I gave a donation to the Red Cross via their internet site and credit card.

François

Blaming governments for not educating the people is a natural, but erroneous response. Hawaii has on average 5 tsunamie alerts annually, yet many ignore them just like people who have hurricane parties. This truly is one of those '100 year events.' There are no living Krakatoa survivors that could have maintained an oral tradition of caution. My great grandmother was in the San Francisco earthquake. I am typing this on the massive oak desk she crawled under. My grandmother got under it during the Northridge quake and I can touch scars from the collapsed brick chimney. Of course,I live in an apartment complex with a cedar shake shingle roof and no firewalls in the attic. Brushfires are a annual event here. At best, the current laws mandate replacement with fire retardant materials and we are scheduled for next year. This is a good time for people to rethink possible local catastrophes.

I'm not talking about fools that make the decision to ignore the warnings (57 people at Mt. St. Helens elected to die), but the ones who never had a clue.

All the governments in the world are literate. I doubt that many of them really have to depend on oral history to survive. But their people should?

Some say ignorance is bliss. Hey, look at America! So many people here are functionally illiterate that many of them probably wouldn't recognize the signs of a tsunami, either. "Hey, George, don't that look like a gold watch out there?"

Sue

There will probably be a number of fraud "charitable organizations" that spring up to collect donations for the relief effort, but divert the money to private interests. This certainly happened after the 9/11 tragedy. The Red Cross and Unicef are both bona fide organizations that are already involved in the recovery. I am sure there are many more as well. I would personally direct my giving to the Red Cross since this is right up their alley and I have experience with them. My wife and I have not made a donation yet, but are discussing how much we should/can give.

If giving specificly for the tsunami efforts, remember that millions of dollars given to the red cross for both the '89 Northridge quake and 9/11 were diverted to other IRC intresets. They do not care where you want the money to go, they send it to where they think it should be used. I'm not saying that they are a bad organization, just that you can't expect to have a say so in the matter when the cash leaves your hand. The salvation army sends all the money given for a certain cause to that specific cause, all of it, even if there seems to be 'excess'. Because of this, and the fact that they have helped my family in times of need in the past, I tend to support them over most other relief organizations.

If you want to donate go to: Salvation Army
and click the red 'donate online' button.

-Jeff

If you donate to the Red Cross you can specify where you want the money to go. If you want your money to stay locally or go to something specific the Red Cross will honor your request. But if you just send a check without indicating where you want the money to go they use it where they see fit.

I think it varies from country to country how accountable, and honorable, the Red Cross really are. Unfortunately once the money is donated, the Red Cross do not always follow the directions of the donor.

After the Bali Nightclub Bombings, the Red Cross in Australia came under quite a bit of criticism in the media after much of the money donated (with the instruction that it was for use in Bali) was redirected away from Bali and instead to their day to day running here.

I'm not saying that the Red Cross is worse than any of the other international aid charities here (in fact they're probably the best of the bunch). Hopefully more of the money will go to where it is needed this time around.

Hello Im a new member who has been lurking on the board on and of for a few years. I live in the city of Malmoe in the south of Sweden.

Now a few days after this disaster the difficulties of survival are rather apparent.

It seems that most of the survival courses and availible litterature are on the micro or individual level of survival. Cody Lundgrens excelent book speaks of the 72 hour situation for one person or a small group. What we now see is the macro level survival large numbers of people over large areas, were there is little or no freshwater, food , medical supplies etc availible.

Rescuers and agencies are dealing with helping people with both mental and psycological traumas on a scale that has not been seen outside of a war in many many years.

So does anybody know of any litterature dealing with this form of macro level survival. How to organize a group survival etc.

Regards

/Jonas

For the people affected in this scenario, its about as close to TEOTWAWKI as you can get, not exactly the main focus of topics on this board.
I too have been pondering over the calamity and being in SE asia, feeling particularly vulnerable right now. ( Although I live in a relatively earthquake isolated area of Singapore) It makes you wonder if the PSK and other junk you carry in your pockets are really enough..... <img src="/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

Interesting question. I think that most people, at least here in the USA, simply assume that Federal and State government agencies, augmented by non-governmental entities like the Red Cross, will eventually provide relief for large-scale catastrophes. That has been the basis of my long-term emergency planning. In other words, my preparation consists of stockpiling enough food, water, fuel, shelter, and medical supplies to last until relief comes. I have (somewhat arbitrarily) put this at two weeks. I figure that if aid does not arrive by that time, then it may not be arriving at all. I'm still trying to figure out what my fallback position will be then. Perhaps it is time to resusitate the old Y2K mentality -which I never bought into by the way- and stockpile a years worth of stuff like many of my neighbors do.

And yet I'm still pretty certain that, short of an asteroid/comet collision, help will be available and will arrive quickly.

Regards, Vince