Natural Disaster Earthquake: Causes and Risk Mitigation

Natural disaster earthquake occurs naturally and has impact on the surrounding environment. There are two kinds of impacts, namely material and non-material. How big the impact is determined by the causative factor. Whatever it is, risk mitigation is needed to reduce the losses incurred.

Causes of Natural Disaster Earthquake

Earthquake is categorized as natural disaster that have various causes. Each of these factors determines how big the earthquake is and what its impact is. Here are some factors that cause earthquakes.

1. Tectonic Plates Movement

Did you know that earthquake is divided into two types? There are tectonic and volcanic earthquakes. The first one, the tectonic earthquake, is caused by the tectonic plates movement. This movement will continue, especially at the meeting of active plates.

Plates are part of the lithosphere, which is the outermost layer of earth. Plates include the earth's crust and the upper mantle, where the construction is rigid and solid. Automatically, plates are part of the lithosphere itself.

Plate movements are driven by convection currents in the earth's mantle. All of these tectonic plate movements cause vibrations called an earthquake.

2. Volcanic Activity

Volcanic activity is the second factor that causes earthquake. This activity is related to the magma or hot material movement from inside to the surface of the earth. It is called a volcanic eruption, which is marked by the release of lava, volcanic ash, and followed by volcanic gas. Water vapor, carbon dioxide, and sulfur oxide are the elements of volcanic gas.

The conclusion is a volcanic activity depends on the movement of magma. In areas consisting of many volcanoes, there will certainly be more impacts from volcanic activity. Besides the eruption, the impact is experiencing earthquake caused by the magma movement.

3. Landslides

The next cause is a collapse or landslide. Although its power is not as great as the tectonic plates movement and magma movement, landslides can cause earthquakes of a certain strength. The resulting earthquakes are smaller in scale and their impact is limited to certain areas.

4. Human Activity

Earthquakes can caused by human activities, such as oil and gas drilling, mining, and even explosive tests (for example nuclear tests). All of these can trigger plate shifts and cause earthquakes as the plates move. This phenomenon is called induced seismicity.

Earthquake Risk Mitigation

The several impacts of earthquake certainly cause many losses, especially for people in potential areas. Complex and effective risk mitigation is increasingly needed to reduce the risk of natural disaster earthquake. Here is a series of risk mitigation that should be implemented.

1. Monitoring Various Causes of Earthquakes

The first step in earthquake risk mitigation is monitoring all the causal factors. The natural and largest causes are tectonic plate movements and volcanic activity. Both can be observed by sophisticated technological observation systems. 

Things that are observed in tectonic plate movements are the location of active plates, the distance between active plates, and the history of tectonic earthquakes. Things that are monitored in volcanic activity are the history of volcanic activity, temperature changes in the crater area, gas emissions, changes in crater activity, and visual changes, such as smoke color. 

Monitoring also includes highland areas, especially those with a history of being prone to landslides. Land contours are closely observed. Various human activities that have the potential to cause earthquakes are also monitored.

2. Analyzing Monitoring Results

After obtaining monitoring results from various causes, the next stage is the analysis of the data. The analysis is carried out to determine how big the potential for an earthquake is, which areas are affected, and how big the impact is. The results of the analysis are the basis for information about the potential for an earthquake, so it can be anticipated early on.

3. Giving Early Warning and Evacuation Warning

If the results of the analysis state that there is a potential for an earthquake, an early warning is issued. This warning aims to inform the public that an earthquake is expected. After the early warning, an evacuation warning is given to urge the affected community to prepare to secure themselves.

4. Doing Evacuation Process

After receiving an evacuation alert, the public is advised to immediately leave the disaster-prone zone and move to a safe zone. The move, of course, follows the evacuation route that has been determined so that the process runs effectively and on time before the disaster occurs.

5. Recovery and Evaluation

After a disaster occurs, recovery is carried out for all the impacts that occur. In the final stage, an evaluation is carried out on each stage of risk mitigation to make it better in the future.

The key point in earthquake risk mitigation is providing early warnings and evacuation warnings to inform the public in the affected areas. The government can make this mitigation effort a success by sending emergency messages to the public via mobile phones.

An emergency message sending machine via SMS (Short Message Service) can be obtained at smsbroadcaster.com. Through this service, emergency messages about natural disaster earthquake can be distributed directly and evenly.