I feel sorry for all the people who lost their lives, especially since the waves hit the most unprivileged parts of the world. Most of the victims were people who didn’t even realize that there was anything beyond the vast emptiness of the sea that surrounded them. And then, suddenly, everything was gone. I can’t say I’m crying for them, because, as Art said, the degrees of our emotional strength differ from person to person. But I’m shocked none the less.
I do, however, spend a lot of time watching images that come off the wire services, and I’m gaping at the scale of the whole tragedy. Pictures showing a beach with several hundred dead bodies mixed with debris, satellite pictures of none existent cities, wiped out in a few seconds, and so on. And sometimes I imagine some of the islands on the Pacific that don’t get mentioned as often in the news.
These islands housed several thousand people (most of them were indigenous, others worked at military installations and so on). Now they’re empty. You don’t hear about them, because there’s not a single living person left alive there. I imagine standing in the middle of that bare island, in a place where a few days ago there used to be a thriving town with lot’s of people milling around. And then I imagine the vast emptiness and the roar of the ocean and crashing waves on the now deserted, barren piece of land. It’s shocking.
Now, when I wake up in the morning, I realize how lucky I am to live in a developed country, without fear of either tsunamis or earthquakes plaguing my everyday live.
If you have a problem grasping the scale of the whole thing, here’s a link that’ll give you an idea how 115.000 people look like, more or less:
http://www.toddbinder.com/Toll.aspx