Weblogsky: Quake/Tsunami Relief and Resources

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Quake/Tsunami Relief and Resources

Volunteers have set up a The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami blog to gather and coordinate information about resources, aid, donations, and volunteer efforts in response to the devastation in Southeast Asia. There are several posts at WorldChanging.com about the catastrophic effects of the great quake. WC will follow up soon with a more comprehensive post, and thoughts about how such tragedies might be averted in the future. Here's an excerpt from a message I sent in a private email earlier today:

Humans have the gift of potential foresight yet we're in denial about our fragility and vulnerability to exceptional natural forces. I think that's the real story here. More so than developed vs developing nations... consider that Thailand had tsunami warning systems but hadn't thought to deploy them on the West Coast. India and Sri Lanka hadn't joined the international warning system because tsunamis are less frequent in the Indian Ocean, as if something like this could never occur. The Indonesian quote says they couldn't afford the equipment, but I suspect that means they hadn't given it priority.

I wonder if there'd been any kind of risk assessment to suggest that tsunami detection might in fact be a priority?

And what other risks are we ignoring? We pay at least some attention to potential asteroid collisions, but what action would we take if we did spot an asteroid on a collision course with the earth? I suspect that scenario hasn't got the attention it deserves.

We see this with global warming. We see this with some volcanoes - Yellowstone is an excellent example. If Yellowstone blows, and it very well might, we'd potentially have a world-killing catastrophe. How much thought have we given to preparation/mitigation?

So I think this is about understanding potentially catastrophic forces, creating strategies for prevention, warning, mitigation, whatever, and getting buy-in on those. Perhaps we need a set of potential catastrophe scenarios with probability ratings for prioritization, and proposals for response.

jon posted this at 11:29 AM
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Comments

Myself and my two friends are all travel nurses; we are in Hawaii at this time. We were here when the tsunami hit. We travel around the world to work. We would love to give some time to the people of Asia. We are on are way to New Zealand in July and Kenya in Dec. But, would love to fly to Asia to give a hand on anything needed.

Posted by: Tammie Anderson | May 2, 2005 10:01 AM