There’s a show on television where this guy is talking about disaster preparedness training, and he said that hundreds of people went on such training to Thailand.
Fahim scoffs at the statement. I ask why. I get an answer.
Fahim says that hundreds of people probably did go. But they were probably friends or family of the government people who sponsored such training. And these people would have been competely inappropriate for the training, with insufficient or no background or previous training. So they went abroad for such training, sure, but instead of attending the training sessions, they probably went on shopping trips or sightseeing tours.
Oh. That was. . . useful. [/sarcasm]
Look at it this way. If these hundreds of people had actually been to the training sessions and learned what they were supposed to learn, wouldn’t one of them – just one of them – have known something about tsunamis? Or something about what to do in the event of a disaster?
But I’m thinking that, you know what? This is an island nation.
And there’s that whole Ring of Fire thing in Indonesia.
The fact that an earthquake happened there is not a surprise.
The surprise was in how strong of an earthquake it was.
So if you know that earthquakes can happen there – and obviously, people know. Governments know. The government was warned that tsunamis could happen. It’s a reality in this part of the world.
So, what happened with those hundreds of people who went on disaster preparation training? What’s going to happen to them? Will they get flogged? Will they feel shame? Do they feel stupid?
