Dominica joins the rest of the world in observing today, November 5 as World Tsunami Awareness Day.
This is the first observance since the decision was taken by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly Resolution to designate Nov. 5th each year as World Tsunami Awareness day and stipulated that the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) in collaboration with other relevant organizations of the United Nations System will assist with its observance.
November 5 was selected by the UN General Assembly to coincide with the annual anniversary of the 1854 Fire of Inamura event. On that day, a villager in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan through his quick action had saved countless lives when he set fire to sheaves of rice on top of a hill, thus warning people of the imminent danger of a tsunami.This was the first documented instance of a Tsunami early warning.
This first World Tsunami Awareness Day worldwide is focusing on effective education and evacuation drills. Although Tsunamis do not occur very frequently, they can cause huge disasters as the 2004 Indian Ocean which affected 14 different countries and resulted in more than 250,000 casualties.
The event in the Caribbean region will be organized within the framework of the Special Committee Meeting of the Disaster Risk Reduction annually organized by the Association of Caribbean States (ACS).
Tsunamis have impacted the Caribbean in the past and are therefore expected to occur in the future. In the past 500 years, there have been at least ten destructive, confirmed earthquake-generated Tsunamis in the Caribbean basin with four causing fatalities. An estimated number of more than 3000 people are thought to have been killed by these events.
The Office of Disaster Management will continue Tsunami effective education, Evacuation Drills and other activities in coastal communities and seek to establish Tsunami Ready Communities.
A meeting to commemorate the UN decision was held in Port of Spain on October 20, 2016.
We are not serious, right? We are observing Tsunami awareness day and the govt. building a a large hotel right there on the beach at the Cabrits in our national park. How can the two go together, it does not make sense, right? They need their heads examining.
Not for Publishing: Please DNO – the caption under the photo may be factual but you cannot caption a photograph like this thus rendering photograph and caption together as totally and historically non-factual. First this is not LISBON IN 1775. This picture is of a Japanese town after the 2011 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tōhoku. As the Caribbean focal point for emergency telecommunications within the ITU I have looked at this photo quite a lot.
In 1775 Japan did not have this architecture and there were absolutely no cars. I am not a journalist but my limited knowledge of publishing tells me that this ought not – ought never to be done!!
Your Photo is authentic, the caption by itself is factual but the two together render your pictorial representation totally and historically non-factual.
I agree, the first place I thought of when I saw the picture was Japan
….. the reader typically looks just below the photo for information that helps explain the photo. That’s when captions and cutlines must perform. Then, typically, the reader, after digesting the information, goes back to the photo (so be sure you enhance the experience and explain anything that needs explaining).
… the reader typically looks just below the photo for information that helps explain the photo. That’s when captions and cutlines must perform. Then, typically, the reader, after digesting the information, goes back to the photo (so be sure you enhance the experience and explain anything that needs explaining).