http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6927389.stm
The flooding in South Asia that was mentioned in class yesterday happened to be a top BBC story today. The numbers are amazing: 12 million stranded in India, rivers rising 9-10 meters, 34 cattle camps set up in one district, 500 villages evacuated in another district. In many areas, people are waiting on their roof tops for assistance.
On one hand, how ironic that a developed nation such as the US would have the same problems as these third world South Asian countries. Even developement can't protect people from floods such as in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina or the swelling of the Snoqualmie River in Washington.
On the other hand, the current flooding in South Asia is incomprehensible to us in its magnitude. Those figures are astounding, and people have been calling it the worst flooding in years. Government and NGO assistance can't even reach many areas even if they had enough man-power, food, and water to do so, which is in short supply. The fact that millions of people are stranded at this moment is wrong, but how do we stop it? It is not possible to get on a plane to South Asia and start handing out our pantry or rescuing people in the most remote areas but I feel that we should be able to do something.
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Well first off, New Orleans could have been better taken care of considering FEMA was run by one of Bush's buddies that needed a job and had no previous Natural Hazard experience. Also,they built a city around levees where people knew the risk, yet they decided to build the military rescue center and the rescue buses in flood zone areas. It is poor hazard planning and prevention efforts that caused such a catastrophe in New Orleans. The problem in developing areas is that there is not enough risk management and the USGS is a huge part of offering technology to assist in detecting natural hazards. The Tsunami in the same Indian Ocean that affected Thailand and Sri Lanka could have been less devastating if there had been more technological resources, the earthquake was detected in Hawaii, but there wasn't enough time to warn the Tsunami areas, because the huge earthquake was not in their area. It is sad that more prevention and risk mitigation efforts are not there, because developing areas can't afford it. The best thing that we should do is help with hazard prevention that way if there is a international geologic hazard it can be easier to rescue and give aid. This is just another example of the diparity of affluence affecting access to basic needs.
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