Imagine That You Are the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, What Will You Plan to Do in Order to Reduce the Health Impact of Earthquake?
Imagine that you are the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, what will you plan to do in order to reduce the health impact of earthquake?
Among all natural disasters, earthquake has perhaps caused the highest death toll and financial loss. Being unpredictable and undetectable, alleviation as well as evacuation have become even more difficult. The Hanshin-Awaji earthquake in 1995 caused a property loss of over US$60 billion and a lost of more than US$100 billion in capital (Sawada, 2008, p.463), whereas in 2010, The Haiti tremor has caused over 200,000 deaths estimated by the Haiti government with a magnitude of 7.0 (Wade, 2010, p.22).
An earthquake can be classified as a geophysical hazard and is most popularly explained by the Plate Tectonics Theory. When several tectonic plates meet and form major faults, they move along each other slowly, increasing the intensity of stress. Energy is released suddenly when a stress point is ruptured in the form of seismic waves. There are two types of seismic waves, namely Body Waves which travel through the interior of earth and Surface Waves, travelling along the earth surface. The 2 types of body waves are primary waves (P-waves) and secondary waves (S-waves). Surface waves can be divided into Rayleigh Waves, Love Waves and Stoneley waves. (Michael, 2011, pp. 170-171)
According to the Hong Kong Observatory (2012, p.2), “[n]o locally felt earth tremor had ever caused any casualty since records began. Most of these earth tremors were of intensity V(5) or below on the Modified Mercalli Scale”. However, Chandler (2001, p.70) states that a “1000-year design-level event of magitude M=6.8 with its epicentre located a distance of 50 km from HK may be assumed”, pointing out the fact that there is still a possibility that earthquakes may pose detrimental health impacts, both short and long term effects to Hong Kong. As the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, preventive measures should be planned in advance in order to reduce the health
Among all natural disasters, earthquake has perhaps caused the highest death toll and financial loss. Being unpredictable and undetectable, alleviation as well as evacuation have become even more difficult. The Hanshin-Awaji earthquake in 1995 caused a property loss of over US$60 billion and a lost of more than US$100 billion in capital (Sawada, 2008, p.463), whereas in 2010, The Haiti tremor has caused over 200,000 deaths estimated by the Haiti government with a magnitude of 7.0 (Wade, 2010, p.22).
An earthquake can be classified as a geophysical hazard and is most popularly explained by the Plate Tectonics Theory. When several tectonic plates meet and form major faults, they move along each other slowly, increasing the intensity of stress. Energy is released suddenly when a stress point is ruptured in the form of seismic waves. There are two types of seismic waves, namely Body Waves which travel through the interior of earth and Surface Waves, travelling along the earth surface. The 2 types of body waves are primary waves (P-waves) and secondary waves (S-waves). Surface waves can be divided into Rayleigh Waves, Love Waves and Stoneley waves. (Michael, 2011, pp. 170-171)
According to the Hong Kong Observatory (2012, p.2), “[n]o locally felt earth tremor had ever caused any casualty since records began. Most of these earth tremors were of intensity V(5) or below on the Modified Mercalli Scale”. However, Chandler (2001, p.70) states that a “1000-year design-level event of magitude M=6.8 with its epicentre located a distance of 50 km from HK may be assumed”, pointing out the fact that there is still a possibility that earthquakes may pose detrimental health impacts, both short and long term effects to Hong Kong. As the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, preventive measures should be planned in advance in order to reduce the health
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