Tsunami aftermath...

Dont know if this a joke out of place but apparently appeared in the Colombo Times - which is quoted below :

Quote

On 26th Dec '04 early morning several hrs before the catastrophy happened, Honolulu Tsunami Monitoring center have been trying to call our Meteorological Dept. monitoring center in Palekelle and Colombo but failed. They also got in touch with presidents' office however it was informed that she's out of the island on a private vacation.

Finally they called the Prime minister's secretariat, but the Prime minister was out on his morning walk. Thinking at least it's best to keep him vigilant on this, the Honolulu officials left the message with the person who picked up the phone to inform the Prime minister that there's a Tsunami coming from Indonesia .

On the prime minister's return, the operator told the prime minister about the call, and said T. Sunami from Indonesia is arriving in 2 hrs. The Prime minister promptly took action to send a delegation to Katunayake Airport in Colombo with name boards ' Welcome Mr. T. Sunami - Indonesia'.

The trouble is we never know if these reports can be true. Yes, we can trace back and ask the operator if he did leave the message, but then " Yes buddy" is gonna be the obvious answer.
Then, you trace the dood that got the message and fry him why he didnt report to the right authorities.
Okay, but then do you expect a peon in the PM's office to know what a tsunami is, when the PM sneds a convoy to the airport ??

And no, i wudnt blame the PM either. How can he know what a tsunami is? Very few did before it happened. Frankly, I knew very little of Tsunami (before this thing happened), except for it had something to do with Japanese earthquakes..
We all paid a pretty big price to find the actual meaning of that word which most werent even aware existed.
Thanks to the current era, people of today are aware of things which are not vital parts of our vocabulary eg. SAARS, AIDS, Bofors, Tsunami, Rogue-state, Regime-change etc.. And what a price has been paid to know the meanings of those words too..

There are more stories to go along with this, one of them being this....

" Apparently, an ex-IIT Chennai student who had worked on a communications project
(during his course) in a village near Cuddalore, had called the village people from Singapore where he is working now and warned them of the disaster a few hours before it struck. All the villagers moved to safety with their children and vital belongings... and there was not a single casualty in that village!!"

I cannot fathom, why this piece of 'providing information' could not be escalated at the highest levels (if PM/Presedent of SL is not available, inform the BBC/CNN and other news channels all over globe, which will have the fastest reach).

Particularly, the IIT case, to be frank, is difficult to digest. When he can warn and save successfuly a village, he could have done it to the whole state if he had informed the State Govt machinery and the media.

To be frank, i do not know if i would have informed anybody had i had this piece of information. So, whoever did their bit to pass it along is to be applauded. But when you have that amount of foresight to inform a village, you are expected to have the intelligence to pass it to more effective/ more reach sources too.

May be I have the benefit of hindsight. What the hell... I do have the benefit of hindsight and i have admitted i totally lack foresight, who am i to complain and point fingers at?