So much injustice in Boxing Day tragedy

Canberra Times – Australasia
Dec 28, 2004

SURROUNDED as most of us probably are by the excesses, the detritus
and the general aftermath of Christmas, it’s impossible to imagine
what the survivors of the world’s most powerful earthquake for 40
years must be going through right now. The top news story on Boxing
Day was supposed to be the re-run of the Ukraine elections, not a
re-run of the Iranian earthquake that left 26,000 people dead in Bam
on 26 December last year.

It’s still too early to say how many people died in the quake that hit
the Indonesian state of Aceh on Boxing Day or in those countries – Sri
Lanka, Thailand, India and the Maldives – fringing the Indian Ocean
that was subsequently battered by a massive tsunami. The chances are
we’ll never know since many of the coastal settlements close to the
Oceanic epicentre were completely destroyed leaving no survivors to
furnish us with tidy statistics.

The difference between human and natural disasters is that the first
are avoidable whereas the second we can do nothing about – unless, of
course, we live in the first world and have a lot of money. Think of
all those millionaires in Los Angeles with their luxury
earthquake-proof homes slap on top of the San Andreas Fault. True to
what I have always considered to be the curiously un-Christian parable
of the sower, Matthew 12 verse 13: ”To him that hath, even more shall
be given and he shall have an abundance. To him that hath not, even
that which he hath will be taken away.” Natural disasters always seem
to dump on the poorest communities of the Third World. OK, there was a
freak hurricane in France just before Christmas which had people
missing planes and ferries and thousands of households without
electricity for a few hours, but that was a mere dot in the big
disaster picture. Every year thousands of Bangladeshis whose average
income is less than a dollar a week are swamped by typhoons and tidal
waves. To make their homes flood-proof by erecting low walls made of
concrete blocks containing a specially designed reinforcing agent,
would cost less than $10 a family, but the government simply can’t
afford it.

It’s at times like this when all I can do is feel helpless and listen
to the latest news updates from the disaster zone. It’s times like
this that I don’t envy an engineer called David Charlesworth who I met
about 10 years ago. As I write this he’s probably on a plane heading
for Jakarta with his bag of tools. David works for a charity called
The Register of Engineers for Disaster Relief. They are the unsung
heroes of natural disasters. They don’t have the glamour of doctors
saving the lives of small children in field hospitals or the photo
opportunity value of Red Cross drivers distributing food in refugee
camps.

REDR members are the low-profile operators who rebuild the roads and
bridges and improvise airstrips to make it possible for the doctors
and drivers to get to the disaster areas.

When I met David he had just come back from an assignment to the
Ascension Islands during the Falklands War. The RAF needed an
airstrip; REDR did it for peanuts. No-frills practicality is the aid
worker’s key word. A friend who went to Gujarat after the 1998 Indian
earthquake said that aid agencies often missed the basics because they
got carried away by headline-catching projects. In Gujarat the
American NGO’s were dead keen on the ”Adopt a village” idea, which
made great television. They spent days driving around looking for a
suitable candidate with preferably an articulate, photogenic head
man. In her experience, said my Christian Aid friend dryly, the
neediest people in disasters are not necessarily the most
vocal. Instead of a charismatic village head man, they’d have been
better off getting in touch with the local Sangam or women’s
group. Every Indian village has one. They are the people who really
know where the help is needed.

A year after Bam, President Mohammad Khatami is claiming that only
$A42 million of the $A2.5 billion worth of international aid promised
has been delivered. Sixteen years after the Armenian quake, only 50 of
the 256 houses destroyed in the village of Saramej have been
rebuilt. With many foreign tourists among the casualties, Sunday’s
victims can expect masses of aid, but how much of it will filter
through to tiny rural communities? Natural disasters are often
referred to, particularly by insurance companies, as Acts of God. Was
there ever a more cogent argument for becoming an atheist? This is the
first Christmas I didn’t go to Midnight Mass. With the benefit of
hindsight would there really have been much point? – The Independent

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress