Asian Seaquake

At peresent, the tsunami, which I will refer to as the Asian Seaquake. Vast amoiunts of human suffering and death continue to flood, er... engulf, er... occur in this impoverished region of the world. The great communicator, television, persists in beaming these images and sound to us, in the wealthy west, making us believe that we are truly interacting with these suffering individuals, when, in fact, we are merely the disaffected voyeurs that, for a moment, align our virtual experience with their actual experience. When, in fact, there is no way to calculate the reality of their situation. We try to fool ourselves into believing that continued ‘coverage’ of the South-East Asian Tsunami crisis will help to solve it, that keeping an eye on it through media coverage shows that we, in the west, care about their suffering; that throwing money and ‘aid’ for the regiion, donated by the vastly wealthy nations of the planet will help to solve the problems that they have.

The problem is that it remains an us vs. them problem. We remain so self-centred and so distanced from the issue that we cannot conceive of the depth of their despair. In the end, I estimate, 350000 to one half million people will have been killed due to this natural disaster. Their lives simply erased from this planet by the force of nature. While we cannot presume to contest the awesome magnitude of nature’s force, we can seek to understand the elements that led to the tragic loss of life that now consumes us all. No nation arises untouched by this upset. 11 nations and at least 20 million people are directly affected.

The Asian seaquake has ravaged several of the poorest nations on Earth. The average per capita GDP of these nations is 11.7% of the Canadian per capita GDP and 9.25% of the per capita GDP of the USA. Their homes and shelters did not stand the proverbial snowball’s chance against the might of a annual torrential downpours, typhoons and widespread flooding; much less the force of the 2004 tsunami, the side effect of a 9.0-magnitude (Ricther-scale) seaquake, an earthquake on the ocean floor. These nations, whose people struggle through life in a manner completely alien to us in the West, are often faced with the adversity of the forces of nature. This disaster need not have come to pass.

Human beings are animals, not dissimilar from the other creatures of the planet. Whether or not one believes in an Almighty Creator, the present fact is that we living creatures are all in this together. We rely upon the same planet to provide us with resource and opportunity to subsist and to exist. So, then, how has it come to pass that in this time of great tragedy, the most ’advanced’ species, the most ‘powerful’ species,the most ‘successful’ species has suffered such a great loss and the ‘lower’ species of the planet have managed to escape unharmed? The global community now seeks to lay blame within power structures and adminstrative structures to determine why more lives were not saved. Questions of politics and economics will be raised as the global community mourns the dead and calculates the cost to rebuild. Had we, humans, looked to the behaviour of other species and followed their lead in moving inland from the wavefront of disaster, leaving behind that which would inevitably be undone, such profound loss of life would have been averted. For where, among the piling bodies of humans, are the animals who were caught unawares?

Early warning signals exist naturally. Those species that cannot detect them for themselves rely upon the signals of other species. This network of understanding has prevented the extinction of species since antiquity. Today, as always, humans seek technological answers to natural questions. A tsunami warning system which currently operates in the Pacific ocean is incapable of warning the inhabitants of the Indian ocean. Furthermore, the wavefront first contacted, and destroyed, Indonesia. No warning was given to Sri Lanka or Somalia, the last places impacted, five hours later and five thousand kilometres distant. The disjointed nature of human nationalism, again, has prevented us from averting catastrophe.

Though unpopular to discuss, especially in the current state of human affairs, the human population problem must also be factored in. In short, due to the lack of sufficient places of habitation for humans in this world, the forces of economy and political pressures aside, the was literally no place else for these people to go. Even if an early warning system had existed, the evacuation of these people could not have been conducted. Resources simply do not exist to support massive displacements of a species that does not live in harmony with its environment.

A seaquake May 22, 1960, centered at 39.5 S, 74.5 W and of magnitude 8.6, devestated the Chilean shoreline. Fourteen hours later, the tsunami wavefront reached the Hawaiian islands, killing 61 people. Nine hours after that, the wavefront reached Japan, killing 150 more people. The behavioural properties of a seismic sea wave are fixed, thus, seismologists can predict the landfall of a tsunami given information about it. In 1994 a seaquake event triggered concern that the wavefront would transit the Pacific Ocean and cause damage along the North American West coast. This information was disseminated rapidly via media outlets hours before the wavefront was to reach shore.

Media consumption in developing nations, the lack thereof, contributed to this disaster. It is difficult to argue against the idea that the presence of a TV in every home in Sri Lanka or Somalia, along with overweight, solobsistic media consumers would have provided an effective defence against the western end of the Asian Seaquake. Once word got out, some people would have been prepared. However, this is simply not a reality in the third world nations of that region. Once recognized as a tsunami produced by a seaquake, the potential one hour lead time for Sri Lankans and potential four hour lead time for Somalis could have saved many lives.

Simply put, in a world of information, the recognition of an event having the potential to inflict widespread destruction and massive loss of life must be faster. The dissemination of this information must be spread as quickly as possible to the people who will be affected regardless of foreign policy, nationalistic ideals, or possible strategic advantages as a result of pursuant devestation. If we don’t take care of one another, no-one will.