Just to put things in perspective:
Before:
http://www.digitalglobe.com/images/tsunami/banda_aceh_shoreline_before_june23_2004_dg.jpg
After:
http://www.digitalglobe.com/images/tsunami/banda_aceh_shoreline_missing_dec28_2004_dg.jpg
.
So sad
.
do you really want to put things in perspective!
Forget about pictures and stop trying to rationalize everything you hear and see. CNN will only show you what makes headlines and is inside their content rating.
You can NEVER put into perspective death on this skale. Dont even try to imagine what it is like, you cant, you fool yourself into believing you know and understand what these people went through but in reality you know fuck all.
Instead of spending your time finding pictures about the effected areas how about just sending money to help the real victims!
tri-espana in Ao Nang Thailand
Many of us have done exactly that.
Best of luck to you, your family and your country.
This has hit close to home for you, both literally and figuratively. You’re right, there’s no possible way we can fathom or understand what has happened, cannot imagine what it’s like to have your children and your spouse taken away in an instant, to have everything you’ve worked to build your whole life only to have it plucked from this Earth in the blink of an eye.
We cannot imagine it, but we can try to comprehend the scale. We can try to educate ourselves on what indeed did happen, the magnitude of this disaster, and these pictures of what an area looked like before and after help to graphically bring the point home to the rest of us. Yes, those before and after pictures depict real people with real families and real lives that in many cases were ended prematurely. But if by some chance someone sees a picture like that and has not taken the time to make a donation, perhaps one of these postings will compel them to do just that.
We’re all going on with our lives here; reminders of what is happening half a world away bring us back to the sober reality that we are all humans, we’re all connected and this tragedy affects us all.
My thoughts, hopes and prayers go out to you and your family. Some of my money has already gone that way as well, and more will in the future. Images of the devastation and destruction will be critical to keep this in the forefront of the world’s population until things can get back to some semblance of normalcy down there. And I know that’s a relative term as for many, many, many people, there will be no such thing as “normal” ever again.
Whoooooa there Tri-Espana…take a time out. We know you have personal experience of this disaster which buys you a couple of free passes for emotional outbursts.
Without the media showing the pictures and telling the stories people won’t give…its that simple. Pictures of death and destruction pluck heart strings and open wallets.
I’ve already given what I can afford to Medecins Sans Frontieres and I’ve e-mailed friends in Thailand to see if there’s anything else I can send over to help them personally…But I still feel helpless. After giving, talking about it and at least attempting to comprehend the scale of the disaster is all we can do from half a world away.
Yes, Americans have been very generous, contrary to the nasty comments from some quarters.
I believe Amazon.com has a very large fund at their site (over $3,000,000 as I recall) for the American Red Cross.
This is the time to count our blessings and do our small part by contributing a few dollars. (One less Starbucks latte.)
Happy Holidays to all!
-Robert
I am not upset by good or bad comments but by people who try and compare this to anything else.
My friends are gone but they are still my friends, I am sure they would not want some dickhead comparing images of nothing to imagine what it was like.
I have no idea what these people went through, I arrived after it happened but if I posted pictures of what I have seen you would be sick.
The Amazon.com collection is up to well over $6.2 million, with almost 96,000 contributions.
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on the posting of the link to the pictures…I don’t believe that “freestyle” was being a dickhead when he posted them. They are compelling images, illustrating in a small way the magnitude of what happened. You guys don’t know one another…freestyle might have just donated $1000 towards the relief effort, and wouldn’t you feel like a dickhead for calling him a dickhead in that instance?
My condolences to your loss of loved ones…no one can imagine what that is like, nor can we imagine unless we are there what is going on right now…and what is still likely to happen in the days, weeks and months ahead as the full effects of December 26th take hold.
Take care and be safe. Our hearts are in the right place.
WoW! I looked at it yesterday morning I think.
-Robert
I am sorry for my words, they come without my brain putting to much thought in.
I think if the people here knew that people in America were talking about them even on a sports forum they would be happy.
I am working for the Krabi port authority to clear underwater debre from the shores and inlet, today we lifted 16 bodies.
tri-espana wrote: I am sorry for my words…
Hey, don’t worry about it. We know you have every reason to be upset. We just wish we knew the best ways to help. We also realize that even the most perfect form of help is still not going to be nearly sufficient, but, it’s all we can try to do at this point. If you can think of some of the most effective ways we can help, please let us know what they are. We really do care.
I hate seeing images like this. I do check everyday to see what’s going on so I can try to keep things in perspective. Washingtonpost.com has an excellent photo gallery with a satellite images section. There are several before and afters that really show the devastation. Click on the Satellite Images tab, you can navigate through the series at the bottom.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/flash/photo/world/2004-12-28_quakeday2/movie.htm?startat=1
Not to be morbid but I was browsing tinypic.com and there are several pictures of the wave making contact with a resort posted presumably by a tourist. Very terrifing.
It simply can’t be put into perspective, and even worse for those of us who have never been there.
When the WTC towers were attacked on 9/11/01, we saw it in full color - saw people die, saw the entirety of the tragedy in a matter of moments as two gigantic buildings fell and 3000 people died. It hit home because we saw it. Still those who weren’t there didn’t feel the full force of it. I had friends working 200 yards away who will never be the same. But that tragedy ended in a matter of minutes.
This tragedy is beyond the scope of our vision or understanding. It is already 40X the WTC tragedy, and the numbers could easily triple before it’s all done. It is unfolding day by day, and it will get much worse before it gets better. It didn’t end. You can’t put that in a picture, and and those of us who weren’t or aren’t there can’t know. I have friends in Thailand and India, and several on this forum know people who were there. Some friends of mine were preparing to travel to Ko Phi Phi the day the tsunami struck and their flight was cancelled from Bangkok. 24 hours earlier, and who knows. One day you wake up, and the next day you don’t. Still, we’re half a world away and we have food, water, shelter, heat, warm beds and our lives go on.
None of us will live forever, but one or two deaths at a time slip by unnoticed. This is the most compelling and tragic thing I have seen or heard in 54 years. How does the brain process this magnitude of horror?
That doesn’t succeed in putting it into perspective. The whole tragedy is just too large to comprehend. I think if any of us truly comprehended it, we’d go completely mad.
Down in these parts, the comparisons are flying fast and furious considering the storms we had this year, and everyone’s come away with the conclusion that they’re really fucking blessed to be where they are right now, even if home is a FEMA trailer. Hurricanes give you enough warning that you can run from the water and hide from the wind, and the worst case scenarios in 2004 (The eye of Charley going 30-40 miles north into Tampa Bay could have killed 100,000 people) didn’t play out.
So the hats and collection plates are getting passed and even the people who pretty much lost everything they physically owned are giving. We’re healthy. We know we can rebuild here. We’ve got a safety net most countries could never match.
I am sorry for my words, they come without my brain putting to much thought in.
I think if the people here knew that people in America were talking about them even on a sports forum they would be happy.
I am working for the Krabi port authority to clear underwater debre from the shores and inlet, today we lifted 16 bodies.
No need to apoligize…you are dealing with something first hand that is truly beyond most of our comprehension. You’re summoning strength and courage that is incredibly remarkable.
What has happened in your part of the world is indeed on everyone’s mind here. It’s hard to have something of this magnitude not touch your life in some way, either by knowing someone directly who lives in the region or has family in the area, or by having friends or coworkers with the same ties.
BTW, the Amazon collection effort for the Red Cross is now over $8.4 million, with more than 116,000 contributors.
I agree that images cannnot really put things in perspective, but an overhead view did wonders for me. I went through the East African floods of February, 2000: I lived in Mozambique and witnessed destruction first-hand.
It poured for weeks in my town, but I still had no idea how bad the flood was until I flew over the Rio Limpopo, which used to be a slow-moving, medium-sized river. More than a month after the worst of the flooding, it was a 10-mile band of muddy water where crops, grazing and towns used to be. All that was gone. That did put it in perspective.
I guess its the same for people who visited the WTC site or Hiroshima soon after. No one can imagine what its like to live through it (unless you did) but witnessing the aftermath first-hand is still unforgettable.
In Africa, my co-workers who had family in the worst-affected areas lost loved ones. They went home (many miles through waist-deep water) a couple weeks after the cyclones to find family members had drowned. Thousands of people are doing the same thing today in Asia. -TB