Tsunami Disaster Commentary

It had to happen, the first story has emerged of surfer from the UK who unwittingly become the first person (probably in history) to surf a tsunami wave. Apparently he was out on his surfboard saw the wave and knew something was wrong but then got carried in to the shore line by the wave, past it and straight into his hotel's restaurant where he hopped off his board, collected his wife and child and fled to higher ground in the jungle behind his hotel just in time to miss the larger 30 foot wave that came ashore and destroyed most of the site he had just vacated.

An amazing escape.

Meanwhile the devastation which I am afraid I predicted with clogged infrastructure resulting in an inability to actually deliver the massive aid that is pouring into the devastated region has begun. Officials in affected countries are pleading with donor nations to tell them in advance what supplies are coming in on each plane so that they can try and organise the reception, removal and storage in preparation for any distribution that is possible.

UN officials on the scene are pleading for vessels with helicopters on board to be routed to the sites as the existing harbours and airports crumble under the onslaught of the amounts of aid and traffic.

Singapore, having escaped the tidal wave is storing goods in warehouses awaiting the opportunity to ship it into Indonesia and Malaysia so that it can be distributed.

I am afraid that this nightmare is only going to get worse in the short term and people will of course suffer. There will of course be the inevitable recriminations that often happen after a disaster, where one group will inevitably blame another for not being sufficiently prepared or not being able to do something.

What everyone fails to realise in their grief, is that this is exactly what happens in a disaster. Even if people had been planning for this particular type of disaster and had practised rigorously to ensure that their planning could be implemented with some trained people behind it there would still be problems - hopefully fewer than when a country or as in this case countries are unprepared both for the nature and the extent of the disaster.

People will learn from this experience and while this is cold comfort for those who are going through the pain and anguish on this occasion it is progress of sorts.

Let us hope that one of the lessons that is learned from this disaster is that it can happen to anyone at any time and that we all need to have emergency plans in place and agreements across countries in place to facilitate the organisation, management and administration that needs to take place.