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World In Crisis

In late 2008 things looked grim enough when the world experienced a universal melt down of the credit crunch, with numerous large banking corporations crashing. The resonating fall of the majors echoed right around the earth, with tremours that continued for years. Entire economies struggled to recover. Nature then appeared to have its say in the world of chaos.

The majority of people residing in Christchurch, the second largest and picturesque garden city in New Zealand, had never experienced even the tiniest earthquake in their lives, until the Darfield 7.1 magnitude quake of 4th September 2010, in a previously unknown fault. The earthquake created widespread damage but virtually no loss of life.

Several seismologists now claim the Darfield quake consisted of three or four separate tremours. A 7.0 in the Greendale Fault, 6.5 in the Charing Cross Fault, 6.2 near Hororata and a 6.5 on a fourth fault line that is supposedly said to run between West Melton and Burnham.

The aftershocks rolled into 2011 and included the 6.3 earthquake on February 22, when a new fault line was discovered, leaving 166 people confirmed killed, with over 200 still missing. The earthquake created enormous damage to the CBD of Christchurch, including severely damaging the iconic Christchurch Cathedral.

A rash of floods then hit Australia, starting in December 2010 and included a flash flood that claimed 35 lives, early in January 2011. Three-quarters of Queensland was declared a disaster zone. This was quickly followed by floods in the south of Australia, in Victoria.

Just when the area was trying to recover, Cyclone Yasi rolled across the Queensland coast, creating widespread havoc, on February 3rd. Miraculously there were no reported deaths or serious injury, though entire communities on the coast were devastated.

A widespread Arab Wave Revolt swamped entire Arab countries, on the other side of the world, from Lebanon in North Africa, to Syria in the north-west, to Oman in the east, with major battles occurring in Libya, involving the United Nations.

Ireland, Portugal and other European nations were either bankrupt or on the very edge of bankruptcy.

A quarter of a million people protested in Britain against the austerity measures of the government, with some campaigners trashing shops in the Piccadilly area.

Next came the fifth biggest earthquake since 1900, of 9 magnitude, in Japan on the 11th March, 2011. The kind of great earthquake that hits once every 100 years.

On top of all that Japan experienced, the fifth largest earthquake since 1900, of 9 magnitude on the 11th March, 2011. The kind of great earthquake that is said to hit once every 100 years.

The tsunami which followed raced across the Pacific Ocean like a speeding jet, before hitting Hawaii and the American West Coast, though there were no reports of major damage. A shocked world had watched a 10m wall of water decimate an 800 km stretch of Japan’s coastline. The overall death toll of the tsunami is estimated to reach around 20,000 people.

Yet more still was to come, as specialized crews gamely struggled to contain the 4 reactors at Japan’s damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Japan’s nuclear experts finally confirmed that the Fukushima reactor disaster was worse than anything they ever imagined could have happened, as Fukushima was declared a number 7 disaster, equal to Chernobyl.

Survivors of the two World War II atom bombs are afraid that a new generation is facing similar circumstances to what they had to cope with.

People are questioning what is next? Not one person, in reach of modern communication, remains unaffected by these events.

Numerous people postponed their travel arrangements in the contaminated regions. In Australasia people turned to the islands of the South Pacific, such as Vanuatu for a brief respite from the world of woes. Life goes on, regardless of what happens around us.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 22nd, 2011 at 4:20 am and is filed under Oman Info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.