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 Imran Khan These articles are by Imran Khan from Pakistan. Mr. Khan is a very intelligent, hard worker in Pakistan who is looking to expand his career and talents by writing and expressing his opinions and views upon the world and other world issues. Contact Mr. Khan: imran@wzartv.com Comment in the Forum Write articles for WZAR |
Natural Disasters On Saturday the 8th of October 2005 at 0852 hours, Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan were struck by a major earthquake; its epic-center was in Pakistan, so the destruction here was immense, so for more than 49,000 people killed, around 60,000 injured, and millions lost their homes. It was a powerful earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale and it never happened before in the history of Pakistan. It came in the area where no major earthquake ever occurred. The buildings were never constructed to hold a major earthquake so the devastation is unbelievable. The one thing which could have been even worse is if it would have come at night the death toll could be many times more as there are almost 90% buildings collapsed because of this earthquake. The rescue work was started immediately at a very large scale and all the world responded rapidly. Most of the specialist rescuer teams from other countries arrived immediately. But the damage was so great and the whole area is mountainous (around 1000 meters above the sea level), making it even harder to perform rescues. Population is spread in wide areas in shapes of little villages. The roads were completely destroyed and the only means to reach people is by helicopter. It’s becoming colder with every passing day and within two weeks it’s feared that snow will fall in the area. People desperately need shelter as they are passing their nights under the open sky with freezing temperatures. Still there are places where no one has even reached yet. It seems that natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, etc. are coming more quickly than ever before. At the End of August 2005, the USA saw hurricane Katrina and even the world’s most powerful country was helpless against her destruction. It caused more than 125 billion dollars and the death toll was also very high. On December 26, 2004, an earthquake in the Indian Ocean at the western coast of northern Sumatra (of the magnitude of 9), initiated several tsunamis that took more than 200,000 lives in many countries in Asia. It was the deadliest natural disaster in the past quarter of a century. A year before, exactly on the same date, an earthquake caused deaths of more than 40,000 in Iran. So in just less than 3 years natural disasters killed nearly 300,000 people, with almost double the number of people with injuries and billions and billions of dollars of damage in many countries; almost whole cities were gone out of shape and needed to be built again. The real difference between hurricanes, floods or even tsunamis and earthquakes is that we don’t have any technology which can tell us in advance time that an earthquake will strike. Yes, we must admit our knowledge in this regard is very little. Earthquakes cause more deaths in comparison to other natural disasters than we can know in advance before they strike us. Although science is still not able to predict the time of an earthquake it still helps us to make buildings strong enough to face the most powerful earthquake. Japan is a great example for that, as it is often struck by earthquakes, but to make these kinds of buildings, people need huge amounts of money and resources and as most of the countries are poor, they simply can’t afford it. No one ever wants to live in danger but unless they have no other choice at all to do so, as we see people live near volcanoes and other dangerous places.
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