Not a pretty sight but one we needed to see
I'm a news junkie. I can't help it - it started with 9/11 and then Afghanistan, Iraq, Bali bombings - I'd check the news on-line numerous times a day and at a number of sites.When I first heard of the tsunami disaster the death toll was estimated to be 400. Four hundred - if only it were so.
On the second of January I went to Time Asia via the CNN International site. There was a link to a site with high-quality images of the effect of the tsunami on Phuket (http://www.pbase.com/issels/phuket_tsunami). I had a look and read some of the inane comments that some misfits had written. I left the site and returned later in the day. Halfway down the page was a new photo. At the top of the photo was the remains of a building which housed a number of destroyed shops. I scrolled down. There on the beach and in the water was a vast amount of debris - lots of broken pieces of timber, plastic dishpans - all sorts of matter tangled together. And mixed up in it were at least seventy to eighty human corpses: big, little, brown, clothed and unclothed, some bloated and floating face down, some with just a limb protruding. The true horror began to sink in. And with it the realisation that we are being fed a sanitised version of the events - I guess 'they' think we can't (or don't want) to experience it.
Not long afterwards that image disappeared. I'm sure it was a hack, but a hack by someone with a damned good camera and a strong stomach. I wish I had a copy of the photo, sick as that may seem, 'cuz everytime I'd start feeling sorry for myself I'd have a little reality check to view.
posted by Susan @ 8:25 pm
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