Human Tragedy - The Asia Tsunami

As I write this, more than 15,000 have been killed, 250,000 homeless and more than 1 million have been displaced in the wake of the strongest earthquake to hit anywhere on earth in the last 40 years - the fourth largest since 1900. It hit the northwestern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra at 7:00 am local time.
The deaths weren’t caused by the earthquake itself but by massive tsunamis that raced across the Indian Ocean to unsuspecting seaside communities.
. It has swept through six countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and Maldives) and affected several more even as far as Somalia. To date, Sri Lanka and India have suffered the biggest casualties and the death toll is expected to rise while an epidemic is predicted to breakout in the next few days if the situation remains out of control.

When I heard the news at 5 pm Manila time through a local TV network, it didn’t carry the severity of the tragedy. I was ready to flip the channel to HBO and hopefully catch a nice movie but I decide to take a peek at CNN. I didn’t touch the remote in the next hour as I watched horrifying images of villages and towns going under water, angry water currents carrying mud, debris, cars and even busses back out to sea while powerful 10-foot waves pounded the waterfront. I saw tourists in popular resorts in Phuket and the Maldives huddled outside wounded and bruised. I got shivers remembering how I was planning to go backpacking from Thailand down to Indonesia for the holidays. I backed out at the last minute remembering how it is the peak season in South East Asia and everything is expensive during that time. I decided to take the trip in July.

With the recent typhoon tragedy in the Philippines where a good thousand people were killed, mostly by the raging floods aggravated by the destruction of the watersheds that were supposedly there to protect people from such disasters, it is easy, even automatic to start thinking about the wrath of God or of nature upon mankind. And then come the questions, “Why did so many people die?” or “What could we have done to prevent this?”

Well, there is no way this could have been prevented. The most affected areas were along the coastal areas of India and Sri Lanka. They probably don’t even have a word for tsunami. When the water receded, an obvious sign of a coming tidal wave, people in those areas saw the fish on the suddenly dry land and went to inspect them instead of running to higher ground. That’s when the tsunamis hit. They probably learned what it is in school and how the Japanese and other Pacific islanders had to deal with it all the time but they went back to their fishing boats and curries and never thought about it again.

In the Malaysia, Thailand and the Maldives tourists were going about doing their usual touristy things when the disaster hit. Many of them were out at the beachfront sunning themselves while others were out scuba diving or doing some other water sports. That is why more than a hundred scuba divers are believed to have been carried out to sea. The grandson of the King of Thailand has been confirmed killed while out jet skiing.

Disasters do hit when most unexpected. One minute you’re thinking about what to have for dinner and the next thing you know, you’re wondering whether you’ll get through this alive. For many of them, the answer wasn’t so favorable.

I couldn’t help but think about the 15,000 thousand lives, now a statistic- A number to be subtracted from the alarming rate of the population boom. But this is not the way we want it to slow down.

Disasters are imminent and a person watching in the comfort of his home can always say, “Aww, that’s tragic.” But it is an Awwwful lot different on the other side of the screen where real life is lost and real people are being hurt and are suffering, shattered. In my room, safe and warm, I offer a prayer for the people who died and those out in the cold. For those who survived, may they gather enough strength to help them get through this tragedy.