To mark the World Tsunami Awareness Day, NEMA and the National Steering Committee for Earthquake Preparedness worked with hotels to better prepare them in case of earthquakes and tsunamis and will continue cooperating with them and other representatives of critical infrastructure to reinforce the current prevention procedures.

“We are preparing the country to respond to a 5-meter tsunami wave and I do not think we are excessive as if we had a tsunami today, losses will be enormous as thousands of people live by the coast and many critical assets are located along the shores. We certainly do not want to take the risk,” said Mr. Yahav who was speaking at an IOC UNESCO conference in Lisbon, Portugal discussing tsunami warning services for the North East Atlantic, Mediterranean and connecting seas region (NEAM) which currently relies on early warning service providers in France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Turkey.

Israel is a subscriber to the NEAM system, which provides regular and essential data on the seismic and sea level activities in the region that will allow their national authorities to trigger or not a warning alert.

At the moment if an earthquake happens in Crete or Greece, Israel will have more than 20 minutes to evacuate its population.

“The Mediterranean Sea has a history of tsunamis, with 25 percent of all those ever recorded occurring close to Israel. Tsunamis occur off Israel’s coast every 100 years on average and we do get tsunami warnings after earthquakes roughly every three months,” said Mr. Yahav.

Photo details: *From left to right Betzalel Traiber, director of the National Emergency Management Authority, Ron Huldai, Mayor of Tel Aviv, Amir Yahav, Director, Israel's National Steering Committee for Earthquake Preparedness and Chicko Edri, Chief of Police for the Tel Aviv region.

Date:

24 Nov 2017

Sources:

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR)