Editorial: A natural disaster in Japan overwhelms us all
Photo: Bloomberg
Published 11 March 2011 01:06 PM
It’s easy to delude ourselves into thinking that we can successfully defend against all eventualities, manmade or natural. Then one afternoon in Japan, as the other half of the world sleeps, the earth fractures, and massive waves indiscriminately wash away cities and lives in a matter of minutes. Once again, nature has demonstrated its unbridled power.
Some tragedies are beyond defenses — be it in Haiti , an impoverished country still struggling to arise from its own devastating earthquake, or Japan, a modern industrial nation that has done all that is humanly possible to prepare for earthquakes, since a 7.9 earthquake destroyed much of Tokyo in 1923. It’s a reality shared around the world — in Chile, Indonesia and Australia, all of which have been recent victims of unrelenting natural disasters.
In this way, the world is indeed flat, not just in the economic sense that author Thomas Friedman used, but in the leveling fickleness of the awesome forces of nature. Friday it was an 8.9 earthquake, which released a deadly tsunami that ripped into the Japanese shore and then tore across the Pacific, setting off warnings in South America, Hawaii and along the entire West Coast of the U.S..
Our horror, our empathy — and our sense of helplessness — are magnified by the fact that today’s world is united by a technology of tweets and real-time video that graphically brings the magnitude of this disaster to us with an almost surreal, movie-like quality. We all watched, yet the most we can do for Japan is offer heartfelt sorrow and support.
In a world in which we can control so much, it is hard to accept that natural disasters are just that — natural. The most persistent attempts to protect human life and property can be overwhelmed by nature’s capriciousness in an instant. And as the aftermath of our neighbor Haiti’s fate shows all too painfully, recovery is a slow and grim process.
http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/20110311-editorial-a-natural-disaster-in-japan-overwhelms-us-all-.ece
