Word: tsunamis
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...southern Thailand is unsavory. Two men, beers in hand, stand on a sandy beach in the tropical sunshine, hard at work on their respective tans. But there is something deeply disturbing about the image. Behind the tourists is a massive pile of debris, a jarring reminder of the tragic tsunami that swept through South Asia—and tens of thousands of lives—on Dec. 26. In the aftershock of this cataclysmic disaster, with a death toll expected to surpass 150,000 and an expected cost surely to be counted in the billions of dollars, two undeterred tourists...
...explaining to do. It’s true that many who work in the resort and service industries in the developing world owe their livelihoods to western tourists, callers and customers. However, a massive number of people in the areas devastated by last month’s tsunami, live on dollars—or less—a day providing goods and services taken for granted by their users in and from the rich West. It is this group of poorly paid workers, who live in, albeit measured by western standards, abject poverty, that was devastated by the deadly waves...
...depraved indifference for human lives. World, and especially western, governments who have pledged billions in emergency relief cannot be satisfied by the contradictory message sent by hedonistic tourists carrying on their vacations as if nothing happened. Muslims, who constitute a large proportion of the population in much of the tsunami-affected area, cannot be comfortable at tourists’ consumption of alcohol under any circumstances, least of all when they are spending their days in a desperate search for a future. Most of all, however, Thais, Indonesians, Sri Lankans, and their South Asian neighbors must be furious with the visitors...
Good intentions aside, when it comes to tsunami-affected resort areas, there’s only so much that private donations and corporate (and university) fund matching...
...Designing infrastructure projects to promote technological innovation, instituting improved disaster warning systems and improving the means of reconstruction would all have lessened the destruction of the tsunami...