Learning from Hurricane Sandy

Letter November 03, 2012
Instead of castigating the US, we need to learn lessons from how it prepared for Hurricane Sandy.

JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: I write with reference to the discussion on social media and on some TV channels exploring the reasons behind the superstorm Hurricane Sandy, which caused widespread chaos and devastation in America. There are people who are terming the destruction this superstorm caused as some kind of divine retribution for the US and a consequence of how it deals with the rest of the world.

The fact of the matter is that natural calamities can hit any country in the world at any time. For instance, Pakistan itself suffered a devastating earthquake in 2005 in which over 75,000 people lost their lives. Similarly, in 2004, Indonesia suffered the devastating effects of a tsunami that ended up killing over 130,000 of its citizens and leaving hundreds of thousands more homeless.

Instead of castigating the US, we need to learn lessons from how it prepared for Hurricane Sandy. How they were precisely able to predict its strength and direction, and the timing and location where it would make landfall. This allowed millions of Americans to be shifted to safety and kept the number of fatalities remarkably low for a storm of its magnitude.

Masood Khan

Published in The Express Tribune, November 4th, 2012.