Tsunami and Relief

I wonder what the government departments in the affected countries know about the extent of the tragedy?

The newspapers of course change their story every few hours. The death toll as at today is being reported in numbers around the 140,000 whereas only a few days ago there were reports of just 14,000 deaths.

That aside, there are questions I have about what is to be done.

The staple food stuff in the area is of course rice. Since rice grows in water filled paddies any that were inundated will not only lose their current crop but with the saturation from the salt water are unlikely to produce a crop any time soon. Then of course the principal source of protein is very likely to be fish. Once again with the fishermen, their boats destroyed and the remainder of the community in shock and in mourning there is likely to be few fish being caught to feed people. The most likely place to have fish processing infrastructure is close to where the fishing takes place. Thus it is also likely that most of the processing plants have taken damage if not been wiped out in the tragedy.

Leave us not forget water for drinking and of course sewerage. We still have places in our so called developed countries where places that are more than twenty kilometres from some major city centre are without sewers and where cess pits are the norm. Is it likely that in some of the countries affected by this tragedy the infrastructure is any better than in our own? Hardly. Thus it is also very likely that there is no adequate way of dealing with the human refuse that is being generated each day.

Water is likely to have been available in tourist resorts from the tap. However in more distant and less developed areas it is also more likely to have come from bores, wells and from rivers.

Each of these are likely to have been polluted and/or rendered useless by the tsunami.

All of this of course spell out the dangers of malnutrition, lack of clean water for drinking, untreated sewerage amidst waters that are still covering the land. A situation ripe for disease to take hold.

The question is not whether or not the death toll will increase or not. The question should be what can be done about it? How badly affected are the roads, the harbours and railway connections? There is simply no way that all of the people remaining on the ground can be supplied by means of air across the affected areas.

Where is the water and the food going to come from and how are they going to cope with the waste?

I would love to see some information about these things coming across the wires