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The tsunami
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Surviving the TsunamiTranslator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast Before March, 2011, I was a photographic retoucher based in New York City. We're pale, gray creatures. We hide in dark, windowless rooms, and generally avoid sunlight. We make skinny models skinnier, perfect skin more perfect, and the impossible possible, and we get criticized in the press all the time, but some of us are actually talented artists with years of experience and a real appreciation for images and photography. On March 11, 2011, I watched from home, as the rest of the world did, as the tragic events unfolded in Japan. Soon after, an organization I volunteer with, All Hands Volunteers, were on the ground, within days, working as part of the response efforts. I, along with hundreds of other volunteers, knew we couldn't just sit at home, so I decided to join them for three weeks. On May the 13th, I made my way to the town of Ōfunato. It's a small fishing town in Iwate Prefecture, about 50,000 people, one of the first that was hit by the wave. The waters here have been recorded at reaching over 24 meters in height, and traveled over two miles inland. As you can imagine, the town had been devastated. We pulled debris from canals and ditches. We cleaned schools. We de-mudded and gutted homes ready for renovation and rehabilitation. We cleared tons and tons of stinking, rotting fish carcasses from the local fish processing plant. We got dirty, and we loved it. For weeks, all the volunteers and locals alike had been finding similar things. They'd been finding photos and photo albums and cameras and SD cards. And everyone was doing the same. They were collecting them up, and handing them in to various places around the different towns for safekeeping. Now, it wasn't until this point that I realized that these photos were such a huge part of the personal loss these people had felt. As they had run from the wave, and for their lives, absolutely everything they had, everything had to be left behind. At the end of my first week there, I found myself helping out in an evacuation center in the town. I was helping clean the onsen, the communal onsen, the huge giant bathtubs. This happened to also be a place in the town where the evacuation center was collecting the photos. This is where people were handing them in, and I was honored that day that they actually trusted me to help them start hand-cleaning them. Now, it was emotional and it was inspiring, and I've always heard about thinking outside the box, but it wasn't until I had actually gotten outside of my box that something happened. As I looked through the photos, there were some were over a hundred years old, some still in the envelope from the processing lab, I couldn't help but think as a retoucher that I could fix that tear and mend that scratch, and I knew hundreds of people who could do the same. So that evening, I just reached out on Facebook and asked a few of them, and by morning the response had been so overwhelming and so positive, I knew we had to give it a go. So we started retouching photos. This was the very first. Not terribly damaged, but where the water had caused that discoloration on the girl's face had to be repaired with such accuracy and delicacy. Otherwise, that little girl isn't going to look like that little girl anymore, and surely that's as tragic as having the photo damaged. (Applause) Over time, more photos came in, thankfully, and more retouchers were needed, and so I reached out again on Facebook and LinkedIn, and within five days, 80 people wanted to help from 12 different countries. Within two weeks, I had 150 people wanting to join in. Within Japan, by July, we'd branched out to the neighboring town of Rikuzentakata, further north to a town called Yamada. Once a week, we would set up our scanning equipment in the temporary photo libraries that had been set up, where people were reclaiming their photos. The older ladies sometimes hadn't seen a scanner before, but within 10 minutes of them finding their lost photo, they could give it to us, have it scanned, uploaded to a cloud server, it would be downloaded by a gaijin, a stranger, somewhere on the other side of the globe, and it'd start being fixed. The time it took, however, to get it back is a completely different story, and it depended obviously on the damage involved. It could take an hour. It could take weeks. It could take months. The kimono in this shot pretty much had to be hand-drawn, or pieced together, picking out the remaining parts of color and detail that the water hadn't damaged. It was very time-consuming. Now, all these photos had been damaged by water, submerged in salt water, covered in bacteria, in sewage, sometimes even in oil, all of which over time is going to continue to damage them, so hand-cleaning them was a huge part of the project. We couldn't retouch the photo unless it was cleaned, dry and reclaimed. Now, we were lucky with our hand-cleaning. We had an amazing local woman who guided us. It's very easy to do more damage to those damaged photos. As my team leader Wynne once said, it's like doing a tattoo on someone. You don't get a chance to mess it up. The lady who brought us these photos was lucky, as far as the photos go. She had started hand-cleaning them herself and stopped when she realized she was doing more damage. She also had duplicates. Areas like her husband and her face, which otherwise would have been completely impossible to fix, we could just put them together in one good photo, and remake the whole photo. When she collected the photos from us, she shared a bit of her story with us. Her photos were found by her husband's colleagues at a local fire department in the debris a long way from where the home had once stood, and they'd recognized him. The day of the tsunami, he'd actually been in charge of making sure the tsunami gates were closed. He had to go towards the water as the sirens sounded. Her two little boys, not so little anymore, but her two boys were both at school, separate schools. One of them got caught up in the water. It took her a week to find them all again and find out that they had all survived. The day I gave her the photos also happened to be her youngest son's 14th birthday. For her, despite all of this, those photos were the perfect gift back to him, something he could look at again, something he remembered from before that wasn't still scarred from that day in March when absolutely everything else in his life had changed or been destroyed. After six months in Japan, 1,100 volunteers had passed through All Hands, hundreds of whom had helped us hand-clean over 135,000 photographs, the large majority — (Applause) — a large majority of which did actually find their home again, importantly. Over five hundred volunteers around the globe helped us get 90 families hundreds of photographs back, fully restored and retouched. During this time, we hadn't really spent more than about a thousand dollars in equipment and materials, most of which was printer inks. We take photos constantly. A photo is a reminder of someone or something, a place, a relationship, a loved one. They're our memory-keepers and our histories, the last thing we would grab and the first thing you'd go back to look for. That's all this project was about, about restoring those little bits of humanity, giving someone that connection back. When a photo like this can be returned to someone like this, it makes a huge difference in the lives of the person receiving it. The project's also made a big difference in the lives of the retouchers. For some of them, it's given them a connection to something bigger, giving something back, using their talents on something other than skinny models and perfect skin. I would like to conclude by reading an email I got from one of them, Cindy, the day I finally got back from Japan after six months. "As I worked, I couldn't help but think about the individuals and the stories represented in the images. One in particular, a photo of women of all ages, from grandmother to little girl, gathered around a baby, struck a chord, because a similar photo from my family, my grandmother and mother, myself, and newborn daughter, hangs on our wall. Across the globe, throughout the ages, our basic needs are just the same, aren't they?" Thank you. (Applause) (Applause)The Great Tsunami of 2004The collision of oceanic and continental crust as well as the collision of two oceanic crust results in the formation of trenches and volcanic arcs. This will also result in the generation of earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. Earthquakes are generated when a fault on the edges of the plates occurs. That is, part of the edges of the plate breaks. The breaking causes shaking on the plates that are felt on the surface. This shaking is what we call earthquakes. When part of the plate breaks during the collision, shifting of the ocean floor happens. During the shifting, energy is released. This energy pushes the ocean water above. When this ocean water reaches the shores, we call them tsunami. During subduction, as plates reach the mantle, it will eventually be melted as magma. When these magmas find a weak spot in the crust, it forms a volcano. This volcano erupts when the crust cannot withstand the pressure exerted by the magma. Earthquakes are generated when a fault on the edges of the plates occurs. That is, part of the edges of the plate breaks. The breaking causes shaking on the plates that are felt on the surface. This shaking is what we call earthquakes. When part of the plate breaks during the collision, shifting of the ocean floor happens. During the shifting, energy is released. This energy pushes the ocean water above. When this ocean water reaches the shores, we call them tsunami. During subduction, as plates reach the mantle, it will eventually be melted as magma. When these magmas find a weak spot in the crust, it forms a volcano. This volcano erupts when the crust cannot withstand the pressure exerted by the magma. Earthquakes, tsunami and eruption of volcanoes are natural disasters brought by the activity of the subduction zone. These natural disasters may cause the loss of lives, damage to properties, displacement to other areas, and livelihood.Volcanic Eruptions Earthquakes are sometimes used in predicting volcanic eruptions. An earthquake alerts the authorities to observe a nearby volcano. When a volcano shows signs of eruption, evacuation of the nearby villages should be immediately implemented Active volcanoes are the ones that are usually closely monitored by volcanologists These are commonly located along plate boundaries specifically along the Pacific Ring of Fire. The Philippines is one of the countries that have a lot of volcanoes. The Pacific Ring of Fire is a region in the Pacific where most active volcanoes are located. The dots in the figure represent the active volcanoes in the world. Active volcanoes are those that have a recorded volcanic eruption in their history. There are two types of volcanic eruptions depending on the magma composition: the explosive type and the Hawaiian or nonexplosive type. The types of eruptions depend on the viscosity and amount of dissolved gases in a magma. Explosive eruptions have magma that is highly viscous and contains large amounts of dissolved gases. On the other hand, the Hawaiian type or nonexplosive eruptions have magma that has low viscosity and low amount of dissolved gases. Viscosity determines the ability of magma to flow. The lower the viscosity, the easier it is for the magma to flow. This viscosity of the magma is affected by silica content and temperature. Low-temperature magma with high silica content are highly viscous, high-temperature magma with low silica content has low viscosity. Therefore, in explosive eruptions, the magma could not easily get out of the vent. This impedes the remaining magma below, causing an increase of pressure. Once the pressure is released. an explosive eruption occurs. Volcanic Hazards Explosive volcanic eruptions release pyroclastic flows and materials that are considered to pose the greatest threat. The pyroclastic flows often render people in a shock state since they become overwhelmed with what they are seeing Too much pyroclastic material (eg., tephra), may bury people and severely damage the agricultural land and livestock. Damaged agricultural land could lead to famine. After an eruption, pyroclastic materials that have settled along the slope of the volcano get mixed with rainwater. This would start a mudflow or lahar moving at high speed, destroying everything along its path. Poisonous gases are also released by volcanoes. These gases can be lethal to people, animals, and plants. Just like earthquakes, violent volcanic eruptions may also happen underwater, which can trigger a tsunami. CONTENT A disaster is a sad event that happens suddenly. A disaster can come from nature or by accident. Natural disaster is disaster caused by nature. They are not caused by man’s carelessness. The following are examples of natural disaster: i) Earthquakes ii) Floods iii) Tornadoes iv) Windstorms v) Volcanoes vi) Erosion vii) Tsunami viii) Thunderstorm. BAD EFFECTS OF NATURAL DISASTER ARE AS FOLLOWS: i) Loss of human lives. ii) Loss of animal lives. iii) Damages to building iv)Damages to roads and bridges v) Pollution of land, air and water. vi)Destruction of electric poles and cables. WAYS OF CONTROLLING NATURAL DISASTER ARE: i) Building houses far away from rivers. ii) Thunder- catchers should be used in areas where thunder and lightning are common. iii) Planting of trees around our houses. iv) By not throwing refuse into gutters because this causes flooding.Earthquake Hazards There are so many things that can happen during or after an earthquake. There are surface rupture and physical damage to buildings and other infrastructures, liquefaction, fire, landslide, and tsunami. Surface rupture and physical damage is the most obvious hazard of an earthquake the ground to break and buildings to collapse. Urban areas would experience more Earthquakes with higher energy create stronger ground motion, which can cause of this damage due to the presence of more infrastructures. Liquefaction occurs in areas where the soil becomes saturated with water. During an earthquake, the movement of the ground may loosen the soil and allow more water to seep in between the particles. This decreases the ability of the soil to support structures that are resting upon it. When it can no longer support a building, instead of being toppled over, the building starts to sink. Liquefaction mostly occur in reclaimed lands, which were once a part of a body of water. Fires can break out during or after an earthquake due to damaged or broken utility lines, substations, and power plants. It can also occur when ground rupture breaks gas tanks or pipes that lead to gas leaks. Tsunami or a harbor wave is an earthquake hazard that is generated when earthquakes occur on the seafloor. Tsunami displaces large volume of water from the sea to the land, causing damages in the cities and communities near the shore (figure 4-2).