Tsunami... what we could have done but did not

Panglima's log Wednesday 29 Dec 2004 0915 hours

if you guys have not heard the news (http://www.bernama.com.my or http://news.google.com or http://www.thesundaily.com or http://www.thestar.com.my) then you have missed one of the most significant event of the century!

simply put, an earthquake a few kilometers below the sea bed west of north sumatera triggered a tremor recently graded as 9.0 on the richter scale, as well as a tsunami that hit the coast of indonesia, malaysia, thailand, myanmar, india, bangladesh, sri lanka, maldives, seychelles, somalia, kenya and tanzania. to date the death toll is almost 60,000 lives. more are seriously injured. the details can be read in the news as i am not about to copy and paste everything into this tiny space.

could we have done something? if there is, probably very little. it took approximately an hour for the tsunami to travel from the epicenter to malaysia. it cant be predicted. it can only be tracked with difficulty once it is generated. and good ol' malaysia has never been under threat of a tsunami before for at least a hundred years (that's how far i know and its a very conservative number). even if we had known it's coming over, there's nothing much we could do in an hour.

we do not have a well practised mass emergency public notification system. name a beach in malaysia that has a siren and pa system with someone constantly at watch. you'll be lucky if you see the notorious red flag which most ignored or went unnoticed.

most malaysians have never seen a tsunami before in their lives. those fortunate to be watching it on discovery channel may still not recognize it again, even if it occurs before their own eyes. in penang, what happened when the sea receded 200 meters (pulled to form the wave)? picnickers ran towards the sea to pick clams and flopping fish left by the water. when the waves reappeared minutes later, very little time was left to realize that they are sitting duck. doomed.

we are ignorant about a lot of things. apathy too. every year we experienced major flood. after each relief operations, the powers that be hold a post-mortem meeting to discuss the shortfalls of the operation. and it ends the moment the meeting ends. the following year we make the same errors again.

we face similar problems after a multi-agencies joint emergency exercise. post-mortem meeting carried out and the same mistakes are made at the next exercise.

who are to be blamed but our own ignorant self? everybody - the federal and local government, their agencies, and the rakyat including the victims too.

i can go on and on but looking at the photos in the paper just derailed my train of thought. until next time... be safe, be good.