Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2015
Making development sustainable: The future of disaster risk management

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1.1 Dis-astrum and kata-strophe
Disasters have been interpreted as threatening development from the outside. As a result, disaster risk generation within development has not been addressed effectively.
In the early morning hours of 26 December 2004, a 9.1 magnitude earthquake, the third largest ever registered on a seismograph, occurred between the island of Simeulue and mainland Indonesia.1 The earthquake triggered massive tsunamis that impacted the coast of Sumatra as well as most of the countries that border the Indian Ocean. The violence of their impact was such that an estimated 230,000 people died in 14 countries, particularly in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India, but also as far away as Somalia.
Devastating tsunamis have occurred throughout history. The word tsunami is Japanese, formed by the combination of tsu (= harbour) and nami (= waves). The most destructive tsunami in Japanese history took place on 15 June 1896, killing
around 22,000 people.2 Triggered by an earthquake off the Sanriku coast, the waves reached a height of 40 metres, destroying everything in their path.
The earthquakes and tsunamis that engulfed the port of Callao in Peru in 1746 and Lisbon in 1755 captured the attention of Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire and Rousseau and provoked speculation on the causes of disaster (UNISDR, 2011a

UNISDR. 2011a,Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction: Revealing Risk, Redefining Development, Geneva, Switzerland: UNISDR.. .
). In the Indian Ocean, the eruption of Krakatoa on 27 August 1883 led to massive tsunamis. On 28 December 1908, the Messina earthquake and tsunami in the Mediterranean killed approximately 123,000 people in Sicily and Calabria and was considered the worst tsunamirelated disaster prior to the events in the Indian Ocean in 2004 (Figure 1.1).
The coastal population of Simeulue and the Andaman Islands largely escaped the impact of the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. Understanding and responding to tsunamis was still deeply ingrained in their culture, prompting them to evacuate to higher ground. But elsewhere the tsunami caught local populations and foreign tourists unaware and unprepared.
A tsunami early warning system, including education and preparedness on how to react after an earthquake, could have enabled hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate and survive the disaster. An operational tsunami warning system had existed in the Pacific Basin since 1949.3 However, no such early warning system had been developed in the Indian Ocean, and for
Chapter 1
(Source: Miller, 1909

Miller, Martin. 1909,The World’s Greatest Disaster: The Complete Story of the Italian Earthquake Horror, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society.. .
Figure 1.1 Devastating earthquake and tsunami in Messina, 1908
A history of violence
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