In this business of writing the first draft of history, reporters should work toward placing large events in perspective. But that’s a tough task when covering a catastrophe like the one caused by tsunamis in Asia this last week.
The death count – estimated Saturday afternoon by the United Nations as 150,000 – is nothing compared with the number of military personnel and civilians who perished in World War II. That war lasted years and was fought on two fronts, the European and the Pacific. It ate up 52,199,262 lives, according to historyplace.com.
But the tsunami claimed lives, livelihoods, homes, businesses, hospitals and whole villages in a matter of hours from the time the geological fault let go under the ocean to the time the huge waves crashed against beaches in India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Somalia, Kenya, the Seychelles and Tanzania.
Although word of the tsunamis crashing ashore came via wire services late Saturday night, few newspapers got stories in their Sunday print editions. The Los Angeles Times – which had a timing edge on other American papers because it’s in the Pacific Time Zone – got a small story inside.
But it was only Sunday, as anecdotal reports started to flow into cable news channels and wire services, that editors began to understand this was a tragedy unraveling. Several cable news channels got lucky, because they either got phone calls from correspondents in the countries where tsunamis hit or regular folks with cell phones called them with reports of what they had seen.
But those initial reports – and the first amateur videotapes – gave only tiny portions of the story. Experts familiar with the population patterns and businesses of the ravaged countries might have had an idea of how terrible this actually was, but the fact that it has taken a week for any kind of accurate death estimates to emerge is an indication of what a terrible and ongoing problem this might be.
On Saturday, the United Nations estimated that 5 million people were homeless amid the fallen buildings and dangerous conditions. Although residents had tried to avoid disease by quickly burying or cremating the dead, health experts are concerned about a number of water-borne diseases attacking survivors already hard-pressed to find clean water or food.
Medicine, food and water that had been flown into affected countries began to sit in warehouses, because roads had been washed out and aid workers were unable to reach remote areas where people tried to forge crude shelter and wait for food.
But let’s get back to that original idea of placing this event in perspective: The number of people dead and homeless in the tsunamis’ aftermath is equal to the populations of Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and Montana added together.
Think about 5 million people in four states homeless and another 150,000 dead in those states.
That should bring it down to the level of comprehension.
Duncan, bye-bye
Cartoonist Chris Browne has stopped drawing the strip “Raising Duncan.” The last one runs in The Salt Lake Tribune today. If you want to see the classic reruns of the strip, go to http://www.comics.com/comics/raisingduncan/ – where you can buy “Raising Duncan” merchandise.
In place of that strip, The Tribune will start “Brevity” by Guy and Rod. This cartoon works words and images in a fresh and often ironic way.
Please don’t call or e-mail me about Duncan; I cannot get Browne to start drawing it again.
