Have you heard that business mantra “Think global, execute locally”?
Well, Mother Nature took that to heart yesterday morning and claimed several thousand lives in several countries. (Reports: BBC, AP, CNN, Guardian, Metafilter, Slashdot.)
A massive quake off the Sumatran coast measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale — the largest in 40 years — caused a series of tsunamis which devastated coastlines of southeast Asian nations and triggered extreme tides as far away as east Africa.
I felt nothing. The first I knew about this was when I read Drudge around lunchtime. However, tremors were felt by Malaysians in high-rise buildings and there were evacuations.
This really comes as a complete shock. I think it’s fair to say “death by tsunami” would only be one rank higher than “attack by giant space lizard” on a list of things most Malaysians would fear so you can understand why the Deputy Prime Minister was moved to state the country had never experienced such a disaster before. We’ve only had to contend with seasonal floods prior to this.
The local death toll is 53 as of writing. While that number may be low compared to the thousands killed in other countries, officials here are describing this as “the worst natural disaster in Malaysia’s history.”
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