Tsunami protection engineering facts for kids

Dam and trees protect town from tsunami.

Tsunami protection engineering is intended to prevent or mitigate possible tsunami damage and save lives. The best method of protection seems to be the use of seawalls in front of ports and cities. Another effective method from a tsunami is proper planting trees. Some villages in India, for example, had minimal casualties in the 2004 tsunami because they had planted trees along the coastline.

Tsunami protection engineering should also foresee and prevent situations like one that happened at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant when the main power went down, backup generators failed and cooling water could not get to the nuclear fuel. The overheating that followed led to explosions, fires and dangerous release of radiation.