Haiyan..................

Haiyan, the one that pummeled away for a world which is increasingly getting used to natural disasters as an everyday occurrence. It was yet another name with ‘Death’ written on it, many thousands to be truthful. Haiyan knocked down a country, practically speaking, which left millions helpless days after the tragedy and the region will need an age to recover from the hammering it took. Even with many days of real time monitoring and precise weather warnings, the islands of Philippines couldn't avoid being hit where it hurts most. So much for the much-vaunted disaster preparedness and management the world has been apt to boast about. 

The pertinent question is, aren't we being ready for the disasters better than ever before?

The obvious answer is yes, with all the advantages of the age of communication it isn't easy to surprise people, like what happened to us Sri Lankans on 26/12/2004. Yet the most alarming and unavoidable fact has been that the magnitude of the disasters keep out- pacing the mankind irrespective of the readiness.

Haiyan was the fastest typhoon ever to hit land at terrifying 315 k mph, the fastest ever recorded. The list goes on...it's no longer uncommon to be hit by Category 5 hurricanes where until a few years ago, the worst was the Category 4. Maximum tolerance of most of the modern man-made land marks have been 8 PLUS on Richter scale, the earthquake measure. But the ones that hit Japan, Chile and Indonesia were over 9 PLUS, a cataclysmic figure which would level even the most prepared city in the world. 

There's no denying any further that the world is acting up in ways never seen before. Still, we are clueless as to the causes and we keep pushing the most plausible reasons under the carpet. For us Sri Lankans, it's high time, before the next high tide.

Written By: Kelum Samarasea (Sir)