As soon as the news of Japan’s earthquake hit all news media, I had paid close attention to this news with interested mind. Not only the highly magnitude earthquake but it was also the consequent massive tsunami that struck afterward and swept all structure near coastline out, causing serious devastation throughout Japan. A report on the topic of "Japan earthquake: Can you tsunami-proof a country?" shows that despite having the most advanced technology in disaster warning and preventing systems in the world, Japan still encounter such high impact of natural disaster. This is very important for us to become concerned about the measures of preparation for any disasters that may strike our country any times.
This news reminded me of what happens in Thailand in the last New Year period. In "Tsunami warning make problem for Phuket tourism industry", Thai fortune teller release rumor of the possibility of tsunami impending in the southern part of Thailand. This rumor has a damaging impact on tourism activities in the area. Since Thai culture has been involving astrological prediction for a long time, whatever a famous fortune teller said seems to significantly influence most of Thai people. This also seriously affects Thailand’s economy. In each New Year season, our country receives a lot of income from tourism activities, so the rumor without using any discretion will definitely affect our country. However, having considered, I would like to attribute the influence of this effect to the following causes. Firstly, the waning system of Thailand is not as effective as those of developed countries, resulting in unreliability of this system. The example of this problem is as reported in "Tsunami drill causes concern". The waning system made several errors in the test, causing many chaos amount people in the community. After having several mistakes in warning system, people have never believed such warning system anymore. They then turn to find another prediction source that seems more likely. This makes them become to more believe in any prediction from a fortune teller. Another cause is that media attempt to raise the program rating by invite famous fortune teller to make predictions for Thailand. Whatever that seems to be true according to the prediction will be picked up to present to the public again, while any wrong prediction will disappear from public attention, never be discussed any more. Therefore, whatever predicted by any fortune teller seems to be true because the public is always informed only what is matched with the prediction, never remember other wrong predictions. Whoever can predict correctly in the last year is likely to be believable in the following year. If the prediction becomes wrong, that fortune teller will be replaced by another one, who can “guess” more correctly. This became the issue among scientific community in Pantip.com. The group of people in the online community challenged a fortune teller who predicted that tsunami would strike the south part of Thailand in the last New Year period that, if the prediction was correct, they are willing to give one million baht to that fortune teller. However, no any fortune teller dared to take such a challenge. Of course, no tsunami occurred as the prediction. “I think these people should take responsibility for their fortune teller, because this is making an impact on tourism in our southern provinces” said president of the Phuket Provincial Administrative organization (¶ 4, Jaktmeiter). I think so. If we have the more reliable warning system and help together to picks up every case of wrong predictions to be under serious discussion, we would be likely to have much less impact from any disaster.
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Although the most technological advance for earthquake and tsunami warning system has been developed and installed in Japan, it seems the human’s attempt cannot overcome the natural power. Such advance warning systems are able to detect the arrival of an earthquake as well as tsunami very early. The warning systems together with the effectively broadcasting networks can make people get ready for an upcoming disaster. Moreover, there are policies aiming to instruct the people about how to get ready for the disasters and encourage them to adoption of the earthquake-proof building structure. However, the carefully protective policies are not always as effective as they expected because of the limited time to prepare the evacuation and limitations in structural construction.
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References
Japan earthquake: Can you tsunami-proof a country?, (11 March 2011), BBC News. retrieved March 14, 2011 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12711173
Jaktmeiter, Tsunami warning make problems for Phuket tourism industry, (11 Dec 2010), retrieved March 14, 2011 from http://jaktmeister.com/2010/12/tsunami-warning-make-problems-for-phuket-tourism-industry
Fredrickson, Terry, Tsunami drill causes concern, (14 September 2010), retrieved March 14, 2011 from http://www.readbangkokpost.com/generalnews
This article you wrote remind me of what happened at Phuket that there was no warning for people to evacuate from that area at all. At the same time, government policies at that time didn't aim to instuct people to be aware of natural disaster not like well-planed policies in Japan. I believe that there would be more upcoming disasters in Thailand like the researchers had predicted,so the thai government should be more aware of that from now.
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