I cannot quite come to terms with all this concentration on Europeans...of course many died...but the numbers of people in the Thai Islands..Chao Ley..Sea Gypsies and even worse in the pretty unregulated Burmese/Myanmar Islands must have been far worse...(Later see reports in the Guardian from Indonesia and about Burma..same view)
The official Thai figures are 1800 dead 1500 missing....however CNN has 3 times that number...Interesting that while other countries appear to have tried to estimate casualities the Thai approach has been to downplay...I should think poossibly well over 5000 casual;ties here!
(Later..make that 12000)
Again Later...The Thai PM Thaksin is describing his efforts as..mending the fence after the cows have run away..but the cows will be coming back...which neatly sums up the Thai attitude to Tourists..Stay Away...
More on this later!!)
We are now being treated to the not very edifying sight of the great and the good of Thailand very expensively suited andfcoiffed and the executives of foreign companies shuffling forward with very large cheques...I mean in size not money..bit like those lottery cheques...and looking smug....I realise that grinning is a Chinese and Thai way of dealing with tragedy,,,oh and now we have pop singers with dirges to a background of drowning people....
Anyway here are two bits which I print in full as they might curiously disappear!!
You will see the kind of visitors to Patong!!
THAI TALK: Horrendous failure of our national warning system
Published on December 30, 2004
(Extract)
“Why weren’t we warned?” This question has been echoing around the tsunami-wrecked coast in the South ever since Sunday. The answers, none of which is very satisfactory, are at best evasive.
Based on interviews given by senior officials from the Meteorological Department and the Geological Resources Department, though, the official response could be paraphrased thus:
“The public was not warned because we weren’t sure. Tsunamis have rarely been reported in the Indian Ocean. We’re more familiar with tsunamis in the Pacific.”
Not very convincing. The very rationale for a warning system is to expect the unexpected. That’s what forecasters are there for. That’s what monitoring natural disasters is all about.
A much more tell-tale explanation of the massive failure given by another Weather Bureau official would go something like this:
“Since we haven’t had a tsunami in the Indian Ocean for decades, we were reluctant to issue a warning. Six years earlier, the then director-general of the Weather Bureau issued a tsunami warning for off of the coast of Phuket. One never materialised. A lot of people there condemned him for making a prediction that they claimed could scare off tourists. The public outcry there at the time practically banned him from ever visiting Phuket again. Frankly, we had this very bad memory in mind when we were considering whether or not to issue a warning.”
