there is sufficient stored elastic strain energy to drive fracture propagation along a fault plane. The sides of a fault move past each other smoothly andaseismically only if there are no irregularities or asperities along the fault surface that increase the frictional resistance. Most fault surfaces do have such asperities and this leads to a form of stick-slip behaviour. Once the fault has locked, continued relative motion between the plates leads to increasing stress and therefore, stored strain energy in the
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volume around the fault surface. This continues until the stress has risen sufficiently to break through the asperity, suddenly allowing sliding over the locked portion of the fault, releasing the stored energy. This energy is released as a combination of radiated elastic strain seismic waves, frictional heating of the fault surface, and cracking of the rock, thus causing an earthquake. This process of gradual build-up of strain and stress punctuated by occasional sudden earthquake failure is referred to as the elastic-rebound theory. It is estimated that only 10 percent or less of an earthquake's total energy is radiated as seismic energy. Most of the earthquake's energy is used to power the earthquake fracturegrowth or is converted into heat generated by friction. Therefore, earthquakes lower the Earth's available elastic potential energy and raise its temperature, though these changes are negligible compared to the conductive and convective flow of heat out from the Earth's deep interior.

Earthquake fault types


There are three main types of fault, all of which may cause an earthquake: normal, reverse (thrust) and strike-slip. Normal and reverse faulting are examples of dipslip, where the displacement along the fault is in the direction of dip and movement on them involves a vertical component. Normal faults occur mainly in areas where the crust is being extended such as a divergent boundary. Reverse faults occur in areas where the crust is being shortened such as at a convergent boundary. Strikeslip faultsare steep structures where the two sides of the fault slip horizontally past each other; transform boundaries are a particular type of strike-slip fault. Many earthquakes are caused by movement on faults that have components of both dipslip and strike-slip; this is known as oblique slip. Reverse faults, particularly those along convergent plate boundaries are associated with the most powerful earthquakes, including almost all of those of magnitude 8 or more. Strike-slip faults, particularly continental transforms can produce major earthquakes up to about magnitude 8. Earthquakes associated with normal faults are generally less than magnitude 7. This is so because the energy released in an earthquake, and thus its magnitude, is proportional to the area of the fault that ruptures[3] and the stress drop. Therefore, the longer the length and the wider the width of the faulted area, the larger the
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resulting magnitude. The topmost, brittle part of the Earth's crust, and the cool slabs of the tectonic plates that are descending down into the hot mantle, are the only parts of our planet which can store elastic energy and release it in fault ruptures. Rocks hotter than about 300 degrees Celsius flow in response to stress; they do not rupture in earthquakes.[4][5]The maximum observed lengths of ruptures and mapped faults, which may break in one go are approximately 1000 km. Examples are the earthquakes in Chile, 1960; Alaska, 1957; Sumatra, 2004, all in subduction zones. The longest earthquake ruptures on strike-slip faults, like the San Andreas Fault (1857, 1906), the North Anatolian Fault in Turkey (1939) and the Denali Fault in Alaska (2002), are about half to one third as long as the lengths along subducting plate margins, and those along normal faults are even shorter.

Aerial photo of the San Andreas Fault in the Carrizo Plain, northwest of Los Angeles

EARTHQUAKE AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT An earthquake is a series of vibrations on the earths surface caused by the generation of elastic (seismic) waves due to sudden rupture within the earth during release of accumulated strain energy. Faulting may be considered as an immediate cause of an earthquake. Due to constant movement of plates, deformation is caused which results to generations of strain energy. Indian plate is moving in north-north-east direction and colliding with Eurasian plate along the Himalayas. All earthquakes, let it be the Gujarat Earthquake, Kutch (16 Jun, 1819, Magnitude 8), Shillong Plateau Earthquake (12
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Jun 1897, Magnitude 8.7), Bihar Nepal Border Earthquake (15 Jan 1934, Magnitude 8.3), Arunachal Pradesh China Earthquake (15 Aug, 1950), Gujarat Earthquake, Bhuj (26 Jan 2001, Magnitude 7.7), Sumatra Earthquake (26 December, 2004, Magnitude 9.3), Kashmir Earthquake (08 October, 2005) have same story to tell about our destruction and annihilation. The Recent Earthquake at Haiti (13 January, 2010, Magnitude 7) again repeats our helplessness to this mighty force of nature. Management of earthquake has become very crucial in this trouble times. Severity of an Earthquake is measured by: Slight Magnitude up to 4.9 in a Richter Scale Moderate Magnitude up to 5 to 6.9 in a Richter Scale Great Magnitude up to 7.0 to 7.9 in a Richter Scale Very Great Magnitude up to 8.0 and more

A proactive stance to reduce the toll of disasters in the region requires a more comprehensive approach that encompasses both pre-disaster risk reduction and post disaster recovery. It is framed by new policies and institutional arrangements that support effective action. These types of approaches need the following set of activities: Risk analysis to identify the kind of risks faced by the people and development investments as well as magnitude Prevention and mitigation to address the structural sources of vulnerability Risk transfer to spread financial risks over time and among different actors

Emergency preparedness and response to enhance a countrys readiness to cope quickly and effectively Post disaster rehabilitation and reconstruction to support effective recovery and to safeguard against future disasters. There are different types of theories which states about the causes of an earthquake. Hence the true nature of an earthquake must be well understood before adopting any control measures. Two models were suggested. One was the Dilatancy Diffusion Theory developed in the USA and the other is the Dilatancy Instability theory of the then USSR.
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The interesting fact is that the first stage of both the models is an increase of elastic strain in a rock that causes them to undergo a dilatancy state, which is an inelastic increase in volume that starts after the stress on a rock reaches one half its breaking strength. Hence it is in this state the first physical change takes place indicating future earthquake. The USA model suggests that the dilatancy and fracture of the rocks are first associated with low water containing dilated rock, which helps in producing lower seismic event. The pore water pressure then increases due to influx of water into the open fracture, weakening the rock and facilitating movement along the fracture, which is termed as an earthquake. Now let us take the Russian Model: The first phases is accompanied by an avalanches of fracture that release some stress but produce an unstable situation that eventually cause a large movement along a fracture. Seismic gaps are defined as an area along active fault zones, capable of producing large earthquake but that have not recently produced an earthquake. It is these areas which are thought to bring in tectonic strain and which are the candidates for future large earthquake. Any fault that has moved during quaternary can be called as active fault. It is generally assumed that these faults could get displaced at any time. Faults that have been inactive for the last 3 million years are generally classified as inactive fault. Active fault are basically responsible for seismic shaking and surface rupture (Sinha et al.2000). Like all other natural hazards earthquakes also produce primary and secondary effects. Primary effects include surface vibration, which may be associated with surface rupture and displacement long fault plane. These vibrations may sometimes lead to the total collapse of large buildings, dams, tunnels, pipelines and other rigid structures.

The most important parameter controlling the maximum earthquake magnitude on a fault is however not the maximum available length, but the available width because the latter varies by a factor of 20. Along converging plate margins, the dip angle of the rupture plane is very shallow, typically about 10 degrees. Thus the width of the plane within the top brittle crust of the Earth can become 50 to 100 km (Japan, 2011; Alaska, 1964), making the most powerful earthquakes possible.
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Strike-slip faults tend to be oriented near vertically, resulting in an approximate width of 10 km within the brittle crust, thus earthquakes with magnitudes much larger than 8 are not possible. Maximum magnitudes along many normal faults are even more limited because many of them are located along spreading centers, as in Iceland, where the thickness of the brittle layer is only about 6 km. In addition, there exists a hierarchy of stress level in the three fault types. Thrust faults are generated by the highest, strike slip by intermediate, and normal faults by the lowest stress levels. This can easily be understood by considering the direction of the greatest principal stress, the direction of the force that 'pushes' the rock mass during the faulting. In the case of normal faults, the rock mass is pushed down in a vertical direction, thus the pushing force (greatest principal stress) equals the weight of the rock mass itself. In the case of thrusting, the rock mass 'escapes' in the direction of the least principal stress, namely upward, lifting the rock mass up, thus the overburden equals the leastprincipal stress. Strike-slip faulting is intermediate between the other two types described above. This difference in stress regime in the three faulting environments can contribute to differences in stress drop during faulting, which contributes to differences in the radiated energy, regardless of fault dimensions.

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Tornado Management

A tornado near Anadarko, Oklahoma. The funnel is the thin tube reaching from the cloud to the ground. The lower part of this tornado is surrounded by a translucent dust cloud, kicked up by the tornado's strong winds at the surface. The wind of the tornado has a much wider radius than the funnel itself.

A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of acumulus cloud. They are often referred to as twisters or cyclones,[1] although the word cyclone is used in meteorology, in a wider sense, to name any closed low pressure circulation. Tornadoes come in many shapes and sizes, but they are typically in the form of a visible condensation funnel, whose narrow end touches the earth and is often encircled by a cloud of debris anddust. Most tornadoes have wind speeds less than 110 miles per hour (177 km/h), are about 250 feet (76 m) across, and travel a few miles (several kilometers) before dissipating. The most extreme tornadoes can attain wind speeds of more than 300 miles per hour (483 km/h), stretch more than two miles (3.2 km) across, and stay on the ground for dozens of miles (more than 100 km).[2][3][4] Various types of tornadoes include the landspout, multiple vortex tornado, andwaterspout. Waterspouts are characterized by a spiraling funnel-shaped wind
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current, connecting to a large cumulus or cumulonimbus cloud. They are generally classified as non-supercellular tornadoes that develop over bodies of water, but there is disagreement over whether to classify them as true tornadoes. These spiraling columns of air frequently develop in tropical areas close to the equator, and are less common at high latitudes.Other tornado-like phenomena that exist in nature include the gustnado, dust devil, fire whirls, and steam devil; downbursts are frequently confused with tornadoes, though their action is dissimilar. Tornadoes have been observed on every continent except Antarctica. However, the vast majority of tornadoes occur in the Tornado Alley region of the United States, although they can occur nearly anywhere in North AmericaThey also occasionally occur in south-central and eastern Asia, northern and east-central South America, Southern Africa, northwestern and southeast Europe, western and southeastern Australia, and New Zealand.Tornadoes can be detected before or as they occur through the use of Pulse-Doppler radar by recognizing patterns in velocity and reflectivity data, such as hook echoes or debris balls, as well as by the efforts of storm spotters. There are several scales for rating the strength of tornadoes. The Fujita scalerates tornadoes by damage caused and has been replaced in some countries by the updated Enhanced Fujita Scale. An F0 or EF0 tornado, the weakest category, damages trees, but not substantial structures. An F5 or EF5 tornado, the strongest category, rips buildings off their foundations and can deform largeskyscrapers. The similar TORRO scale ranges from a T0 for extremely weak tornadoes to T11 for the most powerful known tornadoes.[8] Doppler radar data, photogrammetry, and ground swirl patterns (cycloidalmarks) may also be analyzed to determine intensity and assign a rating. A tornado near Seymour, Texas A tornado is "a violently rotating column of air, in contact with the ground, either pendant from a cumuliform cloud or underneath a cumuliform cloud, and often (but not always) visible as a funnel cloud".[14] For a vortex to be classified as a tornado, it must be in contact with both the ground and the cloud base. Scientists have not yet created a complete definition of the word; for example, there is disagreement as to whether separate touchdowns of the same funnel constitute separate tornadoes Tornado refers to the vortex of wind, not the condensation cloud.

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Tornado Awareness: Tornadoes are relatively short-lived local storms. They are composed of violently rotating columns of air that descend in the familiar funnel shape from thunderstorm cloud systems. The weather conditions that tend to generate tornados are unseasonably warm and humid earth surface air, cold air at middle atmospheric levels and strong upper-level jet stream winds. Tornadoes can occur anywhere in the United States during any month of the year. However, the Great Plains and Gulf Coast States experience the largest number of tornadoes. The greatest frequency of tornadoes occur in April, May and June. The destructive path of a tornado averages about 250 yards in width and 15 miles in length. In extreme conditions, a tornado may travel more than 300 miles and leave a path of total destruction more than a mile wide. Tornadoes will travel up to 60 mph with wind speeds approaching 400 mph within the tornado's center. Tornadoes usually travel from a westerly direction to an easterly direction. Signs and Warnings Tornadoes develop during severe thunderstorms. While not all thunderstorms create tornadoes, the potential is there. During violent weather keep tuned to a local television or radio station for tornado reports. If you are outside and see a funnel-shaped cloud with obvious rotating motion, it may be a tornado. As a tornado develops, it will produce a loud roar that grows louder as the funnel cloud touches the ground. When nearby,a tornado has a loud sound comparable to the combined roars of several jet engines.

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The National Severe Storms Forecast Center in Norman Oklahoma issues tornado watches. Local National Weather Service offices issue tornado warnings. Local Emergency Management officials may sound sirens during a tornado warning. A tornado watch indicates that conditions are right for a tornado to develop and the sky should be watched. A tornado warning indicates a tornado has been sighted or has been indicated on radar. Warnings will give the location of the tornado and the area immediately affected by the warning. How Can You Prepare For a Tornado? The best preparation for a tornado is to designate a safe place in or around your home as a tornado shelter. Tornado shelters are safest if they are underground. A storm cellar or basement away from windows offers the best protection.

If neither of these are available, plan to find shelter under heavy furniture or mattresses near an inside wall of your house on the ground floor. Get under solid furniture or cover yourselves with mattresses pulled off the bed. Plan tornado drills with your family so everyone knows what to do. Know the location of the designated shelter where you work or go to school. Plan to evacuate your manufactured (mobile) home. Make an inventory of your household furnishings and other possessions. Supplement the written inventory with photographs or video. Keep inventories and pictures in a safe deposit box or some other safe place away from the premises.

What Should You Do When A Tornado Warning Is Issued? If you have a storm cellar or shelter, go to it immediately with your family. If no shelter is available, go to your basement and get under a heavy workbench or stairs. Do not position yourself directly underneath heavy appliances on the floor above you.

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If your home has no basement, stay in the center of the house away from the windows or in a small room on the ground floor that is away from outside walls. Take cover under solid furniture or mattresses. Protect your head. In mobile homes or vehicles, leave and take shelter in a substantial structure. If there is no nearby shelter, lie flat in the nearest ditch or culvert and cover your head with your hands. In any large building, such as an office or department store, avoid all large, poorly supported roofs. Go to the basement or to an interior hallway on a lower floor. Do not drive. You are safer in a home or basement shelter than in a car. If you are driving in a city and spot a tornado, get out of your car and go to a nearby building immediately. If you are driving in open country, drive at a right angle away from the tornado's path if you can safely do so. Do not try to outrun the storm. If you cannot avoid the tornado, get out of your car. Lie flat in the nearest depression, such as a ditch, culvert or ravine. Protect your head and stay low to the ground,

What Should You Do After A Tornado? After a tornado passes, keep tuned to the local radio or TV station to get an all-clear signal before leaving your shelter.

Sometimes more than one tornado will develop during a violent storm so keep alert to the possibility of more tornados. Re-enter buildings with extreme caution as they may be unstable. Be alert to fire hazards such as broken electric wires or damaged electrical equipment, gas or oil leaks or smoldering piles

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Volcano Management
On Earth, volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging. A mid-oceanic ridge, for example the MidAtlantic Ridge, has examples of volcanoes caused by divergent tectonic plates pulling apart; the Pacific Ring of Fire has examples of volcanoes caused by convergent tectonic plates coming together. By contrast, volcanoes are not usually created where two tectonic plates slide past one another. Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the Earth's crust in the interiors of plates, e.g., in the East African Rift, the Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field and the Rio Grande Rift in North America. This type of volcanism falls under the umbrella of "Plate hypothesis" volcanism.[1]Volcanism away from plate boundaries has also been explained as mantle plumes. These so-called "hotspots", for example Hawaii, are postulated to arise from upwellingdiapirs with magma from the coremantle boundary, 3,000 km deep in the Earth. Erupting volcanoes can pose many hazards, not only in the immediate vicinity of the eruption. Volcanic ash can be a threat to aircraft, in particular those with jet engines where ash particles can be melted by the high operating temperature; the melted particles then adhere to theturbine blades and alter their shape, disrupting the operation of the turbine. Large eruptions can affect temperature as ash and droplets of sulfuric acid obscure the sun and cool the Earth's lower atmosphere ortroposphere; however, they also absorb heat radiated up from the Earth, thereby warming the stratosphere. Historically, so-called volcanic winters have caused catastrophic famines.

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Volcanic features

The most common perception of a volcano is of a conicalmountain, spewing lava and poisonous gases from a craterat its summit. This describes just one of many types of volcano, and the features of volcanoes are much more complicated. The structure and behavior of volcanoes depends on a number of factors. Some volcanoes have rugged peaks formed by lava domes rather than a summit crater, whereas others present landscape features such as massive plateaus. Vents that issue volcanic material (lava, which is what magma is called once it has escaped to the surface, and ash) and gases (mainly steam and magmatic gases) can be located anywhere on the landform. Many of these vents give rise to smaller cones such as Puu on a flank of Hawaii's Klauea. Other types of volcano include cryovolcanoes (or ice volcanoes), particularly on some moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune; and mud volcanoes, which are formations often not associated with known magmatic activity. Active mud volcanoes tend to involve temperatures much lower than those of igneousvolcanoes, except when a mud volcano is actually a vent of an igneous volcano. Volcano Management Volcanoes refer to eruption of hot molten lava from below the surface of the earth. As plates move away from each other, at certain places, the surface might get stretched and thinner. In such a situation, the hot molten lava and gaseous substances below this thinned surface could open up a fissure and come out.

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Typically, these eruptions are always accompanied by discharge of huge amount of gaseous substances, which are various compounds of high toxicity. All eruptions (gaseous or liquid) from a volcano is at high temperature, and, the mouth of a volcano might look like, as if its spewing fire. The area around Pacific Ocean is characterized by higher volcanic activity. In fact, the entire rim along the Pacific Ocean is called as the Ring Of Fire, because of volcanic activity along this zone. There are a lot of volcanic activities taking place on a continuous basis, across the globe, however, not all of these are serious enough to be termed as disasters. In fact, for most of these just a moderate level of precaution might be sufficient. Even if volcanic activities do not result in too many fatalities, they still do create immense challenges in terms of humanitarian aid, due to destruction of houses, contamination of food and water. Also, one has to deal with large-scale migration, relief camps etc. which also give rise to sanitation concerns which in turn results in various complications due to diseases related to lack of proper sanitation facilities. During a volcanic activity, the best place to be would be indoors. Because the atmosphere is full of toxic chemicals, put filter-masks over your mouth and nose, and, use goggles to protect your eyes. Being outdoors could be one of the riskiest thing to do, as, you could be coming in contact with volcanic ashes which could cause irritation to your eyes, skin etc. at the bare minimum, and, could also cause breathlessness, or, long term damage to you lungs, eyes etc. Avoid weak structures, including the fresh layers which might have been formed by solidifying of lava during earlier discharges. This is usually a mistake that tourists might make. Tourists might have a tendency to get closer to the source of gaseous/lava discharge thus, maybe, standing on such structures which are unstable and are probable to slide. Avoid being in the path of flow of the molten lava. Avoid fumes/vapors of petrol etc. Presence of high temperature material in the atmosphere could cause a fire, if these fumes come in contact with high temperature material, e.g. During the Nyiragongo volcanic activity (Jan. 2002), people were trying to siphon off petrol from a gas-station. A leakage came in
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contact with the hot lava, and, caused a blast at the gas-station, causing more than 50 people to die. The inlets to your houses should be covered with filters, or, these inlets should be closed to prevent toxic ashes etc. to enter your house etc. Avoid use of electronic goods, as, ashes might have entered the vent of these goods (usually provided for heat-dissipation), and, could cause short-circuit inside the devices. Because, one of the main issues post-volcano is lack of water and food, it would help to familiarize with General Preparedeness which also provides certain tips on being able to survive for several days provided, preparations have been made in advance. Post-volcano also, efforts must be made to minimize contact with the debris/ashes which have been spewed by the volcano. Clothes must be shaken and rinsed. Ashes must be vacuumed, and, the vacuum lint filter should be changed. Car filters should be changed, and so on. If you are staying in an area, which is prone to volcanic activities, the houses should be constructed in a manner which will allow closing all vents, i.e. windows and doors should have proper caulking.

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Tsunami Management

A tsunami (plural: tsunamis or tsunami; fromJapanese: , lit. "harbour wave";[1]English pronunciation: /sunmi/ soo-NAH-mee or /tsunmi/ tsoo-NAHmee[2]) is a series of water waves caused by the displacement of a large volume of a body of water, generally an ocean or a large lake.Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and otherunderwater explosions (including detonations of underwater nuclear devices), landslides,glacier calvings, meteorite impacts and other disturbances above or below water all have the potential to generate a tsunami.[3] Tsunami waves do not resemble normal sea waves, because their wavelength is far longer. Rather than appearing as a breaking wave, a tsunami may instead initially resemble a rapidly rising tide, and for this reason they are often referred to as tidal waves. Tsunamis generally consist of a series of waves with periods ranging from minutes to hours, arriving in a so-called "wave train".[4]Wave heights of tens of metres can be generated by large events. Although the impact of tsunamis is limited to coastal areas, their destructive power can be enormous shorelines.and they can affect entire ocean basins; the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was among the deadliest natural disasters in human history with over 230,000 people killed in 14 countries bordering the Indian Ocean.

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The Greek historian Thucydides suggested in his late 5th century BC, History of the Peloponnesian War, that tsunamis were related to submarine earthquakes,[5][6] but the understanding of a tsunami's nature remained slim until the 20th century and much remains unknown. Major areas of current research include trying to determine why some large earthquakes do not generate tsunamis while other smaller ones do; trying to accurately forecast the passage of tsunamis across the oceans; and also to forecast how tsunami waves would interact with specific.

Tsunami are sometimes referred to as tidal waves, which are unusually high sea waves that are triggered especially by earthquakes. [8] In recent years, this term has fallen out of favor, especially in the scientific community, because tsunami actually have nothing to do with tides. The once-popular term derives from their most common appearance, which is that of an extraordinarily high tidal bore. Tsunami and tides both produce waves of water that move inland, but in the case of tsunami the inland movement of water is much greater and lasts for a longer period, giving the impression of an incredibly high tide. Although the meanings of "tidal" include "resembling"[9] or "having the form or character of"[10] the tides, and

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the term tsunami is no more accurate because tsunami are not limited to harbours, use of the term tidal wave is discouraged bygeologists and oceanographers. There are only a few other languages that have an equivalent native word. In Acehnese language, the words are i beuna[11] or aln buluk[12] (depending on the dialect). In Tamil language, it is aazhi peralai. On Simeulue island, off the western coast of Sumatra in Indonesia, in Devayan language the word is smong, while in Sigulai language it is emong.[13] In Singkil (in Aceh province) and surrounding, the people name tsunami with word gloro.[14]

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