Tidal wave in Asia

[boudicca]

Other events which earned a lot more airtime

I think it's getting plenty of airtime. I had to tune in to Radio 2 on the way to work this morning to get away from it.

It's 24/7 here. But 1.500 swedes are still missing. But it's to much right now.

It's certainly getting a lot more now, but turn on to Radio One (not that I do, you understand) and they'll still be playing 50 Cent. As I recall, there was mournful classical music played (ooh, GAF!) on the day Princess Diana died.

I'm just sayin'. There's not necessarily much to be gained by the constant rerunning of footage, I know, but if people are going to give money for aid they generally need it rammed down their throats.

[CellThree]

Looks like the quake managed to wobble the Earth too :

http://cooltech.iafrica.com/science/400749.htm

[Francis]

As I recall, there was mournful classical music played (ooh, GAF!) on the day Princess Diana died.

No doubt due to the fact that she was a much loved and respected member of our Royal Family and the BBC is our public service broadcaster.

[rian]

3000 swedes are missing

over 120.000 dead

[boudicca]

As I recall, there was mournful classical music played (ooh, GAF!) on the day Princess Diana died.

No doubt due to the fact that she was a much loved and respected member of our Royal Family and the BBC is our public service broadcaster.

I beg to differ with both of those.

[smiscandlon]

As I recall, there was mournful classical music played (ooh, GAF!) on the day Princess Diana died.

No doubt due to the fact that she was a much loved and respected member of our Royal Family and the BBC is our public service broadcaster.

I beg to differ with both of those.

Tactful. I was just going to type "arse" and leave it at that...

[emilystrange]

actually, she was, by millions, rightly or wrongly.

[Stevieb27]

actually, she was, by millions, rightly or wrongly.

I never really got that one, still don't following many aguments.

[emilystrange]

tis not a personal opinion.

[Francis]

As I recall, there was mournful classical music played (ooh, GAF!) on the day Princess Diana died.

No doubt due to the fact that she was a much loved and respected member of our Royal Family and the BBC is our public service broadcaster.

I beg to differ with both of those.

As Ms Strange so rightly pointed out, it wasn't an opinion, merely a statement of fact. Begging to differ won't change that. Happy Hogmanay.

[emilystrange]

i was RIGHT? and some one noticed?

[James Blast]

It gets worse
OMG!

OK call me a cynic

[boudicca]

No doubt due to the fact that she was a much loved and respected member of our Royal Family and the BBC is our public service broadcaster.

I beg to differ with both of those.

As Ms Strange so rightly pointed out, it wasn't an opinion, merely a statement of fact. Begging to differ won't change that. Happy Hogmanay.

I wasn't attempting to deny that she was "loved" (for want of a better word) by many, but what you said implied (to me at least, perhaps not what you meant) that there were not plenty of people who really didn't give a monkey's. She was loved and respected by some.

Anyone can receive a disproprtionate amount of public 'love', it does not make them worthy of it, as history has shown countless times. The passing of one human being can spark a hysterical outpouring of mass "grief" (once again, a poor use of the word), it does not make it any more genuine or less ridiculous. There's almost something of that famous Stalin quote in it.

All I can say is that, to me, 150,000 deaths are always more tragic than one. It's not just a statistic. In theory, there should be 150,000 times as much grief now as there was in '97. But maybe that's just not possible for a bunch of nameless, faceless people on the other side of the world, who never have any interesting affairs, and don't take a good doe-eyed press shot.

I'm not having a go here Francis, just voicing my opinion. Happy New Year and so on to you as well.

[Brideoffrankenstein]

All I can say is that, to me, 150,000 deaths are always more tragic than one. It's not just a statistic. In theory, there should be 150,000 times as much grief now as there was in '97. But maybe that's just not possible for a bunch of nameless, faceless people on the other side of the world, who never have any interesting affairs, and don't take a good doe-eyed press shot.

Yes that's what I wanted to say!

[paint it black]

[serious mode]

As horrible as this is (I really can't comprehend the scale: 150K+ bodies [somebody said twice our local population] 5 million homeless etc... I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the whys and wherefores of it all? I mean the complete failure of the human and technical systems involved. A 'rich picture' might look something like: -

'Impoverished' countries unable to justify huge capital expenditure on state-of-the-art equipment as per that installed in the Pacific Ocean, where Tsunami risks are much higher.

People in charge of what equipment there was, frustrated at the fact it wasn't working properly. The reason being that the spares requests were lost inside government, being bounced around from department to department.

Allegedly, the American seismologists picked up warnings but did nothing, partly because they couldn't confirm scale or direction and partly because they didn't know who to contact?

Thai meteorologists, working on a hunch, contacted local radio to warn of possible repercussions as a result of the original shock, but this wasn't disseminated widely as the Thai government were worried about scaring/upsetting tourists

After the first wave struck in the Phuket region (1.5hrs), some local Thai officials tried to tell Sri Lanka and India (4hrs)of the approaching danger, but passed the information to the wrong departments, who took no heed of the warning.

As the scapegoats of inactivity are hunted-down, I'm thinking how much might actually be learnt from this catastrophe?

Apparently the risk from Cumbre Vieja is extremely acute and its effects ten-fold more dangerous than the Asian tsunami? One can't help but wonder, how might the USA, Africa, S.E UK etc... deal differently before, during and after such a devastating wave of destruction?

Probably not the time right?



[/serious mode]

[emilystrange]

There was an article in yesterday's paper saying that a scientist had in fact warned several times in the last weeks, at conferences etc. a meeting with some local authorities was called off due to lack of money.

You'd need to search the Guardian for it tho.

Today's guardian... govt donation figures are in fact a joke, as the amounts never actually appear - double accounting, redistributing of funds from other projects etc. this is apparently normal. practice

[nigel d]

no early warning system in place like what they have for the pacific.
it was said on radio 4 that the pacific monitoring picked this one up , but had no co ordinator to telephone to give the message too!!!!
lack of coordinationseems to be the problem.
i have family in the philippines and havent been able to contact them since the typhoon hit them a few weeks ago.......i wonder if they felt the quake

[lucretia]

I listened to a US Seismologist on radio yesterday (here in SA) and it is virtually impossible to monitor this kind of eventuality with any degree of accuracy - as this occurrence is actually quite rare and it would mean round the clock monitoring for a number of YEARS before anything like this happens again. It was a rather technical interview, so excuse me if I've summarised this point rather flippantly. The boys over at Space.com have tons of information, for those interested.

And there are already warnings of a similar situation occurring off the US coastline:

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnatu ... unami.html

[lucretia]

But this one could be the mother lode event for all time (well it's actually the mother ship, coming to fetch me, cos I missed the last fly pass)

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/a ... 41224.html

[RicheyJames]

are we ready for the tsunami gags yet? or should i give it another couple of days?

[markfiend]

are we ready for the tsunami gags yet? or should i give it another couple of days?

Maybe by tomorrow.

[andymackem]

A few Tsunami points: yes, the casualties are horrific, but we are dealing with dozens of fairly densely populated countries. To say "it's more than twice our local population" is not wholly relevant. In local terms, a deluge swamping Southend and killing 150,000 would be utterly catastrophic, especially considering Southend's population is 175,000. A deluge swamping the whole of SE of England and killing 150,000 would be traumatic, but still leave vast numbers of survivors. One sweeping the channel and North Sea, affecting eastern Britain and the west coast of continental Europe, killing 150,000 is proportionally smaller again. Contrast with the twin towers, where 3,000 out of 10,000 WTC workers were killed - it's a whole different scale which explains the different air-time.

'Why was Diana a bigger deal?': Self-evident. How many Indonesians do you actually know? How often do you switch on TV or pick up a magazine and see images of life in Jakarta? Up until 10 days ago had you ever heard of Banda Aceh, or had any idea where it was? You can't really mourn for something you don't know. Of course western lives are more valuable to us ... we live in the west! That's why there's not 150,000 times the grief over here. Your logic would have us grieving for every single death on the planet, which might be compassionate but would be hideously impractical. Harsh, but fair.

Govt donations: from where? Do we divert from our aid/overseas development budgets to fund it? Do we take money away from Darfur to help Sri Lanka? That's deckchairs on the Titanic.

Do we cut back on spending elsewhere - remove £50m from health, education, policing etc? Not good news if you're waiting for an operation.

We spent a fortune on Iraq - true, and probably the wrong thing to do. But given that our armed forces have been complaining that they weren't given adequate equipment for the job it could be argued we tried to do that on the cheap as well. Even if you're pursuing a bad idea, you have a responsibility to pursue it well. Equally, pulling out of Iraq to raise money to help Asia is absurd - any increase in violence within Iraq that followed would become our responsibility and could prompt an even greater humanitarian crisis than at present.

If the public are prepared to donate in such volumes that is a matter for them. It's relatively easy for me to decide not to buy a couple of CDs and give the money to charity instead - it's a lot harder for the government to reshuffle its budget to suit.

Finally, the ubiquitous minute's silence. Had two of these over the weekend at different football matches, and was forced to question the relevance and appropriateness of this. Once again it's about manufactured grief and a media desperate to find something to write about at a very quiet time of year. And once again it allows us to do precisely bugger all and salve our consciences as the same time. Too easy ....

[lucretia]

A few Tsunami points: yes, the casualties are horrific, but we are dealing with dozens of fairly densely populated countries. To say "it's more than twice our local population" is not wholly relevant. In local terms, a deluge swamping Southend and killing 150,000 would be utterly catastrophic, especially considering Southend's population is 175,000. A deluge swamping the whole of SE of England and killing 150,000 would be traumatic, but still leave vast numbers of survivors. One sweeping the channel and North Sea, affecting eastern Britain and the west coast of continental Europe, killing 150,000 is proportionally smaller again. Contrast with the twin towers, where 3,000 out of 10,000 WTC workers were killed - it's a whole different scale which explains the different air-time.

'Why was Diana a bigger deal?': Self-evident. How many Indonesians do you actually know? How often do you switch on TV or pick up a magazine and see images of life in Jakarta? Up until 10 days ago had you ever heard of Banda Aceh, or had any idea where it was? You can't really mourn for something you don't know. Of course western lives are more valuable to us ... we live in the west! That's why there's not 150,000 times the grief over here. Your logic would have us grieving for every single death on the planet, which might be compassionate but would be hideously impractical. Harsh, but fair.

Govt donations: from where? Do we divert from our aid/overseas development budgets to fund it? Do we take money away from Darfur to help Sri Lanka? That's deckchairs on the Titanic.

Do we cut back on spending elsewhere - remove £50m from health, education, policing etc? Not good news if you're waiting for an operation.

We spent a fortune on Iraq - true, and probably the wrong thing to do. But given that our armed forces have been complaining that they weren't given adequate equipment for the job it could be argued we tried to do that on the cheap as well. Even if you're pursuing a bad idea, you have a responsibility to pursue it well. Equally, pulling out of Iraq to raise money to help Asia is absurd - any increase in violence within Iraq that followed would become our responsibility and could prompt an even greater humanitarian crisis than at present.

If the public are prepared to donate in such volumes that is a matter for them. It's relatively easy for me to decide not to buy a couple of CDs and give the money to charity instead - it's a lot harder for the government to reshuffle its budget to suit.

Finally, the ubiquitous minute's silence. Had two of these over the weekend at different football matches, and was forced to question the relevance and appropriateness of this. Once again it's about manufactured grief and a media desperate to find something to write about at a very quiet time of year. And once again it allows us to do precisely bugger all and salve our consciences as the same time. Too easy ....

A couple of things: From 1992 until the end of December last year, 1,600 odd people worldwide died from tsunami related events. http://observe.arc.nasa.gov/nasa/exhibi ... n_map.html
The last deathtoll that I heard was in the region of 160,000 - this is "reportedly" the biggest relief effort since the Second World War. And whilst YOU might not know anything at all about Indonesia, Thailand, Sumatra or other places in that area, there are many people worldwide who do and have families, friends and work colleagues in those regions who were there at the time of this natural catastrophe. I am speaking from personal experience here and I still don't know if that particular person is safe or not.

Being a celebrity does not mean your life is more worthwhile or worthless than the life of a homeless person on the side of the road and while it might seem inconceivable and "hideously impractical" to you, it is purportedly that precise mechanism in the human brain called "humanity" that allows us to tune into the global psyche at times like these and set us apart from insects.

I agree on the "manufactured grief" point above, especially with regards to the One minute silence and flags at half mast thing but unfortunately in the "civilised" world, our rituals kinda come with all that.

[emilystrange]

yet again, man's profiteering from disaster is sickening. normally its arms or oil or medicine..
this time it's children. for adoption, the sex trade, or both.

i feel really really sick.

[lucretia]

A very good friend of mine is over there at the moment and he was on radio this afternoon - this is just a short synopsis of his interview from our "logs":


INT: Linden Birns (Live on the line from Phuket)
Linden is currently attending a Buddhist ceremony to pray for and remember the victims of the tsunami. The City is very sombre in the aftermath of the Tsunami. Birns arrived in Phuket late this afternoon. He says that it is very sad to see and experience the silence in the City.
Birns is part of a group doing victim identification, the communication and press work. Members of his team were part of the teams doing work after September 11. None of them have ever seen or experienced anything of this scale.