The Internet’s been exceptionally slow today. Towards the end of this posting you will know why.
Where were you on Boxing Day of 2004?
Me, that morning, I woke up late…tennish I presume. The night before was my younger brother’s wedding reception at the Sheraton in Subang Jaya, and we had all stayed up until late. I didn’t feel the quake that morning. I got up, got ready, checked out of the hotel and went straight to Kajang for my maternal cousin’s wedding reception.
I had arrived home from Langkawi two days earlier, with colleagues from my former workplace. A friend of ours who works with a telco was to continue working on Rebak island through the Christmas weekend. I did not learn about the disaster until nightfall when another former colleague, Andy Lim sent me a text message saying a Tsunami had hit Langkawi and Penang islands. From that moment onwards, I flipped from one news channel to another, both local and international ones, to learn mor about the disaster. For the next two days, my former colleagues and I frantically tried to locate our friend who was supposed to be on Rebak island, as Rebak was one of the peripheral islands off Langkawi that was badly hit. Then he texted us saying he was on the mainland with his family when the waves hit Rebak. Thank God for common sense.
I watched the HBO movie on the Boxing Day Tsunami and how true to real it is. Two days after the Tsunami hit the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia, I was up north trying to gauge what was needed by those affected. The house I stayed in in Penang when I first got married was not spared, although it is still standing to this day. As those in Penang who were lost were mostly beach-goers, I shifted my atention to a fishing village in the Kuala Muda district in the state of Kedah. The HBO movie reminded me of that scene: confusion, chaos, people crying and wailing, destruction and what have you. There was no coordination between the various governmental and non-governmental orgnisations; agencies were jealously guarding whatever figures they had on casualties and victims; no one actually knew where to start. The State Assemblyman was very helpful, and I promised to get some help.
A week later, my NGO staff and I managed to muster aid in the form of goods donated by kind human beings: three truckloads plus my MPV. When agencies got to know of this convoy, each wanted the glory of being the agency resposible to distribute these aids. In the end, I managed to met the State Assemblyman who then directed us to the correct aid distribution center. There were many agencies that were not pleased with us but they can go and give the dog a bone for all I care.
Almost two years to the day, this nation’s readiness was again tested in the form of almost ten dead and some 80,000 odd victims being housed at relief centers due to the worst floods in three decades. I have not seen floods of this magnitude since standing on the hilltop of Bukit Peringgit in Melaka where my house was, looking at the “sea” beneath the hill. That was back in 1970/71, I think.
The problem is, every single agency head, political leader, NGO head etc, want mileage out of the misery of others; and disasters like this is the perfect opportunity for them to shine and be seen. And sadly, this is being done at the expense of the victims. Thus, there will never be coordination and economy of effort in disaster relief in this country as people will be too busy looking good for the cameras of the printed and electronic media.
And yesterday, there was a powerful earthquake that had hit Taiwan, but luckily the threat of an impending Tsunami has come and gone. However, cables damaged there is affecting communications in Malaysia, Singapore and elsewhere, according to a Taiwanese telco.
I shudder to think how the relevant agencies would react if they had to handle the floods and a Tsunami hitting the east coast of the Peninsular as well as the northern and western coast of Sabah.
We were brought up to think that Malaysia is virtually safe from unnatural disasters (there is nothing natural about earthquakes, Tsunamis, and hundreds of thousands dead in one go),but the recent earthquakes,the Boxing Day Tsunami, the recent typhoon that hovered off the East Coast, shows how vulnerable we are.
The weather and climate change every several thousand years. Maybe we have come to the end of that cycle.
SeaDemon Says 