OP/ED: Tsunami - one of many from mother earth, page 1

The recent Tsunami in the Indian Ocean region is truly a catastrophe. There is no other word to describe the event(s) that have occurred there. However, there have been worse, much worse in recent history. Not counting the genocides or other man made disasters, a quick look at other natural disasters in the general area (Asia/Southeast Asia) shows disasters claiming MILLIONS of lives.

www.nytimes.com
Good overview of planet earth.
NY Times: Nonetheless, elected officials and disaster agencies, both public and private, remain focused on responding to catastrophes instead of trying to make societies more resilient in the first place, said Dr. Brian E. Tucker, a geophysicist and the head of GeoHazards International, a private research group trying to reduce poor countries' vulnerability to earthquakes. For instance, while the United Nations in 1989 declared the 1990's the "International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction," and created a secretariat to run it, it set no concrete goals or timetable for accomplishing them, Dr. Tucker said.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

Florida (USA) went for more than a hundred years, thousands dead in hurricanes, before new building codes mandated new construction. Florida suffered through four major hurricanes in 2004 with less losses than one major hurricane prior to the building changes.Camille ,in 1969, caused enormous damage. Florida still didn't change much- Hurricane Andrew caused the most building code changes. Without the previous changes Andrew may have been worse than Camille.

Now Florida proved that improved codes makes it possible to withstand four major storms.

What about other places in the world? MOST do not have any type of viable building code, this is the main reason deaths in some places are very high.

While the very recent Tsunami was, as said above, a catastrophe it is not without parallel.

Related News Links:
www.geocities.com
www.sptimes.com

[edit on 4-1-2005 by Banshee]