Pictures and reflections from China
Thanks to McClatchy's Tim Johnson for signaling two extremely moving collections of photos from China's earthquake zone.
This one is on the WaPo's website and has images from a number of brilliant photogs working for different international agencies.
This one is from the EastSouthWestNorth blog, picked up from China's Guangyuan Daily News. Less technically brilliant but more immediate and in some cases intimate.
I am sure that there have been glitches, mistakes-- perhaps even big mistakes-- grandstanding and incompetence in the response of some Chinese officials to this terrible natural disaster. As in all disasters. But overall, the response looks magnificent. What I see in both slideshows are citizens and well-organized cadres of military and civilian officials acting under conditions of great trauma and continuing threat but with huge compassion, focus, good organization, and dignity.
I am embarrassed to recall the images the whole world saw of our government's response to Hurricane Katrina in 2007. I was in Geneva shortly after. and had a meeting with Cornelio Sommaruga, the former head of the International Committee for the Red Cross. He could scarcely believe the incompetence and basic inhumanity of the US response. That was some 19 days or so after the hurricanes struck. Bodies were still bumping around in the receding waters or left on median strips, completely uncollected, stripped of all dignity, and posing a continuing public health hazard. All that because the groups and private companies that had gotten the contracts for "rescue operations" had been told not to touch them because the profit-bearing contract for "mortuary operations" would be going to someone else...
Anyway, my very best wishes to the people and government of China.
I'm thinking maybe next year, once China has dealt with the worst of this disaster and we have a new administration here in the US, perhaps some Chinese emergency response specialists could come over to the US and do some good trainings for our own Red Cross, military, and other first responders?
As you should know, in general, dead bodies do not pose a public health hazard. We bury because dead bodies smell awful, and upset the living.