Tsunami relief funding benefited from media spotlight – UN official

The "extraordinary" international response to last December's Indian Ocean tsunami was driven in part by press coverage, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator said today, contrasting that experience with the recent earthquake in Pakistan, where the media spotlight did not shine as brightly.

Briefing the press in New York on the one-month anniversary of the South Asia quake, Jan Egeland said several factors had helped the tsunami relief funding drive, including broadcasts around the world and the fact that the disaster occurred right before the start of a new budget year.

"If we had had more images from more tourists of the actual earthquake and how it fell on the children and on the people, of how people were drowned in rubble, I think we would have seen more outpouring," he said.

Meanwhile, UN officials at the Geneva-based UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) said children could help their elders escape disaster, as exemplified by the case of a school girl who, during the tsunami, applied her knowledge and warned people away from the mammoth tidal wave.

Tilly Smith, a British girl who was vacationing in Thailand last December when the tsunami struck, remembered the early warning signs of from a recent geography lesson, alerted her parents, and managed to clear the beach, reportedly saving the lives of over a hundred people.

More than anything, Tilly's story highlighted the critical importance of basic education in preventing the tragic impacts of natural calamities, ISDR officials said.

Tilly had just studied the warning signs of a tsunami when she noticed them emerging on the beach in Phuket. "I remembered because I had been taught it in a geography lesson and it was the exact same froth like you get on a beer. It was sort of sizzling," she said.