miércoles, abril 14, 2010

2010, the year of natural disasters

DHN / Mark

Nature seems to have risen in recent times. And is that more than 220,000 people have been killed worldwide so far in 2010 as a result of natural disasters. The last one arrived on Wednesday with the earthquake of 7.1 degrees on the Richter scale that has left over 400 dead and 10,000 wounded in the western Chinese province of Qinghai. This is the third major earthquake recorded in just four months.

The largest of these occurred just opened 2010. An earthquake of 7 degrees shook Haiti killing at least 217,000 dead, a figure estimated to amount to 300,000 when fully completed work to clear debris. Two months after the tragedy, some 300,000 people are still recovering from his wounds and some three million victims try to rebuild their lives in the poorest country of America.

The incalculable damage were linked, rather than the force of the earthquake itself, the location of the epicenter, near Port au Prince, where nearly a quarter of the country’s population, and the poor quality of buildings in the area.

But it would be more than a month later, on February 27, when record the movement of soil from greater intensity of these first months of the year. The earthquake in Chile reached 8.8 degrees, making it the fifth worst in history. The consequences could even, according to experts, to modify the Earth’s axis to shorten the length of day at 1.26 microseconds and to alter the geographic position of cities in Chile and Argentina.

The death toll was, however, much lower than that of Haiti, 486 people died, hundreds of them for the subsequent tsunami that hit several areas from Chile and the Juan Fernández archipelago, while another 79 people missing. The number of victims grew to 800,000, while losses were valued at 30,000 million dollars.

A few days later, on 8 March, 51 people died and more than 70 were injured in a new land movement, this time in Elazig (Turkey), in an earthquake of 6 degrees on the Richter scale. Another tremor in Haiti, after the earthquake in January, died March 22 at least four people and three others injured when a building collapsed in Cap Haitien in the north.

The last earthquake that caused fatalities occurred before Wednesday took place on April 4 in Mexico, reaching 7.2 degrees on the Richter scale. Caused two deaths, 233 injuries and minor damage to infrastructure, especially in Mexicali, capital of Baja California, where more than one hundred aftershocks in the days after.

But not all natural disasters this year have been earthwork. Brazil suffered earlier in the month of April, the worst flooding in four decades by heavy rains, a tragedy which skews the lives of more than 200 people left Rio de Janeiro and thousands homeless Brazilians.

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