Residents open hearts to tsunami disaster victims

People across Nunavut and Nunavik responded with prayers, concern and money for victims of last week’s earthquake and tsunami that hit southeastern Asia on Dec. 26, causing widespread devastation and at least 150,000 deaths.

In Iqaluit, Bryan Pearson’s Astro Theatre has been donating $1 from every movie ticket sold to help international relief efforts. Moviegoers have also made additional contributions to the theatre’s fundraising.

“”We’re all vulnerable to these natural disasters, and I think people are now beginning to grasp the true horror of the situation,” Pearson said.

And Iqaluit’s Arctic Ventures store will donate $1 per customer to the International Red Cross for a one-week period starting Jan. 6 and ending Jan. 12

In Arviat, residents raised $1778.29 for the Red Cross tsunami disaster fund in only five days, through a bake sale, auction and containers put out at local businesses. Yesterday, they held a fundraising concert at the community hall to raise even more money.

“I think the images on TV really got to us, like the image of a mother holding her dead baby and trying to revive her,” said Joy Suluk, who has been helping to organize fundraising actitivities in Arviat.

A special bingo held last weekend in Kuujjuaq which was spearheaded by Johnny Adams, chair of the Kativik Regional Goverment, featured prizes donated by local businesses and airlines. The event raised thousands of dollars for the Red Cross.

During one day of fundraising, Cambridge Bay’s community radio took in $500. Their goal: $4,000.

And many northerners also gave money independently of community fundraising events. A Kuujjuaq man, touched by the horrific photos of the tsunami damage, sent $1,500 to the Red Cross.

Elsewhere in northern Canada, the Yukon government immediately pledged $25,000, and this week, the Government of the Northwest Territories gave $50,000 and announced that their flags will fly at half-mast until Jan. 8.

Comprehending the enormity of the damage and death caused by this tsunami was sometimes hard – but those who remember the 1999 New Year’s Eve avalanche in Kangiqsualujjuaq understood the shock of a natural disaster – particularly one that occurs over a holiday.

Five years ago, at a New Year’s Eve celebration in Kangiqsualujjuaq, an avalanche killed nine, buried hundreds and destroyed the community’s school. It took months for the community to recover, physically and emotionally, as well as millions of dollars to repair the damage.

This tsunami also took lives in the circumpolar world, mainly from Scandinavia, where nearly 5,000 people on vacation will never return home.

“Never has it been so difficult to welcome a new year, a year that for many in our country will be the most difficult,” said Prime Minister Goeran Persson of Sweden. The number of Swedes dead or missing in the tsunami stands at more than 3,000.

Tarja Halonen, the president of Finland, a country that also lost hundreds of citizens in the tsunami, called the tsunami “the largest peacetime catastrophe to overtake this country in the modern era.”

On New Year’s Day, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway held an official day of mourning and poured money and resources into the relief efforts.

Greenland’s government gave 1.2 million Danish krøner, about $250,000, and Greenlanders sent an additional 1.5 million DK, about $300,000, to the Red Cross. A fundraising concert was planned for tonight in Nuuk to raise more money.

And while natural disasters caused by avalanches are more familiar to residents of the Eastern Arctic than tsunamis, tsunamis do occur in polar regions.

Giant waves, that is, “harbour waves” or “tsunamis,” as they’re called in Japanese, are triggered when the sea floor moves up.

Landslides into or under the water can also cause tsunamis. These landslides are often set into motion by earthquakes, volcanoes or large meteorites – all of which have occurred in the high latitudes.

In the last century, three of the 10 largest earthquakes in the world have occurred in Alaska, and these produced deadly tsunamis. In 1958, a landslide caused by an earthquake sent a tsunami 524 metres high into Lihuya Bay, killing several fishermen and stripping the fiord of vegetation.

Tsunamis are more common in the volcanically active Pacific region, but about 8,000 years ago, a massive undersea landslide off the coast of Norway sent a 30-foot wall of water into the northern coast of Europe.

This landslide, the Storegga Slide, could have been triggered by warming sea temperatures – and it may have also raised water temperatures even higher because deposits of undersea methane, a greenhouse gas, were released into the water.

Although there was no direct link between climate change and the recent tsunami, caused by the world’s largest earthquake in 40 years, irregular weather patterns and erosion make the world’s low-lying regions more vulnerable to tsunamis.

The presence of sea ice has lessened or “dampened” the impacts of most tsunamis in the Arctic Ocean. That’s why Alan W. Harris, a senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute in California, maintains there’s little possibility of a killer wave doing much damage in the Arctic and “only polar bears need worry about whether the ice damps the tsunami wave from an Arctic impact.”

But in the future, with increased calving of glaciers and ice shelves, where massive hunks of ice break off and crash down into the water, there could be more Arctic tsunami-type waves, and, with less sea ice, these could have a larger, visible impact.

If you want to help the tsunami relief effort:

Canadian Red Cross Society
International Services Department
170 Metcalfe St., 3rd floor
Ottawa, ON K2P 2P2
Tel: (613) 740-1900
E-mail: feedback@redcross.ca
Internet: www.redcross.ca

Care Canada
9 Gurdwara Rd., Ste. 200
Nepean, ON K2E 7X6
Tel: 1-800-267-5232
E-mail:onorrelations@care.ca
Internet: www.care.ca

Oxfam Canada
880 Wellington St., Ste. 400
Ottawa, ON K1R 6K7
Tel: (613) 237-5236
E-mail: enquire@oxfam.ca
Internet: www.oxfam.ca