The Maldives has fragile environment and our Environment Minister has said global warming is destroying coral reefs of the world and this is posing serious threats to economic and social development and survival of many countries. He said about 27% of coral reefs has already been lost and faster loss of coral reefs is inevitable unless global warming is tackled urgently.
We have a fragile democracy too, one that is just beginning to shape and is fraught with difficulties as the political parties remain polarized and jostling for power.
In December 2004, a major earthquake followed by a tsunami hit Asia and Africa, devastating many coastal areas. Almost 200,000 people in eight countries perished in a few hours, and over 100,000 are still missing.
According to the UN, the estimated cost of the Indian Ocean mechanism would be US$30 million (not including maintenance), a far cry from the billions in damage caused by last month's Asian tsunami disaster, and a worthwhile investment to avoid the massive human loss suffered by the affected countries.
The Meteorological Department in Male' informs that it has the capacity of sending an early warning signal to Maldivians before a tsunami or earth quake affects Maldives.
Following such a warning, where are our people to run to get away from the disaster even if they get few hour escape time? We live in such cramped living conditions, the government will have to come out with clear guidelines on where the people can escape before such disaster occurs. The easier part will be to to issue the warnings. The difficult part will be to educate the vulnerable communities and implement the evacuation plans by our Government departments.
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2 comments:
needs an evacuation plane.The island needs to be designed in a way where water can pass through the island without flooding and people need to be aware of how to react on worst case scenarios like that.
Are we to concentrate only on tsunamis? what if a hurricane hits?
Hi blueminies
Thank you for your comment and good to hear from you.
Some highly paid consultants from somewhere can tell us how to press the button to issue a warning. Evacuation of peope needs much more logistics than that and it is difficult to figure out how we will measure up for such a task when we are unable to keep our streets safe now.
To design flood channels around small islands will be a costly operation. It will be cheaper to look for alternative less perilous habitable places.
Every year we hear of the death and damage caused by hurricane, drought or flooding due to the monsoonal effects over parts of India and Bangladesh. We have not even thought about what to do if such an incident occurs to us.
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