Friday, December 31, 2004

Bush dramatically increases the aid to Tsunami victims

See reports on the NY Times and the LA Times.
It's always better be late than never. The Bush administration takes the UN seriously this time. China has done the same thing today to significantly boost its disaster relieve aid to $63M after criticisms of its government's slow reaction in the past a few days.

International aid is very important for the recovery of these countries from one of the worst disasters in the past 20 years. However, the death toll could have been significantly reduced should a tidal wave monitoring system being established in the Indian Ocean as those in the Pacific and the Atlantic. For whatever reasons that the developing countries there can't have one built by themselves since we are obligated to help them after the disaster, the money would have been better spent on helping them build an effective warning system, for a much cheaper price tag if not anything else.

Labels: ,