Reading the newspaper these days is mostly a depressing experience. There is the odd feel-good story, but for the most part it is a litany of human and natural catastrophe's that get the headlines. It's pretty bleak, but looking around the world it's easy to understand why.
This morning read about the man who threw his young daughter off the Westgate Bridge a couple of years ago. The mother was in the dock explaining how she had been waiting to see her daughter off on her first day of school, a happy event. Instead her ex-husband told her to say "goodbye to your children" before he dropped his daughter over the railing to and into the water far below. Terrible srtory.
Then of course there is Libya. What started with so-much hope and promise is now turning nasty as Gaddafi fights back and the international community dilly-dallies wondering what it ought do. Something fellas, that's the tip. It's a complex and tricky situation, but can we, as citizens of the world stand-by and watch this? In Bahrain the rebellion seems to be fizzling out also.
Then of course there is the big story, the story I've been avoiding: the Japanese earthquake.
I was out on a sunny Friday afternoon when I heard the first sketchy news of the quake. I was early in a bar and with a beer in front of me killed time by catching up with the news on my iPhone. At that point it was very unclear as to the scale of the disaster, though the tsunami was being reported on.
We now know what it's like. Pictures of the devasted areas show a wasteland similar to that after the atomic blasts at Horoshima and Nagasaki. Almost everything is flattened, houses turned to matchsticks but for the old erection still standing amid the carnage. Cars are piled up like driftwood by the force of the tsunami, with the odd vehicle stranded atop a building by the retreating waters, as if parked there. Fishing trawlers when not smashed by the water are stranded deep inland. Somewhere in all of this are the people.
The footage of the actual tsunami was mesmerising, as so much of this is. The water raced in, smashing homes and lifting others off their stumps and carrying them forward like houseboats. The water surged and tumbled, smashing over sea barriers and seeking the low lying areas. Belatedly cars and trucks sped away to elude it, trying to find higher ground, a way out, as to did the odd speck on the film, a desperate person running from destruction. Some are successful, some not. In the wake of it there two towns virtually wiped out with many of their inhabitants. The cost is huge, in human life, and economically. The scale of almost complete destruction is almost beyond belief.
For all this destruction the greatest danger was ahead. Even as I write we are poised not knowing what is to happen with the nuclear power stations damaged in the quake. There have been explosions in some, and fears of a meltdown and the absolute catastrophe that would be. Radiation levels are manageable for now, but for how long? And what next?
This is another in a series of natural disasters over the last 6 months. I exclaimed over the Christchurch quake, only for it to be topped by this. They both sit on the same fault line, which curls around and returns through southern California. It's not hard to believe that the next stop in this train of catastrophe might be where it's been dreaded for so long: the San Andreas fault
Who know's where rthis ends? Or if it will?
