In the Shadow of Death
Pity the poor people of Indonesia. Truly victims of geographic location, of nature at her fiercest, of utter helplessness in the face of both unalterable realities. Whether it be volcanic eruptions, earthquakes or the resulting tsunamis, they have faced the full force of some of nature's worst catastrophies to be visited upon mankind.When one revisits the calamity of the 2004 Boxing Day earthquake/tsunami fall-out in the death of 170,000 people in the province of Aceh alone, it boggles the mind. The national trauma left in the wake of that disaster of such humanly unimaginable scope can hardly have begun to heal, much less the full range of reconstruction, before people were again faced with the inevitability of a volcanic eruption, and the resulting evacuations in anticipation of the event.
Then the earthquake which current statistics indicate have killed an estimated five thousand people, and left countless thousands others homeless, panic-stricken, wounded and ill. Thousands of Indonesians are mourning their dead, facing an uncertain future. The disaster and its aftermath brings to mind the fact that many other areas of the world also have serious fault lines in the earth-crust, where plates grind and give promise of a "big one". Were it to happen here, in Canada, on our West Coast or even here in Ottawa, would we be any more prepared to deal with the after-effects? Would our disaster relief organizations be any more capable of coping with events on such an unprecedented scale as the government of Indonesia?
As economically poor as Indonesia is, they have had to cope with actual disasters on a wider scale, similar to those of other disaster-prone regions of the world such as Japan, Iran, Pakistan, where earth-shaking upheavels have wrought complete disaster on populations clearly unable to cope. The truth is, nowhere on earth is there a population or a government capable of coping with upheavals of this nature; they are legendary in the scope of their destruction, in the clear inability of government to cope. Wealthy countries such as the United States with all their organizational capabilities and national wealth are helpless in the face of natural disasters, and do little better than their poorer counterparts in rescue, relief and rehabilitation.
Yea, we do indeed live in the shadow of death, never knowing where or when the Grim Reaper will strike.
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, May 30, 2006
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