The 19th Floor

Troubled Waters

The devastation left in the wake of yesterday's tsunami is staggering. Twenty-two thousand people dead and still counting. Someone (a tourist, from the looks of it) took some amazing pictures of the wave crashing into the island of Phuket, off the coast of Thailand. The NYT points out that some deaths might have been avoided if countries ringing the Indian Ocean had established an early-warning system like the one that exists in the Pacific. Most of these nations probably don't have a lot of spare cash for that sort of thing, but let's hope the world community chips so that the next time something like this happens, people in the affected areas will have a better chance of survival.