More disasters

Since I talked about the Bhopal disaster, you might imagine that I'd talk about yesterday's earthquake and resulting tsunamis. And you'd be right. Articles are starting to come out about the lack of a warning system that might have prevented some of the deaths (23,5000 as of right now, and sure to rise.)

Think about this. The tidal wave moved at about 300 miles and hour. That's fast, and when it gets close, you're in trouble. But 12,000 people died in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is 1000 miles away from the earthquake. You can do the math to find out that there is a period of 3 hours or so where someone in the world knew that something very bad was heading for Sri Lanka.

Doesn't bother you? Then think about Somalia, 2,800 miles away from the epicenter. There's an extra six hours of time after the waves hit Sri Lanka! 9 hours of total time ... and still hundreds of people died. Probably thousands.

There's no early warning system-- I get that. It's expensive, and this kind of thing doesn't happen every day. But can't this world at least get a guy with a cell phone to run to the beach and tell people to get the heck out of there?