Surely you remember how a giant monster is unmasked at the end of almost every episode of Scooby-Doo! It is always one of the greatest evil villains. This scene is followed by a rational explanation of the monster’s “supernatural” actions, unravelling the mystery. But what if the beast isn’t a mask? Well, this is what the year 2020 exactly was. The year to definitely write off and forget about!

None of us will ever know why all that bad that befell us had accumulated in this single year, regardless of the most significant global pandemic of recent times. Not only was our world tortured with viruses, hatred, and tragedies last year, but also Nature, like a puppeteer, played its show with our planet. Natural disasters hit almost every continent, leaving behind economic devastation, substantial property damage, and tremendous losses of innocent lives. But what if − what if there is a way to prevent such damage and losses, or at least to reduce them. We would not write about it if there were no solution. The solution is Telegrafia. We are the solution.

Our warning systems can provide solutions to prevent and mitigate the effects of natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, forest fires, floods, or tsunamis. So let us look back at some of the natural disasters of 2020 where our company could have been of some help.

Forest fires at the Aussies began in December 2019 and showed no signs of slowing down or stopping. While most of the world was celebrating the New Year, Australia was struggling with one of the biggest natural disasters in its history. In January 2020, several states declared an emergency. According to official reports, one of the life elements burned more than 18.6 million hectares of land, destroyed more than 5,900 buildings, and killed numbers of animals. 34 people lost their lives in the flames, while more than 400 died due to excessive smoke inhalation.

America was struck by both large-scale natural disasters and huge economic costs. In addition to the pandemic, America’s economy was sorely tried by hurricane Eta. It came just before the end of one of the worst hurricane seasons and resulted in floods and wildfires, taking its toll across the continent, in Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, Panama, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.  The catastrophe caused more than $60 billion in damage and claimed 150 victims.

The Indonesian capital Jakarta and its neighbouring areas experienced a terrible start to the year when they were hit by extensive floods on January 1. More than 400,000 people were forced to flee their homes. The floods were accompanied by heavy rains, which caused further damage as the local rivers spilt over, and the people found themselves in water up to one and a half metres deep. The water took the lives of 66 people who lost their battle to water, landslides, or electric shocks.

Taal Volcano is the second most active volcano in the Philippines. Its eruption last year released ash dust into the area of 100 kilometres. The previous outbreak of the volcano had been recorded 43 years before. The explosion resulted in vast clouds of ash, causing the mass evacuation of more than 300,000 people. The reports also confirmed the occurrence of a total of 2,484 accompanying volcanic-tectonic earthquakes, of which 176 were felt. The disaster claimed at least 39 lives. The Philippines is still recovering from the aftermath of the disaster.

Earthquakes were nothing exceptional in 2020, and their list would be quite lengthy. With magnitudes of more than 6.0 alone, more than 45 earthquakes were reported. A devastating magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the Turkish Aegean coast and the northern part of the Greek island of Samos. The quake also caused a small tsunami that flooded the Turkish city of Izmir and the abovementioned island. Dozens of people lost their lives.

Planet Earth experienced scenarios like catastrophic movies last year. The account of catastrophes mentioned is just a pinch of salt added to the already deep wounds of our planet. And there are more like the devastating cyclone Amphan in India and Bangladesh, floods in India, Japan, China and Afghanistan, or other hurricanes in the United States. Even dangerous swarms of locusts in East Africa and parts of India and Asia brought damage to millions of acres of standing crops on the infested continents.

Nevertheless, Telegrafia’s warning systems can provide comprehensive solutions. Our products can promptly convey information to responsible persons such as firefighters, rescue and emergency services in every situation, thus helping with rapid informatisation or warning of the population, which is crucial in catastrophic scenarios. At the core of our solutions are the best electronic sirens in the world, which, combined with other efficient technologies, can find their applications in various industries and sound alarms wherever necessary. You can learn more about our solutions on our website—every second counts.

Now we can only hope that 2021 will not put on a disguise of 2020.

The article was written by

Róbert Jakab

Robert is like moving photography – because he is a video. He is able to capture 60 frames per second, so when something happens, he records it. He is also works on smaller videos to make an evening movie…and then continuing the second part. Telegrafia 2: Monkey power

Images:
Fikri RA, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Oğulcan Bakiler (VOA), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Fikri RA, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Oğulcan Bakiler (VOA), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons