Like you, I'm sure, I've been listening to all the reports coming out of SE Asia over the last few days with growing horror.
As you may have seen, I have posted a link in the previous post below this one, for visitors to make donations to the Emergency Appeal being co-ordinated by
Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) who are an umbrella organisation for a number of well known and World renowned Charities.
DEC are co-ordinating the UK’s National Appeal in response to this and many other major disasters overseas. You can make your donation via a secure payment page. Don't worry if the page you see this morning seems to be dedicated to Dafur. Your donation will be put to the SE Asia Disaster Appeal. If you are resident in the UK, you can also telephone 0870 60 60 900 and give your money over the phone. Every little bit will help!
Now... one aspect of all this is really getting to me... and that is, how come the Administrators at the US's
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who monitored the initial earthquake, didn't issue a warning directly to the countries who were undoubtedly going to be receiving this massive tsunami as a result?
I realise there is no system deployed in this area of the Indian Ocean, such as there already is in the Pacific, protecting the US's West coast. However, since they saw the Earthquake happen on their monitors, they could have simply picked up their telephones and called someone, couldn't they?
"We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world,"
NOAA director Charles McCreery said.
So, are we led to believe, that a group of grown men, supposedly intelligent scientists, simply sat on their hands and watched as the horrendous Tsunamis developed over the next hour or two? Did it not cross their minds to do something, like pick the telephone directory up and call the UN? Make a call to their own US State Department, who undoubtedly DO have contacts in all the countries that were hit by the tsunami over the next two hours? I really find this absolutely inexplicable! Ludicrous!
I keep telling myself, whenever there is a seemingly unexplicable situation, nine times out of ten, upon investigation, there always IS an understandable explanation. In this instance though, I am at a loss to come up with any reason why it was not possible, for the Administrators at
NOAA to do more than issue a
Bulletin. Seems to me, thousands would have been saved, with a little more effort on their part, other than... "Ooops, we don't have any contacts in our address book!"
Someone please make a comment and tell me differently. Put my mind at rest. Surely, there was more done to try and warn these poor people?
Gibraltar News Online
