<h3>Tsunami is Costly Vis-à-vis Dollars and Death</h3>
As Japan still faces a disaster that seems to keep continuing, the financial impact is slowly being assessed. It is thought that the country will be facing tens of millions of dollars worth of damage as well as continuing fatalities, the latest being when 25 year old Dustin Weber was swept away and has not been found, as he turned his back to the surging sea.
<h3>How is California Coping?</h3>
Now there is talk of what is going to be with California. Crescent City seems to be most affected as the north part of the state is being impacted by roiling the waters. According to Josh Zulliger, (warden at the California Department of Fish and Game), “there are three-foot waves still coming in here.” It is not surprising that it is Crescent City that is being impacted the most since it is known for being a very vulnerable area vis-à-vis tsunamis probably due to its underwater ridge offshore as well as the shape of the harbor that “effectively bounces waves directly back into the line of incoming waves.”
So the boats are sinking in California. Everyone has been so focused (naturally) on Japan following the earthquake and tsunami, that California hasn’t been in the press much recently. But the waves ultimately sent over “an eight-foot swell into the enclosed harbor here, smashing dozens of boats.” Clearly Japan’s disaster is having a worldwide impact, not just on markets and the economy, but also more directly on people and the potential danger to their lives.
California now has to find a way to pick up the pieces. Japan has their own – greater – problems that will no doubt take a very long time (and lots of capital) to fix. But it seems like the west is being affected too and places like Crescent City need to find their own resources to get back to normal as well. The lesson from this is thus clear: such an earthquake and tsunami is not just restricted to Japan, or even Asia, but will have a worldwide boomerang effect, especially on an already volatile global economy.