Quake in S. Asia.

[arnisador]

At last report, they're estimating over 20,000 dead.

I am sad to say that, with all that's happened since the incredible devastation of the tsunami less than a year ago--which at last report killed over 230,000 people--I'm starting to feel a bit numb. It's just too much.

I need some perspective.

 

[Lisa]

7.6 magnitude, estimated 22,000 dead.

I know what ya mean. The numbers are so large and the devastation we have witnessed lately is so big that it makes you just kinda blink, speachless, too much to process, unbelievable. I think we get this way when we are overwhelmed with too much information. Perspective would be nice right now.

 

[Ping898]

Kind of feels like the devastation is non-stop right now.

 

[dubljay]

Death tolls like that are staggering. It's hard to fathom. Often I hate seeing this stuff on the news, not because I don't want to know about it, but the media tends to beat it to death, desensitizing everyone to the magnitude of it all.

 

[mantis]

Death tolls like that are staggering. It's hard to fathom. Often I hate seeing this stuff on the news, not because I don't want to know about it, but the media tends to beat it to death, desensitizing everyone to the magnitude of it all.

+ katrina + taiwanese hurricane + about 10,000 in guatemala, now pakistan!
sad thing is there's nothing we can do about it.
we just sit, stare, and wait for death
who knows who's next!

 

[arnisador]

What Lisa said is exactly how I feel. I'm overwhelmed by the sizes of those numbers.

 

[mrhnau]

I'm reading about 30k+ now

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/10/10/quake.asia/index.html

really kind of scary... I was just discussing this with my wife yesterday, how so many natural disasters have been happening. Scary how fragile life really is.

MrH

 

[hardheadjarhead]

Staggering, isn't it?

That's equal to one out of three people dying in the county I live in.

We stand on the threshold of being able to have cheap building materials that would bring an end to such things...but we're not there yet.



Regards,


Steve

 

[mrhnau]

That's equal to one out of three people dying in the county I live in.

Thats the size of my university (roughly). Thats 10x the size of my home town. Its incredible!

MrH

 

[arnisador]

We stand on the threshold of being able to have cheap building materials that would bring an end to such things...but we're not there yet.

The heavy losses due to earthquakes are most often a matter of construction, yes. My wife, a former civil engineer, showed me just how true this is. It's the (good and well-enforced) building codes that make these so much less damaging in the U.S. It's one of the hardest things to accept about something like this--if it had happened in Seattle, you probably would be able to count the deaths on the fingers of one hand. They'd mostly be heart attacks in the elderly. But in a poverty-stricken area of a poor country that hasn't enacted or doesn't enforce modern codes for lack of resources, thousands die in building collapses.

Of course, the U.S. had the know-how to lessen the death toll in N.O. by strengthening the levees...but didn't.

 

[arnisador]

I'm now seeing 40,000.

An article on the earthquake vulnerability of older buildings in Calif.:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20051011/ts_latimes/howriskyareolderconcretebuildings