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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- Climate
- The Guardian
Why did such a powerful earthquake and tsunami cause so little damage?
On Wednesday, one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded hit a sparsely populated region in far-east Russia. It triggered a tsunami that started crossing the ocean at hundreds of miles an hour. What followed was a race against time: early-warning systems went into alert mode as waves fanned out towards the coastlines of Japan, Hawaii and the US west coast. The damage appears to have been minor so far and this is, in part, thanks to a global and highly successful disaster response effort. More than 3 million people were successfully told to evacuate their homes. At the centre of this remarkable response was the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC), based in Hawaii. Founded in 1949, it was monitoring tsunamis across the entire ocean by the 1960s. A small team of experts identified the size and depth of the earthquake, and a tsunami warning was triggered straight away. The whole thing worked like clockwork – their speed and accuracy may have saved thousands of lives, with temporary evacuees now allowed to return home. But this type of work could be under threat. The PTWC is part of a US government agency that has faced cuts from the Trump administration. The 8.8-magnitude earthquake hit off Russia's Kamchatka peninsula on Wednesday morning. The rupture happened along hundreds of miles of a fault line where the Pacific plate is sinking below the North American plate. This is one of the largest faults on Earth – it is called a megathrust fault – and parts of it are underwater, which means there is always a tsunami risk. The earthquake was 30 miles (47km) beneath sea level and sent shock waves at a range of 200 miles. Tsunamis travel across the ocean at about 500mph, the speed of a jumbo jet, so some communities had just few minutes' warning – while those on the other side of the ocean had a few hours. Unlike in the movies, when it is typically one massive wave, tsunamis are often several waves that will continue to travel around the world for days. The epicentre was near the Russian city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which has a population of 180,000 people. Residents fled inland as ports flooded, while 200 miles north, the Klyuchevskoy volcano erupted, with lava descending its western slope. Maximum tsunami wave heights of 4 metres (13ft) were observed in Kamchatka. Some buildings on the coastal area of Severo-Kurilsk in Russia were swept away, according to local officials. The Kremlin has said alert systems 'worked well' in the earthquake response and there were no casualties. The tsunami prompted warnings and evacuations across the Pacific, including in Japan, the US west coast, Hawaii, Canada, Chile, Ecuador and New Zealand. Nevertheless, the height of the waves turned out to be lower than initially feared. In Hawaii the highest recorded waves reached 1.8 metres, in California there were surges of just over a metre, and in Japan waves remained under half a metre. Local authorities were clear about how to evacuate and gave specific locations across more than a dozen nations. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion In Hawaii, for example, tsunami warning sirens blared. Evacuations were ordered for some coastal areas as the Honolulu department of emergency management announced: 'Take action. Destructive tsunami waves expected.' People received alerts on their phones. All islands activated emergency operating centres, shelters opened, and people in coastal areas were told to go to higher ground. Similar warnings were issued elsewhere. In Japan, almost 2 million people had been ordered to higher ground. Local media reported one fatality of a woman killed while driving her car off a cliff as she tried to escape. In Chile, authorities conducted what the interior ministry said was 'perhaps the most massive evacuation ever carried out in our country' involving 1.4 million people. Ilan Kelman, professor of disasters and health at University College London, says: 'It looks like it's been very effective. People had that long-term education, and that long-term readiness to know what to do.' He estimates that this preparedness saved thousands of lives. At this time of year there is a lot of tourist activity along many Pacific coastlines, and visitors are often unfamiliar with local warning systems or evacuation zones. This can make evacuations more challenging. 'It appears from places where the tsunami wave has hit, numerous lives were saved by drawing on that past experience,' says Kelman, notably the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, which killed more than 200,000 people. At the time there was no regional tsunami early warning system in place, and the Indian Ocean was not considered a high-risk area. Some warnings were sent by fax and email, and did not reach people in time. The 2004 tsunami was also significantly more severe – some waves exceeded 30 metres in height; whereas so far waves from this latest tsunami appear to have reached a maximum of 5 metres in Russia, says Kelman. In most places, waves were less than a metre high, and in many places effects were negligible so the disaster that was anticipated did not arrive. This is another important factor in why damage has been limited. Several international centres send out automatic messages for earthquakes, depending on the location. The Indian Ocean tsunami warning system was set up after 2004. Kelman says: 'It was never done before then because it was always too expensive, there were always other priorities, but suddenly it became a priority … It has been tested several times with mixed results, so we have to improve it.' There is no effective equivalent for the Atlantic Ocean. The main centre to identify this earthquake was the PTWC. 'They were on it right away,' says Kelman. 'Knowing the size of the earthquake and the depth of the earthquake and the type of the earthquake meant that there was a significant chance of a major tsunami. They issued tsunami warnings and got the messages out there, which were then disseminated by national governments and local authorities.' However, the PTWC sits within a US government agency targeted by Elon Musk-led cuts earlier this year. Kelman says this tsunami shows how needed it is. He says: 'We would hope that if the cuts did affect them, they will be reversed and that the people who have saved lives today will also get more support for appropriate resources. 'It appears that they were nonetheless exceptionally effective, and we owe them so many thanks for issuing appropriate messages and saving many lives.'
New York Times
3 hours ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Kavanaugh Defends Supreme Court's Terse Emergency Orders
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said on Thursday that the Supreme Court should be wary of providing detailed explanations for its rulings on emergency applications like those arising from challenges to the Trump administration's efforts to transform the federal government. 'There can be a risk, in writing the opinion, of a lock-in effect, of making a snap judgment and putting it in writing, in a written opinion that's not going to reflect the final view,' he said. The justice made the remarks at the judicial conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, held this year in Kansas City, Mo. In a similar appearance last week at the Ninth Circuit's judicial conference, Justice Elena Kagan, who has often dissented from the court's emergency rulings in favor of President Trump, made the opposite case, saying the majority should do more to explain its reasoning. 'I think as we have done more and more on this emergency docket, there becomes a real responsibility that I think we didn't recognize when we first started down this road, to explain things better,' Justice Kagan said. 'I think that we should hold ourselves, sort of on both sides, to a standard of explaining why we're doing what we're doing.' Justice Kavanaugh was interviewed on Thursday by Judge Sarah E. Pitlyk of the Federal District Court in St. Louis, who was a law clerk of his when he was a federal appeals court judge in Washington. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Washington Post
5 hours ago
- Automotive
- Washington Post
Trump's EPA is targeting key vehicle pollution rules. What that means for carmakers
DETROIT — The Environmental Protection Agency's plan this week to relax rules aimed at cleaning up auto tailpipe emissions is the latest Trump administration move to undo incentives for automakers to go electric. As part of a larger effort to undo climate-based governmental regulations , the EPA on Tuesday said it wants to revoke the 2009 finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. That would cripple the legal basis for limiting emissions from things like power plants and motor vehicles.
New York Times
6 hours ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Trump Wants a New Border Wall. It Would Block a Key Wildlife Corridor.
A Trump administration plan to build 25 miles of wall along a remote stretch of rolling grasslands and mountains in Arizona would block one of the largest and most important remaining wildlife corridors on the state's border with Mexico, according to a report this month by the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group. 'A barrier here would block species movement, destroy protected habitats, and inflict irreversible damage on critical ecological linkages,' the report said. Wildlife cameras have photographed 20 species of wildlife moving freely across the border in this area — including black bears, mountain lions and mule deer — movement that would be sharply curtailed by the planned 30-foot-tall wall, researchers say. This part of the borderlands, which includes the San Rafael Valley and the Patagonia and Huachuca Mountains, also contains critical habitat for endangered jaguars, at least three of which have been recorded in the area over the past decade. At least 16 other threatened and endangered species are found there. 'It's a good perspective of what's going and what's going to happen,' Gerardo Ceballos, an ecologist and a senior researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said of the report. If this wall and a few others are built, he said, 'there will be no jaguars in the U.S. soon.' The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, cleared the way for construction on this stretch of wall in June by issuing waivers that exempt contractors from more than 30 federal laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Bloomberg
7 hours ago
- Politics
- Bloomberg
How Trump-Vetted Scientists Are Trying to Shred the Climate Consensus
A new report from the US Department of Energy says projections of future global warming are exaggerated, while benefits from higher levels of carbon dioxide such as more productive farms are overlooked. It concludes, at odds with the scientific mainstream, that policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions risk doing more harm than good. Released Tuesday, the report is part of an effort by the Trump administration to try to end the US government's authority to regulate greenhouse gases. It's the output of scientists known for contradicting the consensus embodied in volumes of research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose work is approved by virtually every nation.
