Tsunami in Asia

Thoughts on the Tsunami

January 2nd, 2005 (Edited and Corrected on Tuesday January 18, 2005)

From a political perspective, here are a few random thoughts on the tsunami that recently swept through Asia.

What a sad holiday season for hundreds of thousands of people. The final death toll from both the original wave and the following disease could reach close to 300000. (For current tally of deaths click here.) Through injury and affected friends and family members, millions of other people will be affected by the tsunami. There is no doubt that this is a disaster of monolithic proportions that surpasses even comparison to September 11th. If less time and resources had been spent fighting a few terrorists and more time and resources had been used on disaster preparation and prevention, I strongly believe that the magnitude of this calamity could easily have been reduced. It seems that far too often, we as a civilization are making war and suffering rather than promoting peace and tranquility.

Anyway, please read my thoughts and please do not hesitate to send me yours.

First of all, it should be noted that even with the information provided that the magnitude of this disaster could have been minimized. For example, the United States Geological Service knew that the tsunami was going to hit the countries that it did. It claimed that it was unable to warn soon to be affected countries because it did not have contact information for these countries. While this may be true, it also true that there seems to be no evidence that the US Geological Service even tried to find contact information for these countries. The contact information for the respective geological organizations in many of the major countries affected can be found within the first page of search results from google.com. Surely, if the US Geological Survey had put more effort into warning these countries, much of the disaster that took place could have been prevented.

But the United States did not need to warn all the countries all of impending tsunami. Some seismologists and meteorologists in Thailand already knew that there was a good chance of a tsunami, but most did not issue a warning because they were afraid of losing their jobs. In the past, scientists in Thailand had issued warnings that turned out to be false -- and were then heavily criticized for endangering Thailand's tourist industry. In the days following the disaster, Thailand's top meteorologist was fired anyway.

Just days after the initial tsunami, scientists in India and Sri Lanka were criticized for issuing a tsunami warning following aftershocks of the original quake. While it may have inconvenienced many, it would have saved lives if another wave had actually hit. In a situation like this, it is definitely better safe than sorry -- at least in my opinion.

Analyzing the media and the tsunami is also very interesting. Most of the coverage in Canada has focused on those countries with the strongest Western Connections. Those countries are India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia. Lots of other countries were also devastated by the tsunami including countries throughout Southeast coastal Asia, in the Indian Ocean and along the coast of Eastern Africa. For example, we hear almost nothing of how the tsunami has struck Burma/Myanmar, yet scientists believe it struck the country with great ferocity and cause a great deal of damage, destruction and death in its wake. Because Burma/Myanmar is a dictatorship and has very few ties to the West, we do not know just how many deaths there really are in the country and because of its government type, the actual citizens of the country are unlikely to receive the same amount of aid as the citizens of other countries. The effects of the wave on the coast Africa has also been under-reported. Because there is no guaranteed safety for journalists in Somalia, we do not know how many people died there except that the number is in the hundreds. We have also heard very little about other countries like Kenya and Tanzania which were affected by the waves. Because the media is not covering these locations, less of the aid will go there because people and aid organizations are less likely to know about the needs in these areas.

Another interesting note is that many of the countries that were affected are countries with large numbers of sweatshops. It will be interesting to see whether the corporations which fund these sweatshops are going to provide help to the disaster relief or simply take up and move because the disaster has made business inconvenient in the area. So far the majority of aid donated has come from government and non-profit organizations -- corporations and businesses have donated very little.

On another note, the United States since Iraq has been highly critical of the United Nations because of its lack of support for the Iraq war. Ever since then the United States under the Bush administration has attempted to work around the United Nations and promoted the idea of "reform" of the United Nations -- undoubtedly this reform is needed, but the American Republican version of reform is aimed at ensuring the United States continues to control world affairs and maintain access to the world resources (like oil). Continuing with its efforts to bypass the United Nations, the United States has set up its own centre to control the administration of aid in Southeast Asia. The UN is the organization that would normally do this. With two control centres for aid, unnecessary bureaucracy and redundancy has been created hampering relief efforts. Furthermore, it remains to be seen if the aid centres will administer the aid in a fair manner to all affected regions, and whether the aid will be the type of aid that encourages renewed independence for the affected regions.

On a totally different note, the earthquake influenced the Earth's rotation. Scientists are now being forced to add a leap second to a year at some point in the future to make up for accumulating variations in the earth's rotation. Thanks to the Indonesian earthquake, Earth is now tilted a few centimeters on its axis and spinning 3 microseconds faster. According to NASA, this is unlikely to have any major influence climate or satellite capabilities.

Finally, to end on a bright note, there was one interesting miracle as a result of the tsunami. A mom and her children that were pulled out to sea by the wave saw a very large snake swimming towards shore. Snakes are normally an animal that I try to avoid, but this family owes their life to the snake. In desperation the mum and children grabbed on to the snake and it pulled them to shore with it. Our enemies are often not as clear cut as we perceive be -- our enemies can be our greatest friends. Read more here.

Before and After Satellite Photos of Areas Struck By Wave:

Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

The popular tourist destination, Khao Lak, Thailand.

Animation of the Tsunami's Reach:

From BBC -- Countries that suffered major damage as a result off the Tsunami.

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