Natural Disasters in Importing and Exporting

During times of great natural disaster, the country affected not only deals with the destruction to their natural disaster, but also with problems in importing and exporting products needed to keep the country running. It creates problems when exporting in two ways, either the product itself can be damaged if it is a natural product or a product that is out in the open air, or it can be getting the product out of the country depending on the method of exportation. When it comes to importing after a natural disaster, sometimes the hard part to that isn’t getting the product into the country, sometimes the problem is getting the product to the location where it is needed in the country.

On March 11, 2011 Japan was struck by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake. This earthquake caused massive and powerful tsunamis on the island. In the aftermath of all of this destruction Japan was forced to close all of its ports for a brief while. The ports in Japan and south of the capitol were opened soon after they were closed, while the rest of the ports remained close to assess all the damage caused to them by the Earthquake and Tsunami. With all of those ports closing, it would cost Japan an estimated 3.4 billion dollars in lost seaborne trade. Japan’s main imports being wood, oil and food stuffs, and their main exports are cars, electronic devices and computers. Their exporting of cars, electronic devices and computers did not cause a major shortage of these goods to other countries, but it still backed them up. The most impactful thing was the imports oil and food stuffs, without that they were having fuel shortages which made it harder to get things distributed throughout the country.

On January 12, 2010 a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti. At the high point of the relief effort, there was a great influx of planes coming to help, all of which were bringing various can goods, medicine and medical staff. The single runway airport that handled 10 spaces for large places, normally...