Saturday, February 27, 2010

The world we live in...

**Written a few days ago, forgot to publish**



This morning I learned that a massive 8.8 Earthquake had struck Chile at 3:30AM local time (just after midnight by my calculation in Calgary). I'm working an early morning shift at the Airport here in Calgary and I became aware of the event at about 5:00. I quickly read a few news articles on the web about the Earthquake but there were no pictures or videos available that that time presumably because massive chuncks of infrastructure (electricity, phone lines and mobile networks) were damaged in the quake.


















It's now 9:00AM here in Calgary and our flights to Hawaii have been put on delay becuase there is a Tsunami forcast for almost all Pacific costal regions - including Hawaii. This led me to start reading up on the Tsunami predictions and more on the Earthquake. A quick search on Google for "tsunami warning" or for "earchquake" opens up thousands of different articles and websites on the event. There is a section on Google search for "latest results" which updates new search hits by the second. I can't keep up with how many posts are being created on the internet right now that contain the phrase "tsunami warning". Literally every second there is a new hit from newspapers, magazines, television stations, news blogs, personal blogs, tweets, etc... My facebook notification page is rapidly filling up with people's opinions, thoughts and well-wishes for the victims in Chile along with warnings for anyone on or near a beach.



200 years ago there would be no way to warn distant lands about a coming Tsunami

100 years ago the news of this event (and a warning) could be transmitted accross the distance but it would reach so few people that it would hardly be considered useful

20 years ago the warning can be sent yet many people would not be warned in time

In the world we live in, this warning of a potential disaster is almost instantly broadcast around the world in a variety of mediums.

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