I was wondering about that. What would classify as "worst disaster"? I found a variety of American candidates:
May 25, 1979: An American Airlines DC-10 crashed shortly after takeoff, killing 275 people.I start to wonder about the concept of "the worst disaster" when it comes to an oil spill like this. Really? The worst?
March 18, 1925: The great "Tri-State Tornado" hit in Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, killing 689, injuring more than 2,000, and producing more than $16 million in property damage.
April 27, 1865: More than 1,500 died on the Mississippi River near Memphis, TN, when their steamboat exploded.
Oct. 8, 1871: A forest fire in Peshtigo, WI, killed more than 1,500 people and burned more than 3.5 million acres.
May 31, 1889: The South Fork Dam collapsed, flooding Johnstown, PA, killing more than 2,200 people.
September 11: Three aircraft hit the Pentagon and the World Trade Center killing almost 3,000 people.
April 18, 1906: An earthquake struck San Francisco, CA, leveling almost 4 square miles and killing an estimated 3,000 people.
Sep. 8, 1900: A tidal surge from a hurricane that struck Galveston, TX, killed an estimated 8,000 people.
1918: A nationwide epidemic of the Spanish influenza killed over half a million Americans.
Then I think about the fact that an average of about 3,500 children a day die in American abortion clinics. Again, I begin to wonder about the concept of "the worst disaster".
According to the statistics, something like 150,000 people die every day from a combination of all causes. That's a lot of people. How many of them know Christ? How many of them are facing an eternity of darkness? Again, I begin to wonder about the concept of "the worst disaster".
This oil spill thing is bad ... really bad. We need to fix it as soon as we can. I would imagine, though, that our classifying it as "the worst disaster" would depend on our priorities, wouldn't it?
3 comments:
What I've usually seen it referred to is as about the worst environmental disaster ever in US history.
And that is probably a fair assessment, especially if we are concerned about God's creation and the millions of people who will be negatively impacted by this and the hundreds of billions of dollars it will cost to try to minimize the environmental damage.
Lord, help us.
I see it as certainly a "disaster", and certainly an "environmental disaster". (My quote -- "This oil spill in the Gulf is the worst disaster I have ever seen." -- was an actual quote from someone. They didn't qualify it as "environmental" because they were speaking in terms of affects on the people, the environment, the economy, and on and on.)
All I'm trying to do is maintain perspective.
Perspective? hah!
Perspective is what the 24 hour news cycle creates for you. Good point on God's creation in the womb being destroyed with the assent of those "concerned" about God's creation.
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