Feeling very bad over the whole Japan situation

[wattzy]

To all those people out there that are from/in Japan, i feel terrible for you.
How many people that have died...its really quite sad. I count myself lucky to be in a country that is safe from catastrophes like this.

My sympathys to all those effected.

[Harold Mansfield]

To all those people out there that are from/in Japan, i feel terrible for you.
How many people that have died...its really quite sad. I count myself lucky to be in a country that is safe from catastrophes like this.

My sympathys to all those effected.

I'm sure all of our hearts go out to Japan. It seems to be a never ending disaster. The largest earthquake in recorded history, followed by an almost immediate tsunami and now the unstable nuclear plants that could be spreading radiation with the wind.

I was especially touched with the reports of how calm and caring the people are towards each other and how no panic or chaos has erupted. That is an extremely polite society.
I'm sure things would be different here...we've all seen it. We erupt into violence against each other when a store runs out of a sale product or a certain toy during the holidays.

However, the other thing that is painfully obvious is how many Naval ships were immediately dispatched to the other side of the world to help out with he humanitarian mission...and we definitely should. Not doubt about it.

But I didn't see that scale of support (10 ships) go to our own city after the New Orleans disaster. I don't want to get into a political discussion about it, but I watched Katrina coverage for weeks and the only agency that I saw pushed past it's limits was the Coast Guard.
I only remember 2 maybe 3 ships there, one hospital ship and a carrier. And one support ship. And that was our own backyard.

I'm just saying.

[greenoak]

eeewww...never thought of that.
...maybe we will bre a better world when we are completley homoginized/ blended...

.i guess there is a website gathering all the racist posts about the japan too right now....
sounds like its getting even worse this morning with the radiation....

[Harold Mansfield]

Now it's really bad. They are dealing with more disaster than anyone I've seen in my lifetime.

How long are those fuel rods hot? Do they just burn for years or something? Anyone know anything about Nuclear power?

[jamesray50]

I was awake watching TV with my parents (Fox News - all they ever watch) when it came across about the earthquake and then the Tsunami. I could not go to sleep after that. They kept showing the tsunami over and over and I kept seeing it and feeling bad for all the people caught in it.

Even though we offered our help as soon as everything happened over there, Japan at first refused our help. I guess they are a proud country and figured they could handle everything themselves. We are always to first to help any country when there is a catastrophe, but other countries are not necessarily eager to jump on the bandwagon to help us. Fact of life.

[Spider]

I think there is more help from other countries than you realize - the American press is not noted for its unbiased reporting.

Also, worth considering is - America is a proud country, too. How many foreign offers of help are refused, we will never know.

Just because it's not covered on the broadcast news, doesn't mean it didn't happen!

[Harold Mansfield]

Even though they need the help, they also have to weight the vulnerability of just letting any and everyone fly planes full of cargo into their country at such a sensitive time. And if people are sending things that will really help or make things worse.
There's also the logistics of such a large scale mission. It's a pretty big undertaking on the fly.

I know what you mean about watching the videos though.
Every time I see the one of the tsunami wave rushing towards the shore, I just can't imagine the helplessness. There isn't anything you can do when a wall of water is rushing at the entire shoreline at 300 miles an hour except run. You can't build anything to stop that.