Thursday, December 30, 2004

Tsunami Ho!

Why is it that when things like a big ass Tsunami hits and a bunch of people die in some far away country, that Americans get all crazy? I saw ads for a show last night that was like all, "Tsunamis an unexpected danger! What could have been done to prevent it and could it happen here?". I know that low budget media people are always looking to make a show that people will watch, but it just contributes to the hysteria.

As far as the unexpected part, geologists have been telling anybody that will listen that low lying areas near the ocean, any ocean, are at risk of inundation. The swell of this Tsunami was only 9 feets high. I am not sure what the crest on the shore break was, but I don't think it was terribly big. Sure it was a ton of water, but it's not like it was a monster 40 foot rogue wave. A better shore break would have done a lot to slow the speed of the swell. Add to that the fact that it is well understood in the geology community the the Indian subcontinent is colliding with the Asian continental plate with a huge amount of force. This is the reason everest exists. The area along the margin of india and throughout the indonesian islands area are a very active seismic and volcanic area. It shouldn't be a surprise to anybody that they are susceptble to this sort of thing. This is why California and Hawaii have early dection systems and occasionally have alerts to potential Tsunamis.

These these things have happened time and time again in recorded history. Even poor countries have the resources to install early detection systems along their coasts. The fact that they didn't before is simply negligent.

Kudo's to America for sending over 35 Million to these countries to try and help these people recover. We also gave a ton of help to Iran when they had that nasty earthquake earlier this year. The rest of the world did very little to help the Floridians that lost their homes in the past huricane season, but that is ok. With the sorry position that Bush has put us in as far as public opinion throughout the world we need to do all of the good deeds we can do.

I suggest we send out Valentines this year to everybody in the world. Just like in grammar school. Everybody gets one, no favorites.

2 comments:

Leslie Welch said...

Bush should donate the 30 million dollars being spent on his inauguration party...

Lefty said...

Too true. I understand that being the president isn't all camp david and hanging out at the ranch (or is it?), but does Bush really need another damn party? If he can't/won't donate it to the refugees from the Tsunami tragedy lets talk about all of the poor people right here at home. The "richest nation in the world" and we still have children going hungry every day of the year! Yeah let's throw the rich guy a party.