Swept away by sadness

It was time once again for the round of finger-pointing -- another disaster to be picked apart and analyzed after the fact -- when a flash flood ripped through Bahorok area in Langkat regency, North Sumatra, last Sunday.

The grim statistics -- more than 100 people dead and an equal number still missing, feared dead -- are only part of the story.

The flooding is said to have occurred when dams, created by the accumulation of logs upstream, burst, flushing huge logs, debris along with mud onto the riverbanks, gushing toward houses and cottages nearby and shattering them to pieces.

Again, innocent people were the victims, left to grieve and then rebuild their lives once the media spotlight has moved away.

But, when the houses have been rebuilt and the people's sadness has been salved, will the illegal loggers who have been blamed for the disaster be left to their own devices once again, running rampage and decimating Sumatra's jungles?

When the inevitable does happen -- more forest fires, perhaps, or the long predicted extinction of the Sumatran tiger or rhino in the wild -- at least we will be used to yet more of the same "day-after" analysis. Talk, after all, is cheap.

-- R. Berto Wedhatama