30,000 confirmed dead, thousands missing
Death toll from massive tsunami tops 30,000
Toll in Asia climbs to more than 35,000
Tidal wave death toll hits 40,000
I find myself at a bit of a loss this morning. I’m quite overwhelmed by the death and destruction in Southeast Asia, and trying to come to grips with that has robbed me of any inspiration to write about anything else.
It seems that everytime I look, the number of confirmed dead from the earthquake and the tsunami has risen…21,000…23,000…26,000…30,000…35,000…40,000. Where will it end? As I sit at my kitchen table in my warm, dry house, it is difficult to achieve any sort of perspective on those numbers. It’s also difficult to imagine the destructive force that a 9.0 earthquake can bring to bear on a region where building codes, such as they may be, generally do not even begin to address earthquakes. As if any man-made structure could be expected to withstand the force generated by a 9.0 hurricane….
As if all of this wasn’t bad enough, the earthquake and the resulting tsunami was only the harbinger of the horrors to follow. Now comes the death, disease, hunger, lack of clean drinking water…and this is only the beginning.
Mourners in Sri Lanka buried their dead with bare hands Tuesday as rescuers rushed to check isolated pockets of Indonesia for survivors of explosive tidal waves that the UN said may be history’s costliest natural disaster….
Eleven nations in the densely populated band of destruction spanning as far as Africa tallied corpses as they filled tropical beaches and choked hospital morgues. The International Red Cross feared malaria and cholera would add to the toll as aid agencies mounted what UN officials said would be the world’s biggest relief effort.
ìThis is unprecedented,î said Yvette Stevens, an emergency relief coordinator of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the reports coming out of Southeast Asia is that it appears roughly one-third of the victims were children. There are, and will continue to be, many tragic aspects of this story. The death of children, particularly in large numbers, is always something I find difficult to process.
This was by all accounts an equal-opportunity disaster, touching the desperately poor in Sri Lanka and Aceh as well as rich European tourists along the Thai Riviera. In many respects, this is turning into a worldwide disaster. Responding to the humanitarian needs, and later the reconstruction needs, is something that will require the concerted and coordinated effort of the entire world. It is too early to tell whether or not this coordinated effort will be forthcoming, but in the meantime, there is much that we can do to help. Thanks to the wonders of our technological age, there are a myriad of ways that all of us can assist those in need. A partial list of organizations can be found here, here, and here. Right now, it is too soon to know exactly what the needs are. Many relief organizations will struggle to deal with the scope of the death and destruction. Nonetheless, the work has to begin somewhere, and we can and should be a part of it.
It’s difficult to feel much like focusing my normal scorn and ridicule on anything when so many are suffering so greatly. It’s going to take awhile for me to be able to wrap my head around the scope of this disaster.
Hmmm…we’ve already had the swarms of locusts and war is always part of our day to day life…what’s next? Famine? I wonder how long it will be before someone finds a religious angle to the tragedy? Those of you who have more than a passing knowledge of the Book of Revelation have an idea of what I am referring to. How long before Pat Robertson and/or Jerry Falwell use this disaster as a means to raise funds for their “ministries”? Ah, well, I digress. People will make of this what they will, of course, but it will not and cannot change the reality on the ground. And that is where our focus should be.
