How to escape from Tsunami?

Ways to prevent from Tsunami Disaster

- If you are at school, please follow the instructions of school head and teachers.
- If you are at home, let all family members know the warning information of Tsunami. If you are living in a Tsunami hazardous zone, make preparation for the prevention or move your dwelling from the hazardous zone to the safety places.
- If you are on the coast or nearby regions of the ocean at the time of earthquake occurrence (or if you feel the ground shaking), move immediately to the higher places.
- When you are on coast and feel the ground shaking, please do not wait until the warning information has come, move immediately to the higher places. Like moving away from the coast and ocean, please also move far away from the places nearby the rivers and streams which are connected with the sea and ocean.
- If the epicenter of the earthquake is far, the time to escape from the tsunami is enough. If it is near, the time is too short to move to the higher elevation places (hill or small mountain) because thetsunami could be reached within a few minutes.
- Chain of islands, coasts with the shallow depth and mangrove forests can make the tsunami wave disintegrate and weaken. But very strong and high tsunami wave can damage such situation. Living far from coastal flat land is the most safety way to escape from the tsunami disaster.
- The higher floor of several-stories-reinforced building (like hotels) at the coastal low land is one of the safe places to escape from the tsunami wave. But please avoid small houses and buildings which are not well structured and built for the resistance of the tsunami wave.

Reasons for the weakness of tsunami along the coast of Myanmar
- North-south trending earthquake belt starts at the south of Cocos island, continues until the northern part of Yakhine state. But no earthquake occurrence was recorded in the northern part of earthquake belt, the inland part of northern Yakhine state, and this portion is stated as the seismic gap.
- Therefore great earthquakes seldom occur in the Myanmar territorial water.
- Due to the presence of this seismic gap, even large earthquake could happen but its depth will be greater than 70 km (Such earthquake could not induce tsunami generation.).

Physical and technical characteristics of tsunami wave
How fast does tsunami wave travel?

Date
26 December 2004

Region
Sumatra Island

Direction

East-west
South-north

Speed of wave

800-1000 km/hr
400-500 km/hr


Arrival time of tsunami wave after the earthquake event

- West coast of Sumatra island 10 Minutes
- Phuket, Thailand 1 Hour
- Sri Lanka 2 Hours
- India 2 Hours
- Myanmar 3 Hours
- Kenya and Somalia 7 Hours

How does tsunami wave travel?

There are two assumptions for the motion of tsunami wave.
The first assumption is that generally tsunami wave travels in two directions. The first direction leads to the nearest coast from the tsunami source and the second one to the opposite direction that is commonly regarded as the open sea.
The second assumption is that tsunami wave travels towards two directions perpendicular to the long earthquake rupture.
The largest and powerful waves of 2004 Sumatra tsunami traveled mainly east-west direction perpendicular to the 1200 km long north-south trending Myanmar-India earthquake rupture.