Over the past two decades, tsunamis caused almost 10 per cent of economis losses from disasters, causing slow development especially in countries that border the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
World Tsunami Awareness Day is an opportunity to emphasize again the importance of disaster prevention and preparedness, including early warning, public education, science to better understand and predict tsunamis, and development that takes account of risk in seismic zones and exposed coastal areas.
Like I wrote tsunamis are rare but extremly deadly. In the past decade, there were 58 tsunamis and they claimed more than 260,000 lives so it is an average of 4,600 per disaster. The tsunami that has the highest number of deaths in this period was in the Indian Ocean what was in december 4. It has 227,000 fatalities in 14 countries.
Petra Kántor