Sunday, May 18, 2008 Sun.Star Essay: A common world By Erma M. Cuizon
THE world is small these days. Not a month passes by but you hear about a tsunami breaking into some coasts somewhere in the world, or floods and tidal waves, cyclones, hurricanes and earthquakes People are connected with each other, one experience echoes another, there’s company.
I looked up my old copy of the World Almanac and still found very interesting data in the disaster listing. One moment of heartache is heartache for all in this planet.
(Myanmar is self-denying,)
In the recent earthquake in Sichuan province in China with a magnitude of 7.9, the Chinese government has moved fast on the rescue but the catastrophe is too big to handle. The rest of the world is coming in to help.
(But Myanmar would rather be left alone. The disaster in China will eventually come out worst, in terms of the death list, than the effect of the cyclone in Myanmar. But what makes the Myanmar case worse, seen to cost up to tens of thousands of lives, is help coming late because the world, waiting to help, is held at bay by the Junta.)
In one and more times, China must have needed help. There were years of isolation but it could be different now. On TV, the Internet, on radio, the whole world knows what’s up almost anywhere.
Did the whole world in 1556 know about the earthquake in Shaanxi that killed 830,000 people?
In these instances, there probably wasn’t a way to measure the strength of the earthquake. The Almanac report notes the magnitude measures beginning 1755 of an earthquake in Persia. In the case of China, it was only in 1920 when authorities could determine the magnitude, or 8.6, a shock that killed 100,000 Chinese. But this death count would increase in the next earthquake that visited China seven years after, causing 200,000 fatalities even at the magnitude lower than the previous, or 8.3.
In the World Almanac’s major earthquake disaster list, only the earthquakes in the Philippines at magnitude 7 are in the list, or only two---in Mindanao in 1976 at a magnitude of 7.8 with 8,000 dead, and in Luzon in 1990 at 7.7 killing 1,621 people.
Of storms, who hasn’t been caught in one? There was one weird aspect of the storm I discovered years ago. As usual came the expected clash of winds---blowing, shrieking, crashing, booming. Then all these suddenly stopped, the air was as quiet as thought. It was like I was expecting someone to speak, so I listened. Actually, I was in the eye of the storm. A few minutes after, the blasts came back strong, this time moving in a new direction.
Some typhoons are unforgettable to us. Like the one that stayed for weeks in Luzon in the ‘60s and flooded Manila, almost up to the second floor of some houses in Makati, as a friend related. A reporter with the Manila Times covered the disaster in Luzon. He came down from the helicopter to someone’s roof where they found a family stranded there for hours under the rain because the water was now meters above the second floor of the house.
Under “notable” storms list are 10 instances of storms passing the Philippines, with the worse number of deaths cited as typhoon Sening which killed almost 600 people.
Of notable tidal waves and floods, only one of the disasters in the Philippines is in the list, in Luzon killing 454 people. But consider the China experience---Huang He River flooding, killing 300,000 people in 1642. It got worse in 1931 in the same river, killing over three million Chinese.
We don’t really know the difference between hurricanes, windstorms and cyclones, like the one that visited Myanmar. There are powerful winds that blow in spirals, or shoot straight through, or stay, linger and send cold winds at your back.
The Philippine government is sending an aid team to China for a sense of common humanity. We could help Myanmar in our own small way but the Junta doesn’t trust anyone. Our bit for China isn’t much but it’s the most we can do to return God’s hand for keeping us safe, with less devastation, during our own times of disaster.
