Well by now you should all have heard the news. We have had an event that demonstrates a very real hazard that our growing coastal populations face, tsunamis. It also has demonstrated the importance of early warning systems that could have been in place but were never put in place in the Indian Ocean.
The statistics speak for themselves, twelve countries, over 40K dead, possibly millions dislocated and homeless all in a single day. It is time to stop assuming these things can't happen or that we in America are unaffected. These are precisely the most destabilizing events that will foment the most hatred toward the US depending on how we respond. We have tied up many assets in Iraq and yet it should not be forgotten for example how much of that war on terrorism is being waged in all the countries impacted by this tsunami.
The greatest weapon in the arsenal now is our technological ability to contribute aid and shelter, to assist in the recovery and to help prevent the possible incubation of multiple vectors for pandemic that can and often will be a dangerous part of the aftermath of these events. This much more than phoney staged elections is our opportunity to win hearts and minds.
I have heard many are donating to Oxfam and I am looking to do something similar through the Buddhist temple near my residence. I will be sending clothing and medical supplies directly.
http://news.bbc.co.u...fic/4129371.stmCare International International Federation of the Red Cross Medecins Sans Frontieres Oxfam Save The Children Unicef World Visionhttp://news.bbc.co.u...ter/default.stm
http://www.nytimes.c...l?oref=login
A Third of the Dead Are Said to Be ChildrenBy SETH MYDANS
Published: December 28, 2004
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Dec. 28 - Survivors of the gigantic undersea earthquake on Sunday that swallowed coastlines from Indonesia to Africa - which officials now describe as one of the worst natural disasters in recent history - recovered bodies today, hurriedly arranged for mass burials and searched for tens of thousands of the missing in countries thousands of miles apart.
The reported deaths from the disaster - which climbed today to about 44,000, with many still unaccounted for, as Sri Lanka and Indonesia increased their confirmed tolls - came into sharper relief on a day when it seemed increasingly clear that at least a third of the dead were children, according to estimates by aid officials.
The International Committee of the Red Cross and government officials here, as well as those in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India, the Maldives and as far away as Somalia, warned that with hundreds of thousands of people stranded in the open without clean drinking water, epidemics of cholera and other waterborne diseases could take as many lives as the initial waves.
Images from around the region presented a tableau of unrelenting grief. Fathers and mothers wailed over drowned children. Bodies were arrayed in long rows in hastily dug trenches. Villagers sat by ruined homes, stunned. Hotels in some of Thailand's most luxurious resorts were turned into morgues.
"This may be the worst natural disaster in recent history because it is affecting so many heavily populated coastal areas," said Jan Egeland, the emergency relief coordinator for the United Nations, speaking at a news conference in New York.
"Usually a natural disaster strikes one or two or three countries, not eight or nine enormous coastlines like they've done here," he added. "Bigger waves have been recorded. But no wave has affected so many people." Nearly half the reported deaths were here in Sri Lanka, where estimates jumped Monday to more than 12,000 killed, and where more than a million people were reported to have lost their homes.
Today the estimate of deaths jumped even higher, with an official with the state-run National Disaster Management Center, D. N. Wanigasooriya, telling Reuters, "At the moment they have recovered 18,706 bodies."
The realization began to emerge today that the dead included an exceptionally high number of children who, aid officials suggested, were least able to grab onto trees or boats when the deadly waves smashed through villages and over beaches. Children make up at least half the population of Asia.
On the western tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the destruction was doubly fierce, caused by both the earthquake itself 150 miles away and the tsunamis that followed.
(excerpt)