tsunami. 26 dec 04.

CNN.com Specials

CNN.com: Quake, tsunami kills thousands

CNN.com: Report: Third of dead were children


Those are but a few.
It's the most unexpected and terrible thing to hit Asia for nearly a century. (Personally, the '97 finanacial crisis affected me more, but this is a real tragedy.) Lucky me was in Penang at the time, but I wasn't even near any of the areas affected by the whole thing. The nearest I was to the seaside was at Bayan Lepas FIZ, where people were fishing quietly by the beach. I only got to know the whole thing Monday morning when I read the papers in Ipoh.

I can't find much (read: lazy to google) about the extend of the destruction in Penang, but from what I heard from friends, it's pretty bad. Roads split near Island Plaza. Batu Feringgi is a mess, fishing villages in the north-eastern part of the island are in shambles.

Comparing to what happened to other countries, especially India, Sri Lanka, and not to mention Maldives with two-thirds of its land submerged, I'll say Malaysia did OK. The saddest thing is that the death tolls keep rising, and so many of them are children. Areas destroyed will take years and millions of dollars to rebuild. So many lost their homes and loved ones.

CNN.com: Fatal Lack of Warning System

It's true that governments could have done more in terms of some kinda disaster warning system for real-time warnings on tragedies like this. Still, they are not to blame because this, the Indian Ocean, is really not a region that's been high in these kinda seismic activities. More like, none.

It's a good thing that governments now plan to setup such warning systems. It might be too late for what has already happened, but hopefully, it will help save lives if, God forbids, that similar events might occur in the future.

Besides these, it's really been a bad December. A few buses have had serious accidents casuing deaths throughout the month. The Lata Kinjang waterfall, a famous tourist attraction here, had a sudden flood during peak days. Bad news are all I see in the papers this month.

Hopefully, things will get better next year.
For those who died, may they find peace; and for those who lost so much, may they find the strength to live on.