Early estimates indicate that over 384 people died in a massive earthquake and Tsunami which hit Indonesia on Saturday, 29 September and the death toll is expected to rise.
The place which was most affected was the Sulawesi island. An eight storey hotel has collapsed. The businesses on beach side and plantations which support the city have suffered the most extensive damage. There is no electricity or water.
Tens of hundreds of people who were on a beach festival have been badly affected. This disaster is in addition to the 500 people who were killed by similar disaster last month in Lombock.
We are only talking about the disasters which happened in Indonesia. But other parts of the world too have not escaped these natural calamities. The havoc caused by the heavy rains in the wake of, and in accompaniment of, Hurricane Harvey had brought America, the world’s most powerful nation, to its knees.
The incredible sight of Houston, America’s fourth largest city, submerged in deep waters makes you wonder how helpless man is against the wrath of nature. But it has to be said, the culprit is man himself.
These tsunamis, mudslides and floods are Mother Nature’s cry for help in retaliation to the flogging we humans subject her to.
I would like to reiterate here what I have said before in this column – stop belching out poisonous gases in the atmosphere or else our posterity will have no earth to live on.
Dinesh Sheth
Newbury Park, Ilford
