Indian Ocean Tsunami Disaster

Bloomington Mayor Mark Kruzan's Remarks

The following are Mayor Kruzan's remarks from the forum entitled "Indian Ocean Tsunami and Humanitarian Response: A Campus-Community Forum"

As on September 11, 2001, I found myself struggling to identify the right word to describe what was unfolding on December 26, 2004.

"Catastrophe," "disaster," "tragedy" all came to mind.

A dictionary definition best described the event for me. "Cataclysm" means a sudden, violent change in the earth's surface.

And that, of course, is what happened in the literal sense.

But like what happened in our country 3 1/3 years ago, no one word completely captured what had happened. We are rationale beings attempting to comprehend the incomprehensible.

One way to cope is to assign numeric facts to an event . . . to attempt to quantify what's occurred. A 9.0 magnitude earthquake. An 18-foot wall of water that traveled 6,000 miles, came ashore in 50 nations, washed away the lives of well more than 150,000 souls and orphaned thousands more.

Even with those facts, the vastness of the devastation isn't truly understood and will likely not be for a generation.

I've been struck by how the tsunami - as any other natural phenomenon - was a Great Equalizer. Huts in villages and multi-million dollar hotels as well as people of all classes were, for a terrible moment in time, one in the same.

But among the ruin, disbelief, and sorrow can also be found hope.

Hope can be discovered in families who lost loved ones and whose homes were in ruins coming to the aid of strangers.

Hope exists when tourists who had sought vacation time now find themselves acting as relief workers.

Hope is when people who had never heard of the locales devastated that awful day are now searching out ways to help and sending countless dollars every day.

And I see hope that a world at war can come together to aid nations in need.

Our world is torn by religion, torn by political philosophy, and torn by traditions. And yet we have seen a global grief evolve into an outpouring of support.

To all of you here tonight from nations impacted, our message is simple -- we care. We are with you.

Ours is a community that cares. Whether it be one family in our city or thousands of families in faraway places, Bloomingtonians and Monroe Countians are there for others in need.

Thank you for caring enough to be here this evening and for making this world a better one in which to live.