L.I - we are learning to write explanations about natural disasters

Tsunamis

A tsunami is a series of water made in an ocean or other parts of the water by an earthquake, landslide or a volcanic eruption. It is formed when a destructive wave of water is caused by a shift in the Earth’s tectonic plates. These waves are present when movement occurs and a wall of water is to be forced outwards to the shore, making a wave to produce  mass destruction .

Tsunami waves are different from the waves you can usually find rolling into the coast of a lake or an ocean. Those waves are made by wind offshore and are quite small compared with tsunami waves. A tsunami wave is  about the length of one thousand American football fields and it travels about seven hundred kilometres per hour, but are only one metre high in the open ocean.

Once a tsunami reaches land and  forms a giant wave it crashes down and destroys much of the coastline. The waves of a tsunami are very powerful and can eliminate everything that is close enough to the coastline. 

A tsunami can cause a lot of damage by crushing buildings, sweeping people off land and consequently causing diseases. Every time a tsunami occurs there are a lot of lives lost.

In December 2004 an earthquake in the Indian Ocean of Indonesia caused a tsunami that killed over 200,000 people in fourteen countries.In March 2011 the Tohoku earthquake off the eastern coast of Japan caused a tsunami that was a major factor of over 15000 deaths.