ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
January 18, 2005 Tuesday 4:34 AM Eastern Time

Russia among countries vulnerable to earthquakes – UN report

By Sergei Mingazhev

KOBE (Japan), January 18 – Russia is among countries with a high
relative vulnerability to earthquakes, said the UN’s report “Disaster
Risk Reduction: A Development Task” that was circulated at an
international conference on disaster reduction opening the Japanese
city of Kobe on Tuesday.

About 6.5 thousand people died in a strong earthquake in Kobe ten
years ago.

The report cites results of different studies that had been conducted
under the UN’s programmes on the basis of information about natural
disasters over the past two decades.

One of the studies sought to develop models of risk for different
categories of countries with consideration for their geographic
peculiarities and economic factors.

The countries with a middle level of development and a significant
percent of the urban population such as Turkey and Russia have been
categorised as group with a high relative vulnerability, along with
the countries like Armenia and Guinea, in which earthquakes of an
exceptional magnitude occurred during the study period, the report
says.

Iran, Afghanistan and India have been put in this category too.

The term high relative vulnerability means not so much a high seismic
danger in some area of a country as poor preparedness for
earthquakes, because of which relatively mild tremors can cause
numerous victims and large-scale destruction.

Russia’s most dangers place for life in terms of seaquakes and
tsunamis are the whole Kurile Range and Kamchatka, said deputy
director of the Russian Hydrometeorology Centre Alexander Frolov, who
attends the conference in Kobe.

He told Itar-Tass that if the epicentre of December’s 9-magnitude
seaquake was located not near Sumatra but offshore of Kamchatka, the
height of the tsunami would have reached 20 meters, or two times more
than in Indonesia, because of the configuration pattern of its
coasts.

“If it is taken into account that our warning system works within
10-15 minutes after an earthquake, 30-35 minutes would have been left
for the evacuation of people,” Frolov said.

He stressed the need for additional measures in the field of rapid
reaction to catastrophic events.