Date to remember

As everyone is settling in for what I hope is a very happy holiday with friends and family there is something I would like to remind everyone to take a couple minutes out of our lives to think on and remember a specific event.

Five years ago everyone was preparing to spend time with their families. The fear from 9/11 had finally started to recede to the back of every bodies mind, and the economy was still doing comparatively well. Things seemed to be going reasonably smoothly. Until the most unthinkable event that will happen in any of our lives happened. December 26th there was a massive earthquake. "The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea mega thrust earth quake" that was the second largest earthquake ever recorded on a seismograph with a magnitude of between 9.1 and 9.3. This earth quake resulted in a massive Tsunami that resulted in what is estimated to be between 200,000 and 230,000 dead, and 1.6 MILLION displaced. These are people whose entire villages were washed away.

(picture from http://www.masternewmedia.org)


Humanitarian aide did come. The USS Abraham Lincoln, which was in a port call in Hong Kong was immediately ordered to provide aide where 17 Helicopters assigned to HSL-47 Saberhawks and HS-2 "Golden Falcons", attached to CVW-2 flew 1,747 missions, resulting in 5.7 Million pounds of supplies being taken directly to the people that were hit the hardest by the Tsunami. This does not include all of the medical attention that was provided. The USS Abraham Lincoln was relieved by the USNS Mercy who in 6 months between Bandah Aceh and Nias treated nearly 100,000 patients, and performed nearly 500 surgeries.



This is not to mention all the civilian agencies that provides amazing support where the Bandah Aceh government would allow them to, and the combined world donation of 7 Billion USD in support.

While all of this saved countless more lives, and helped to get peoples lives in order again. It would be disrespectful for us to so easily forget something that was so traumatic that effected, and continues to haunt people to this day 5 years later.

I hope everyone has a very happy holiday and remembers that even if you didn't get as many gifts as you wanted to get, or maybe didn't get to see that one family member that you wanted to see that we need to be thankful for everything we've got.

-Will