Tsunami, why I donated

Mark Rogers

CGF, Certified Grumble Framer
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Posts
138
Loc
Dallas, TX
I do not donate enough, especially for US based natural disasters. I lived through a hurricane and although being without power and water for several days is definitely a major inconvenience, it is nothing by comparison. Travel was difficult because of things in the road, but we were very fortunate in that it was just “material” things that needed to be moved. The US also has incredible resources that are far more readily available. Every part of the US has people that can help like Doctors and Nurses, amateur radio operators to help setup communications, volunteer fire department personal, part time police and security people, ex-military…etc. I am sure many areas hit by the Tsunami will have little or none of this.

After I pondered this, I had another realization, which hit me even harder. I am not sure where all of my moulding comes from, but I know some of it comes from Indonesia. It is not very unlikely that moulding in my shop, was handled by someone who either needs help, or is related to someone who needs help.

Like I said, I do not normally donate enough, but I decided to donate twice this time. Once from my personal account, and once from my business account.

If you have a PayPal account you can easily donate to Unicef:
http://donations.paypal.com/

There is a great picture sequence here shot by a survivor. There are also comments by people in the area at the time of the shot. And, just so you know, the person being swept under the balcony did survive.
http://www.pbase.com/issels/phuket_tsunami

It is a small world, and we are all one through God.

Mark
 
Mass media pretty much reports little beyond the death count estimates. Here are a couple of other perspectives, which helped me understand the incredible magnitude of this:

According this article, the earth’s rotation speed was increased by the earthquake:
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041229/full/041229-6.html

Here are before and after satellite pictures of the area. Warning: numbers do not really do it for me, but this brought tears to my eyes:
http://www.digitalglobe.com/tsunami_gallery.html

Mark
 
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