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How Prepared Is Ireland For A Tsunami?
Topic Started: March 14 2011, 03:53 PM (368 Views)
Mark (IWO)
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ARTICLE FROM MAIN IWO WEBSITE
http://www.irishweatheronline.com/irishweather/climate/how-prepared-is-ireland-for-a-tsunami.html

The natural disaster in Japan has served as a stark reminder to island and coastal nations around the world of the devastating impact of Tsunamis.

On the other side of the world here in Ireland we would be forgiven for thinking we are immune to tsunamis/tidal waves considering we are not in a seismically active area. However, damaging tsunamis could affect Ireland from several geologically feasible scenarios.

Research shows that Ireland was hit by tsunamis on at least three occasions in the past 250 years. It is chronicled that in 1755, Tsunamis waves up to 40 feet reached Kinsale after an earthquake in the Portuguese capital killed 70,000 people. Recent modelling of a Lisbon earthquake scenario, conducted jointly with the UK, predicts waves up to 4m high along the south Irish coast.

Irish University researchers have in the past said that giant waves could reach Ireland within two-and-a-half hours of a volcanic eruption on the Canary Islands. Geologists have also warned that the country’s position in the Atlantic means the southwest coast would be the first to be hit by tsunamis caused by earthquakes in the Caribbean.

Furthermore, findings from the 2005 Irish National Seabed Survey (INSS), undertaken by the Marine Institute in partnership with the Geological Survey of Ireland and others, revealed a very substantial rockslide in the Atlantic Deeps which would have caused an enormous tsunami in the past, the effects of which are clearly visible on the coastlines of Northwest Ireland and Scotland.

Further back in history it is widely reported that a huge tidal wave affected parts of the west coast at the beginning of the 8th century. Clare County Library states: “The reef of Kilstiffin, Kilstapheen, or Kilstuitheen has a legend of a sunken church and city, of which the golden domes appear once in seven years. The submerged forests and bogs inside the reef in Liscannor Bay, and the record of the great earthquake and tidal wave that split into three Inis Fitæ on the same coast (A.D. 799-802), incline one to believe in a basis for the legend.”

Ireland's position away from seismically active zones does not however mean it is immune from earthquakes. Buildings on the east coast were damaged in 1984 after a 5.4 magnitude tremor hit Cardigan Bay, Wales. Last year a 2.7 magnitude tremor was recorded in Lisdoonvarna, north Clare, the first tremor or earthquake to be recorded in the west of Ireland in modern times.

So how prepared is Ireland for one of nature’ fiercest phenomena and does the country really require a Tsunami Warning System (TWS)*?

Following the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, the Government Taskforce on Emergency Planning gave the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI) the mandate to develop a concept for a tsunami warning system for Ireland in conjunction with other interested stakeholders, both national and international. The concept developed was approved at the meeting of the Government Task Force on Emergency Planning in October 2006. The Government mandated the setting up of an inter-Departmental committee to develop a fully designed and costed proposal in 2007.

Last year the project, which has received €100,000 in state funds, was being progressed by the cosmic physics division of the Dublin Institute for Advances Studies (DIAS) which plans to install four real-time seismic monitoring stations in classified locations around the southwest, west and northwest of Ireland. The stations will monitor earthquake activity and will add to information already provided by two stations, at Met Eireann’s Valentia observatory in Kerry and one near Dublin that the institute runs for Germany.

Tom Blake an experimental officer at DIAS told the Sunday Times in 2010: “When an earthquake occurs in this region we will be able to record the shockwaves and see them in real time…..Ultimately, the system could send an automatic text message to our phones which we could then analyse. If an earthquake is a magnitude of 6.5 or more on the Richter scale, we would then decide to issue a tsunami alert. If there was one in the Caribbean, it would take just 11 minutes for us to track the shockwaves in Ireland.”

Limited progress has been made at European level regarding a continental wide warning system. In 2005 the International Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO established an Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the North Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Tsunami Warning System (NEAMTWS) to deliver an initial system in the Mediterranean by end 2007 and a system for the whole region by 2011.

Meanwhile, ESONET (European Seafloor Observatory Network), comprising 10 linked regional networks in contrasting oceanographic regions has also yet to be fully realised despite being proposed a number of years ago. When complete, some 5,000 km of fibre optic sub-sea cables will link land based observatories to similar units on the ocean floor right around the European coast at an estimated cost of 130 - 220 M. View recommendations and ESONET report.

Some of most destructive tsunamis in the past 20 years: Nicaragua (1992), Indonesia (1992, 1994, 1996), Japan (1993), Philippines (1994), Mexico (1995), Peru (1996, 2001), Papua-New Guinea (1998), Turkey (1999), Vanuatu (1999), Indian Ocean (2005), and Japan (2011).

In an Irish context, tsunamis are low probability events that would have very significant impacts. Progress has been made in Ireland to alert the country and its citizens in the event of a tsunami threat. However, questions remain in relation to how people in low lying coastal areas would react to an actual tsunami warning and whether the systems proposed would sufficiently minimise risk to life and property.

*Tsunami early warning systems are based on observation networks of seismometers and sea level measuring stations, which send real time data to national and regional tsunami warning centres (TWCs). Based on these observations, TWCs are able to evaluate the potential for a given earthquake to generate a tsunami, and confirm or cancel a tsunami warning advisory. When a potentially destructive tsunami is detected, national authorities decide if a tsunami warning and an evacuation order must be issued to their public.
The coldest winter you will ever experience is a summer in West Clare.
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SandraD77
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Awesome!
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Very interesting post Mark!!! Makes you think eh!
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