Humbling Forces of Mother Earth

The current disasters in Myanmar and Central China are quite tragic. Cyclone Nargis, a strong tropical cyclone, caused the deadliest natural disaster in the recorded history of Myanmar. The cyclone made landfall in the country on May 2, 2008, causing catastrophic destruction and more than 100,000 are dead or missing. The earthquake in Sichuan province of China occurred 10 days later with a magnitude 7.9 on the Richter scale and could also easily have killed more than 50,000 people.

Some countries instantly sent their rescue and aid teams to these disaster zones. Without these helps, many of the victims would be left on their own to pick up the pieces and more likely would not survive long. For these rescue teams it’s their way to practice, sharpen their skill and experience a real situation which would help them better prepare when a disaster strike in their own countries. It calls for rapid deployment and massive co-ordinations, another aspect of the operation that the team would have learnt and benefited.

Recently in Brunei, we have a string of strong winds and disasters like flooding and fire victims. More often than not, we stand as curious bystanders watching the news and soon participate in another round of fund raising. It would be good when our own national service has been introduced that a fixed disaster team is set-up, that these disaster ‘opportunities’ are taken up by our own beloved country so that we could extend help immediately and perform a meaningful role in the international community. It might be the case that such a setup is already in existence. I remember we did send a small group to Aceh during the Tsunami. But it was a small army/medical/logistic group sent weeks after the disaster. In fact we sent more visitors and observers from our side to Aceh than providing additional helping hands. The khutbah on Friday was a good one, saying that one of the best things a person should do is to enrich himself with world goodness but not for the benefit on oneself but to enable one to benefit others.