Can animals predict disasters?

Five tiny songbirds fitted with tracking devices appear to have fled their nests in Tennessee just a day before tornadoes struck in April. The golden-winged warblers had arrived at their nesting site only a few days earlier after a 3,000 mile journey from Colombia.

Scientists believe they flew 400 miles south to escape the storms which killed 35 people, then returned after a few days. They think the warblers may have been alerted by a very deep rumble in the air, inaudible to the human ear.

In 2004, there were stories of animals escaping the Boxing Day tsunami. Witnesses spoke of flamingos deserting low-lying breeding areas, elephants screaming and running to higher ground, and dogs and zoo animals refusing to go outside their shelters.

While more than 200,000 people died, there were relatively few animal casualties. At Patanangala beach in Sri Lanka’s Yala National Park, home to a wide variety of animals, 60 people were washed away, but the only animals lost were two water buffaloes. There is speculation that perhaps animals are able to detect vibrations in the earth that pass us by.

Second biggest earthquake in history

This day 48 years ago saw the second biggest earthquake ever recorded.   For four minutes at about half past five in the evening of Good Friday, March 27, 1964, it rocked the Gulf of Alaska with a magnitude of 9.2.

Fissures appeared in the ground, buildings collapsed, and tsunamis were generated, but fortunately because the area was sparsely populated, only about 130 people died.

It was stronger than the underwater earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra that generated the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, resulting in perhaps 230,000 deaths.   This was the third most powerful ever recorded.

The strongest of all was the Chilean quake of 1960, which cost perhaps 4,500 lives and made 2 million people homeless.    Once again because of the relative sparseness of population in the area, it was much less devastating than less powerful earthquakes such as the one that struck Haiti in 2010 and probably killed more than 200,000.

Haiti relief effort

The United Nations says that member states have pledged £165 million for the relief effort in Haiti. Correspondents in the country, though, report that there’s little sign of help reaching the stricken areas. In one place, survivors seem to have built a pile of dead bodies as a protest.

The UN’s World Food Programme says two million people need feeding, but so far it has managed to reach just 4,000. Because of fuel shortages, Port-au-Prince’s small airport is clogged with stranded aircraft, the port is too badly damaged to use, and roads are blocked by debris.

If the estimate of around 50,000 dead is correct, this would make it the deadliest earthquake since May 2008, when up to 87,000 perished in Sichuan in south-west China. That one measured 7.8 compared with the 7 recorded in Haiti.

The other most devastating quake of the century so far was the 7.6 disaster that hit northern Pakistan in 2005, causing 73,000 deaths, while of course, it was a massive 9.2 undersea earthquake that caused the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, which accounted for around 230,000 people.

* Estonian readers of this blog may wish to know that my book A Disastrous History of the World is now available in their language as Maailma Katastroofide Ajalugu, published by Sinisukk.

Coincidental quake

The earthquake that has just devastated the Indonesian island of Sumatra was a separate event from the earlier Pacific tsunami that hit Samoa (see yesterday’s blog) though some experts believe the Samoan event may have brought the Sumatran quake forward by a few days.

At least 464 people have been killed on Sumatra, though an official at Indonesia’s disaster centre predicted the death toll could eventually run into thousands. The initial shock came beneath the sea, 50 miles north-west of the city of Padang. An eye-witness said many concrete buildings had collapsed and that fires were burning in the ruins.

Indonesia is in the Pacific’s “Ring of Fire”, the most seismically active region on earth, which suffers up to 7,000 earthquakes a year. Five thousand people were killed by a quake in Yogyakarta in 2006, while 170,000 Indonesians perished in the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004.

The country has also suffered some of the world’s most notorious volcanic eruptions such as Tambora in 1815, and Krakatoa in 1883. The most powerful of all, though, struck Sumatra about 74,000 years ago, when the Toba eruption and the volcanic winter that followed wiped out 99 per cent of the human race. See A Disastrous History of the World.