Sarajevo, 16^th of August 2010

Regarding to the most analysis throughout the world, this year is the most catastrophic ever, bringing the most victims, natural disasters and crisis in countries like Palestine, Iraq, Pakistan, etc. From my point of view, that is not something new and I usually feel very bad because I am not empowered to change any of these things. Even in my country, positive changes are very hard to achieve, as all the big players only play the game that only suits their own interests.

Haiti after the earthquake

450 natural disasters happened in only seven months of this year, and more than 250.000 people died. Damage provoked by earthquakes, floods and fires is estimated on more than 70 billion dollars, although the hurricane season still hasn’t started. The total damage is more than in whole 2009, which was characterized as a relative benign year, due to natural disasters.

Considering the happenings in Pakistan and China, where people are fighting against floods, and unstoppable fires in Russia, the total damage in this year will probably be more than 100 billion dollars.

Smoke in Moscow

The year of catastrophes started with the earthquake in Port Au Prince, the capital of Haiti. 217.000 people died and 1.2 million lost their homes. After the Haiti's disaster, a stronger earthquake happened in Concepcion, Chile. Even this earthquake was the fifth strongest in the last century, compared to Haiti’s one, only 521 people died, but the damage was priced on 30 billion dollars.

Iceland’s volcano Eyafjallajökull woke up on 14^th of April and blocked the whole Europe’s air space. There are some scientists who say that this volcano eruption should be connected with seismic events before that.

Map of Catastrophes

390 of 450 natural disasters in this year are connected with extreme weather. The most destructive of them was Xinthia storm, which killed more than 50 people in southern Europe, at the end of February. Damage caused by this storm cost about 4.5 billion dollars. After the floods in Europe, especially in the Baltic States, where 15 people died, some of the predictors said that the end of the world just started.

Public kitchen in Sarajevo

There are 20.000 people in my country who don't have monthly income that exceeds 83,6 KM (43€). They belong to the extreme poor group, but all the state's help that they recieve, is one meal a day, which is guaranteed by the public kitchen. All the happenings mentioned above, unfortunately, didn’t touch the hearts of most Bosnians, as they are too occupied by their own catastrophes on a smaller scale. Still, we should be forgetting very easily how it feels to be in a situation when needing help from other people. That happened to us just 15 years ago, and it wasn't on a small scale.

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