I-MAG STS Corporation
As is well-known, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami did not damage
Pakistan. That was good (no damage to Pakistan plus Pakistan was able
to help its neighbors) and bad (no one was too concerned).
As is less often remembered, on October 8, 2005 there was a major
earthquake in Pakistan. It was a Richter 7.6, so about the same as San
Francisco 1906. Officially, about 80,000 people died. We reckon the real
losses were almost twice that. There were several challenges: (1) the
quake was in the far north (Kashmir) which is relatively sparsely
populated and no one in the south cares much (2) The US Marines
helped out a lot (3) no dams broke (4) life has always been trying in
Pakistan so there's something of a fatalistic attitude.
Nothing much changed.
One Pakistani scientist did write to us thanking us for the work but
noting that there were no reliable reports in all the long history of his
country of the massive flooding (14% of the land area). Pakistan is
about twice the size of California, so the equivalent might be slicing off
from Los Angeles County south. Therefore, they did not need to worry
about a solar-based smart electrical grid; more helicopters; shallow
draft rescue boats; better infrastructure; dams collapsing; epidemics
from dirty water; famines from wrecked agriculture; food riots in cities;
about 100 million people living without a net even before the floods and
all the dire things we worried about.
He also observed that there were no chronologies of previous climate
changes and glacier shrinkage. As the measurements of ice/snow loss
(both area covered and thickness) were not easily disputed, he
promised to forward the material.