Flood and Famine

In the past the scourges of fire, flood and famine served to keep populations in dire fear of the struggle to survive. In our modern era with all the technological advances that humankind is able to call upon to aid in survival, we remain hard pressed to cope with the aftermath of natural disasters. There is much that can be mitigated and even controlled by technical means and machinations, but when faced with the full force of natural events on a catastrophic scale, it comes home to us time and again how powerless we are to cope effectively.

After the earthquake that devastated Haiti a year ago, the vast piles of rubble that were left in the wake of massive destruction still remain in place, hampering reconstruction, even if the resources were in place for a full-scale assault on the problems that face that poor country. It has been pointed out that the international funding of clean-up has little appeal, yet without it the work of reconstruction cannot proceed.

A million poor Haitians continue to endure life in squalid tent camps, and women and girls are continuing to be horrendously victimized by roaming gangs of men intent on raping them. Children's education is in abeyance, food and potable water, reasonable hygiene, and employment opportunities continue to elude the displaced population.

Haiti's government continues its futile inept governance, while invested hordes of humanitarian groups ply their trade. That's a non-functioning country, a desperately poor one, damned with one incompetent governing body after another.

Massive flooding has caused Pakistan - another failed nation, just as bankrupt in every conceivable way, but with the added measure of presenting as a real and present danger to the world at large through its indelible presence as a terror-training crucible and a nuclear state - to simply shrug at the plight of its own displaced.

Australia, a progressive, wealthy liberal democracy coping with incessant drought conditions impacting on its livestock and agriculture, has been faced in a huge tract of its geography with floods of historical dimensions, threatening its people and its robust economy. "If you count everything from the cost to homes, the home rebuilding effort, public infrastructure rebuilding effort and economic loss, I think we're well above $5-billion territory."

The flooded areas in Queensland soon to be joined by slop-over into the neighbouring state of New South Wales. In Queensland alone no fewer than 40 towns and 200,000 residents have been affected. Homes that have been flooded with water and muck are completely written off. Australia represents over half of global coking coal exports, required in steelmaking. It will be months before the mines are once again operational.

Australian authorities warn people of additional floodwater threats as poisonous snakes and dangerous crocodiles are being washed along with mud into homes and shops. The world-famous Great Barrier Reef with its monumental and beautiful corals are being impacted by the flooding. Crops normally grown on now-flooded agricultural land have been devastated. The transport system has been impacted with heavy damage.

In biblical times we read of infestations of grain-eating insects leaving no food for affected populations; of all-encompassing floods, of human settlement-annihilating hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, great tectonic-earth movements. There is nothing new under the sun and we cope now as we did then, strenuously and with hope for the future.