Recently Destructive Nature

A maintenance worker was right when he announced, "It’s going to be a cold winter." Temperatures reached record-breaking lows in November. They suddenly rose temporarily in December, but dropped again before Christmas.

On December 26, 2004, an earthquake hit the Indian Ocean, creating a terribly deadly tsunami that caused millions of death and massive destruction in South Asia and East Africa. For days, the death toll kept climbing, and many victims faced aftershocks.

While we were trying to help the victims, it continued to be freezing. We did not see the sun for a few days because of record-breaking amounts of rain and floods.  Nature kept breaking its promise. First, the weather reports said that the rain would end the following day, but when the next day rolled around, it would be postponed for more days.

Nature eventually eased up kept its promise when rain stopped a day earlier than predicted. It was great to have sunshine and temperatures rising again, but too many deaths and destruction had been caused by the tsunami and storms. As if that wasn’t enough, the storms in California caused a mudslide in La Conchita on January 10, 2005, burying and killing many residents.

That evening, I realized that my phone line was always busy. I couldn’t make or receive calls. That meant no internet, either, since I used dialup connection. I had to report to the phone company with my cell phone the following morning. The worker informed me that the storm had caused some damage to the phone services in the area, and that they couldn’t send out a technician to my place until January 14. The service returned on January 12, but severe static and line interruptions made talking on the phone very difficult for me. Finally, after two more days, the technician arrived and fixed the problem.

Things were back to normal for me, but not for many people who will continue to suffer for a long time.  Why is nature being so cruel to the world? Did we all do something terrible to deserve such punishments? At least I know that the tsunami victims did not deserve what they got.