WHEN NATURAL DISASTERS come in bunches, there seems to be something distinctly unnatural about them. Does it seem reasonable that one cold front could trigger 70 tornadoes across four states over the weekend, killing 23 people?
Things are much worse overseas. The death toll from Monday’s earthquake in China is nearing 12,000 and still climbing.
But the biggest disaster of the year is in Myanmar. Tens of thousands of people are dead; tens of thousands more are missing. International aid officials say the cyclone’s toll could eventually reach 100,000.
But then, the Myanmar cyclone is not entirely a natural disaster.
Certainly, many of the cyclone’s victims were killed by the storm’s wind, floods and high tides. Now it is possible that many more people will die — victims of their own government’s greed and paranoia.
The military government of Myanmar is behaving as though the people left homeless and without food and water by the storm are enemies of the state. Aid workers from outside the country are treated with suspicion and bureaucratic roadblocks are thrown in front of every effort to get help to the stricken areas.
At one point, U.S. military officers on Navy ships off the coast were suggesting bypassing the diplomatic niceties altogether and using their planes and helicopters to drop supplies directly in the affected areas. They made that suggestion in the full knowledge that the government of Myanmar would be likely to consider such flights an act of war.
The government of Myanmar also bears a heavy burden of responsibility for the initial disaster. The storm was a work of nature, but once the path of the storm was known, the government failed to issue timely warnings that could have saved thousands of lives.
In this year of storms and earthquakes, nature may seem cruel, but there is nothing personal or malevolent in a big wind or a shift in the crust of the Earth.
Leave it to human beings to take a natural disaster and make it inhumanly worse.
Patrick S. Kelley
Editorial Page Editor
Comments
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Posted by hottopics (anonymous) on May 13, 2008 at 3:42 p.m. (Suggest removal)
It is a continuing horror story that we are watching unfold. Mind bogling that help was turned away as to say that the lives of their own meant nothing. Prayers to all of those caught up in the disaster.
Posted by railroadhorn (anonymous) on May 13, 2008 at 5:03 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I think you'll find that the strangeness was predicted by Nostradamus!
Posted by create (anonymous) on May 13, 2008 at 5:54 p.m. (Suggest removal)
A report I heard on CNN today detailed how the rice that has been distributed by the Myanmar government to some parts of the delta area was rotten. Does this mean they are sending their rotten rice to the people and saving the good stuff being sent to them by rescuing nations? Good stuff to feed their armies? I can't believe the United Nations hasn't stepped in by now.
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