The Impact of Natural Disasters

I live in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is not afflicted by huge measures of natural disaster. We dont get volcanoes. We dont get earthquakes. We dont get huge amounts of rainfall or drought. We dont get huge tropical cyclones parking off the coast and controlling our weather for weeks on end. I suppose we are pretty lucky. Over the last few days we have seen some pictures of the impact that a cyclone has had on Burma. To date about 22,000 are deads with another 40,000 lost. If this happened in NI what would our response be? It would be on every channel 24/7. We would know everything about the loss of life and the impact on people. Yet again, I feel that we are selling this crisis short. We need to see the problem. We need to see how we can help and we need to see how we can help countries like this make sure that something like this is minimised iun the future. Maybe it just that our countries have been navel-gazing recently - worrying about the global credit crunch and house prices falling that we are more worried about the state of our finances compared to the survival of others. Let me finish with one fact.
Average annual wage of a subsistence rice farmer in Burma (of which around 17,000 are now dead) = $150
Average amount of money spent by students in my school on school dinners in a year = $1000 (£500)
Do the maths!
7th May 2008