It was devastating to hear the latest news yesterday (11 March 2011) about the magnitude earthquake yesterday measured at 8.9 in Japan, triggering a 10 metre high tsunami. This is devastating, not only with the wave of water hitting the north east coast of Japan and bulldozing houses and sweeping cars and trucks along the way, this is the worst earthquake in Japan since the Great Kanto earthquake back in 1923 which was at a magnitude of 8.3. Although there has been others since, like the one in 1995 at a magnitude of 7.2.

From this large earthquake, the tsunami also threatens other countries and coastlines such as Hawaii and New Zealand amongst others, but at least these countries have more time to prepare. So far I haven’t heard of any major damage of Hawaii or along the West Coast, but I guess there will be more news of yet things to come. I only just heard on the news today that the nuclear power plant in Japan has been badly affected by the tsunami, it’s been said that the Fukushima Daiichi power plant has exploded and there is now talk of a radiation leak, so their emergency services is going to be stretched even further to deal with these disasters.

Previous to this natural disaster, there has also been other big disasters like the Indian tsunami which was a tremor measured at a magnitude of 8.8 causing the waves to hit the India coast on boxing day 2004 that took 230,000 lives. The large waves of up to 30ft high swept the coast of Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and East Africa from the powerful earthquake, and from some other information I found on the web, there was another quake further down the fault line that was measured at 8.6, I wasn’t even aware of this one and hadn’t even seen it in the news.

Last month, February 22, was the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand measured at a magnitude of 6.3. Although this wasn’t so big as the others, it still caused a huge amount of damage, with buildings colapsing causing people to be caught in the rubble. But it appears to have been worse that the 7.1 magnitude quake they had previously on the 4 September, this was another quake I wasn’t even aware of.

So what is happening to the planet, with the world economy the way it is, countries revolting against their government such as Turkey, Tunisia and Libya, and with the constant damage we are causing to the planet, with cutting down the trees and damaging the ozone layer…are we now experiencing the world fighting back, is it retaliating with the damage we have caused it?

You can’t help but think, what will be coming next? Others say with the new technology we have available now, that we only now get more up to date information with what else goes on in the world within minutes, and that these natural disasters have been going on around the world without us realising. But it was only yesterday that there was confirmation on the news that these disasters appear to be happening more frequently. When looking at the history of these quakes then you can see that’s it’s not often that we get earthquakes with a magnitude of 8 plus, so do we have more reason to be concerned, are we going to see more natural disasters in our lifetime, is the planet slowly fighting back, or are we slowly destroying it, what are we leaving behind for our children, the next generation who will have to live on this planet for longer. It really does make you wonder!