The Tsunami disaster

Submitted by Pete on 3 January, 2005 - 12:28

Socialists and trade unionists in the Indian Ocean countries hit by the 26 December Indian Ocean tsunami have called for more aid from rich countries, cancellation of debts owed by the victim countries, and an end to the blockage of aid by the local military.

Vast numbers of people were killed straight off by the tsunami. That could have been avoided. What can still be avoided is a similar death toll from the aftermath.

Millions of people have lost their jobs and homes and, often, their friends and families. Hundreds of thousands of them are injured. Most were already living in poverty before the tsunami, only with difficulty getting enough clean water, nutritious food, and health care to survive. Now their needs have doubled and their resources have been drastically reduced.

US President George W Bush started off by offering $35 million in aid, and Britain by offering $3 million. They have increased the figures since then, but, as US Senator Patrick Leahy put it, "We spend $35 million before breakfast in Iraq".

The USA will spend $420 billion - 420,000 million - on its military in 2005. The rest of the world will spend about $530 billion.
A small fraction of that expenditure can save hundreds of thousands of lives. Armed forces equip and train themselves to improvise infrastructure, establish communications, and move large amounts of supplies, quickly - exactly what is needed in the tsunami-hit areas.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has already called for a debt repayment moratorium for Indonesia and Somalia. The countries affected need not just a moratorium, but debt cancellation, to free the resources needed for economic reconstruction in the ruined areas, and to do it without the strings and paybacks linked to official aid.

It is also vital that the aid is not blocked by local governments. From Aceh, at the north west tip of the Indonesian archipelago, hardest hit by the tsunami, activists report that the Indonesian army is blocking distribution of aid.

According to SEGERA and FDPRA, pro-Acehnese movements based in Jakarta and linked with the People's Democratic Party of Indonesia, "Tens of thousands of tonnes of materials are piling up at airports. Activists took the initiative to hire transport so that some goods could be taken out but the TNI [army] officials at the airport refused Officials demand letters of authority from those who despatched the goods from Jakarta"

The army ranks the risk of goods getting to the movement for autonomy or independence for Aceh - against which the army is conducting a grinding war - higher than the risk of tsunami survivors dying for lack of supplies.

Even when there is no such official obstruction, and no or few problems of official corruption and bureaucratic sluggishness, successful relief for the survivors depends on infrastructure - roads, water pipelines, telephones.

Over a thousand Australian tourists are still missing from the tsunami. But the identified Australian survivors were back home, and getting medical care when they needed it, quickly and efficiently. They were mostly in tourist areas - better provided with infrastructure than others - and they had the resources of the tourist industry and a rich government to come to their aid. For the ordinary people of the coastal cities and villages it will be different.

The 26 December tsunami was a natural disaster which no political will could have avoided. But the casualties from such disasters depend on political will. Today, humankind has the technology to construct buildings, communications, and emergency backup services in a way that limits those casualties.

Consider earthquakes. In cities where many rich people live, the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 (7.1 on the Richter scale) cost 16 deaths. The Kobe (Japan) earthquake of 1995, measuring 7.2, cost 5,273.

In poorer cities, the Bam (Iran) earthquake of 2003, measuring 6.6, killed 30,000; the Izmit (Turkey) earthquake of 1999, measuring 7.4, killed 17,000; the Mexico City earthquake of 1985, measuring 8.1, took 10,000; and the Tangshan (China) quake of 1976, measuring 8.3, killed about 500,000.

The Richter scale is not a full measure of the natural impact of an earthquake; but casualties will be much lower in a city where buildings are designed to resist earthquakes, where emergency services are well-planned, and where officials have to submit to media and public scrutiny, than in one full of flimsy houses where the government cares little about emergency services, and where (as in China) there are no media independent of the government to agitate and raise questions.

The same will go for tsunamis. In the case of the 26 December tsunami, vast numbers of deaths could have been avoided even with poor infrastructure, if only people had been given a simple warning to run inland in good time. And there were hours between the earthquake that caused it, and the tsunami hitting the shores.

It is not easy to predict a tsunami from the size of the earthquake that causes it, nor to detect the tsunami on the open sea. But if the tsunami had been in the Pacific, there would have been warnings. The USA, having large interests in the area, set up a Pacific tsunami warning system as far back as 1948. Japan has 14 tsunami sensors off its coasts.

The USA's monitoring station detected the earthquake, and warned the US military base at Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, which as it turned out was not seriously affected. US scientists tried to notify governments in other countries, but had no emergency phone numbers to hand, nor adequate information about the tsunami.

In Thailand, it so happened that a meeting of the country's meteorological experts got the first, inadequate warnings an hour before the wave hit. They decided to issue no warnings because Thailand's foremost meteorological experts were sitting together in a crisis meeting. But they decided not to warn about the tsunami because, so one meteorologist told the Thai newspaper The Nation, "Our department would not be able to endure a lawsuit" from the tourist industry in case it proved to be a false alarm.

The Indian Ocean has fewer tsunamis than the Pacific, but the threat was known. Back in June 1994, an earthquake in the Indian Ocean off the coast of East Java triggered a tsunami that killed 200. The danger of a future disaster in those waters was cited by an Indonesian scientist at the 1997 meeting of the UN's International Oceanographic Commission, or IOC.

The idea of initiating a Regional Tsunami Warning System in the Southwest Pacific and Indian Ocean was raised. It fell victim to either underfunding or bureaucratic sloth or both, but the Indonesians kept pushing. An Indonesian scientist reintroduced the idea at the IOC meeting in 2003. A 2003 IOC report noted: "Indonesia has a high activity in earthquakes and tsunamis. Historical data show that many tsunamis in Indonesia are destructive and have affected neighbouring countries this geographic region is currently not well covered .... The proposed regional warning system will be very useful for several countries."

In short: if the coastlines of Indian Ocean were populated with cities containing headquarters of multinational corporations and big banks, and rich people's homes, then there would have been a warning system.

The 26 December tsunami had nothing to do with global warming. But global warming will affect the outcome of future tsunamis, as well as directly generating other disasters in the shape of big storms. Millions of people in Asia live on land which the sea is likely to swamp as sea levels rise over coming decades. In the interim, they will be more at risk from tsunamis, even much smaller ones than the 26 December giant. If they lived in the Netherlands, public works would already be underway to protect them. In Asia, none are.

More information and comments on the tsunami disaster from radical activists in the region and trade unionists internationally at: asiantsunami.blogspot.com/.

Comments

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 04/01/2005 - 17:10

I wanted to put something to my unison branch, calling on government to support to cancelling debts etc and making some of the points raised above about money spent on war etc...

If someone has already written or is writing one, can they post it here so we can all use it..

If not i will try and write something.

Submitted by Janine on Wed, 05/01/2005 - 12:30

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

You can read my attempt at a resolution here.

Not sure if it counts as "shortish", though.

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