Near 60,000 Dead from Tsunami Disaster

The breadth of the Indian Ocean disaster is beyond comprehension. Informed sources believe the death toll related directly to the tsunami is headed for 100,000. The homeless are already in the millions. Virtually all of the homeless face contaminated water as their only source. Cholera and other diseases of sanitation could break out any time and tens of thousands more could die. While this is not the kind of cataclysm the world is capable of in a worldwide disaster that threatens the survival of the human race, but it is cut of the same cloth. Our most enthusiastic response for donations and coordinated relief will same tens of thousands of lives. But no matter what we do, tens of thousands more will die. There is nothing we can do about that. We are nearly helpless in this scale of disaster.

 

Increase the scale of this disaster into another region involving the developed world, the fabric of the world economy is threatened. And, any serious relief effort becomes spotty. Many places receive no help at all beyond local efforts. Move the disaster deep into the developed world, into more than one region, effectively, the world economy collapses and becomes regional. Parts of the world spared by the disaster take care of themselves because doing anything more will do further damage to their economy. Huge parts of the world degenerate into chaos, government breaks down in any kind of comprehensive sense. Anarchy becomes more prominent than rule of law.

 

At a regional level, government is threatened with breakdown now in the Indian Ocean region. Local government is fractured in the affected areas. National government efforts are spotty at best. It will be years before this break down of order is completely restored. Collateral casualties will certainly be in the hundreds of thousands, very likely the millions.

 

 [Daily Kos]

Update [2004-12-28 19:18:17 by Armando]:

The reported deaths from the disaster climbed today to more than 50,000, with some reports placing the number near 60,000, as Sri Lanka and Indonesia increased their confirmed tolls.

Update [2004-12-28 19:18:17 by Armando]:More Donation Links.

The number of deaths makes you tremble:

Survivors of the gigantic undersea earthquake on Sunday that swallowed coastlines from Indonesia to Africa - which officials now describe as one of the worst natural disasters in recent history - recovered bodies today, hurriedly arranged for mass burials and searched for tens of thousands of the missing in countries thousands of miles apart.

The reported deaths from the disaster - which climbed today to about 44000, with many still unaccounted for, as Sri Lanka and Indonesia increased their confirmed tolls - came into sharper relief on a day when it seemed increasingly clear that at least a third of the dead were children, according to estimates by aid officials.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and government officials here, as well as those in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India, the Maldives and as far away as Somalia, warned that with hundreds of thousands of people stranded in the open without clean drinking water, epidemics of cholera and other waterborne diseases could take as many lives as the initial waves.

Images from around the region presented a tableau of unrelenting grief. Fathers and mothers wailed over drowned children. Bodies were arrayed in long rows in hastily dug trenches. Villagers sat by ruined homes, stunned. Hotels in some of Thailand's most luxurious resorts were turned into morgues.

"This may be the worst natural disaster in recent history because it is affecting so many heavily populated coastal areas," said Jan Egeland, the emergency relief coordinator for the United Nations, speaking at a news conference in New York.

This is gut wrenching.

A Third Were Children

The reported deaths from the disaster - which climbed today to about 44,000, with many still unaccounted for, as Sri Lanka and Indonesia increased their confirmed tolls - came into sharper relief on a day when it seemed increasingly clear that at least a third of the dead were children, according to estimates by aid officials. Images from around the region presented a tableau of unrelenting grief. Fathers and mothers wailed over drowned children.

Amateur videotape played on television showed terrifying scenes from several countries of huge walls of water crashing through palm trees and over the tops of buildings and roaring up coastal streets with cars and debris bobbing on the surface. To backdrops of screams and shouts, people were shown clinging to buildings, being swept away by the current, running for their lives, weeping, carrying the injured and cradling dead children.

Words fail.

Update [2004-12-28 11:44:17 by Armando]:

IRC Donations.

Oxfam.

India Relief.