Incidentally, 20,000 people just died in an earthquake

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I’ve seen plenty of news coverage on both Guatamala and the Pakistan quake. It’s sad what has happened, and many people are doing what they can to help, even if it’s simply making yet another donation to a charity orginization to help.

But talk about it? Seems to me that many of us have Disaster Fatigue. Shit isn’t going to stop happening. And I’m not going to stop being charitable in my own pathetic way, but I’m pretty much through talking up a storm about it all. Perhaps others feeling as I do would help to explain why the dearth of threads about it. Don’t judge.

22

For my sake- I’m a news-ignoramus- can we review the major disasters that have happened in the last few years?

Dec. 03- 20,000 in earthquake Bam, Iran
Dec. 04- 300,000 in tsunami, indonesia
Sep. 05- 1,000 in hurricane, new orleans
Oct. 05- 30,000+ in earthquake, Pakistan
Oct. 05- perhaps 1,000 in flooding, Guatemala, although 100 communties still cut off from aid

Are these all the major ones? There are always minor ones like romansperson alluded to, but these are all the BIG ones in recent memory, right?

I just thought I’d slap this here- I started a thread about how the tsunami stacked up in the overall disaster toll in human history, and ended up with this list, which I think more people shoud see :D. I only wanted to know about natural disasters that killed a number on impact, as opposed to stuff like famines and plagues, which kill numbers over time. This is the top ten impact death list I ended up with:[ul]
[li]Flood in Holland, 1530- 400,000 dead. The dikes burst- hey, 40% of the country is below sea level![/li][li]Cyclone in Bengal, 1970- overnight, 300,000 are killed.[/li][li](Man-caused Flood in China, 1642)- does this count as a natural disaster? Rebels fighting the Ming Dynasty purposely broke the river dikes in the city of Kaifeng, killing 300,000.[/li][li]Tsunami in Indonesia and India, 2004- 300,000[/li][li]Earthquake in Tangshan China (probably ranks much higher), 1976- 240-750,000 killed[/li][li]Earthquake in Shanxi, China, 1556 (could actually be number one)- may have buried 830,000 Chinese in the silt caves in which they lived. Yep, people used to live in caves of silt; we have no idea how many there were, but it could be this high who died.[/li][li]Cyclone/earthquake part one in Calcutta, 1737[/li][li]Cyclone/earthquake part two in Calcutta, 1737- supposedly they both killed 300,000 EACH, but I heard a source saying that’s complete bs, the population at the time was nowhere near that high, it was more like 3,000. Anyone know?[/li][li]Flood in China, 1931 (could be much higher)- killed 3.7 million Chinese, BUT I think mostly from starvation and polluted water later, NOT from impact, which I limit my list to[/li][li]Flood in China, 1887 (could be much higher)- killed a million, possibly, but again, starvation and pollution perhaps.[/li][/ul]

23

Here’s some stats from Cec on big natural born killers.
Happy

24

The one small glimmer of this horrific earthquake is that Osama Bin Laden might have been killed in it.

25

Another hope is that India and Pakistan might forget their differences over Kashmir and work together to find a lasting peace settlement for that region. This happened when those earthquakes hit Turkey a few years ago. Greece went to its aid and relationships have been much better ever since. They even made a joint bid for the Soccer World Cup.

26

3 million people left homeless by the quake. That is such a mind boggling number… Especially considering that the temperatures are hovering around freezing there right now.

Three million people. Absolutely horrendous.

27

Very off-topic, but I read that deforestation in those areas was as much as 98% in places. I’ll try to find a cite when I have time.

@Roman: locusts are already a permanent problem in mostly North-Africa, and there are worries they might cross over to Spain sometime.

@Happy: she got plenty virgins in that Quake alone, so if that works, we’ll be off the hook the rest of this year at least.

28

My hometown paper had considerable coverage of this disaster, we have lots of Indians and Pakistanis here. One article, by a local writer pointed out there was no indication OBL had been killed or injured.

29

I’m starting to think that OBL is really Keyzer Soze.
[Verbal}

And just like that ::::whoooosh::::::he was gone.

[/Verbal]

30

I kept hearing about the devestation from both the earthquake and mudslide on NPR this weekend. I was shocked to hear that in Guatemala an entire village may be declared a mass grave rather than attempt to reclaim it from mud that’s 40 feet deep in some places. I’ll give what I can, but I already gave as much as I thought I could to Katrina victims, and I suspect that a lot of people are in the same position.

31

It took some doing, but here ya go! When can we expect that Earth fixing thing?

32

I’ve been advised that my thread title can come off as snarky. That’s really not what I meant at all; I was just puzzled by the moderate amount of attention that this particular disaster is getting as compared to disasters of comparable size and situation – I was thinking in particular of the tsunami. I apologize for the offence that the title might cause.

33

It’s okay, there definitely needs to be more coverage on this.

I’m just… it’s horrible of me to say it, but I think we’re all tapped right now. How many more natural disasters are we going to expect this year?

(Please don’t answer that.)

:frowning:

34

How many are there in a regular year?

It’s strange… two gigantic earthquakes in ten months. We can’t blame that one on global warming… right? :confused:

35

No, but I do recall hearing (several months ago; don’t remember where anymore) that the large shift in the contintental plates caused by the tsunami earthquake made other large quakes more likely.

36

It’s a her, not a him.

No Earthquake-Fixing for YOU!
[/soup nazi]