Sporting clichŽs are disastrous Ð but not nearly as much as earthquakes

Date Published: {J}

In terms of problems you’d fear would affect flights out of Galway Airport, volcanic eruptions in Iceland would hardly be top of the list. But that’s where we find ourselves in 2010 as the effects of globalisation reach further into our daily lives than we could ever have anticipated.

Of course it’s not just Galway Airport and we shouldn’t be so parochial; at least we now know that we’ll soon have direct flights to Cork which has always seen itself as an independent republic anyway and consequently we can now claim another international destination.

Equally we shouldn’t be paranoid and think that the CPSU is behind the volcanic ash because their workers at the passport office have already managed to ground around 60,000 Irish passengers by denying them their passport on foot of what might now be seen as an industrial volcano of protest over their wages.

The irony is that those who waited for passports are getting them in the post now – but they have nowhere to go with them because we can’t get any flights.

And we shouldn’t be laughing; earthquakes in China are one thing – not to denigrate them, even if they occur in a remote Tibetan trading centre that we’ve never heard of – but volcanoes that ground all flights from Carnmore are a different kettle of fish entirely.

You may not realise that more than 220,000 people have been killed worldwide so far in 2010 as a result of natural disasters. China’s was the third major earthquake recorded in just four months.

The largest of these was of course the earthquake in Haiti which killed at least 217,000, a figure estimated to top 300,000 when fully completed work to clear debris.

Two months after the tragedy, another 300,000 people are still recovering and some three million victims are trying to rebuild their lives in the poorest country of America.

And while earthquakes invariably make the news, there are other global disasters that hardly make the headlines but which have enormous impact nonetheless.

Brazil, for example its worst flooding in four decades early this month, a tragedy which killed more than 200 people in Rio de Janeiro and left thousands of Brazilians homeless.

And of course we had our own problems closer to home when hundreds of families were forced from their homes – and while that might seem insignificant in an international context, the scale of the human misery inflicted offers an insight into the suffering endured by tens of thousands across the globe.

Of course the word ‘disaster’ is hopelessly overused in a sporting context; all week it’s been labelled a ‘disaster’ that Liverpool won’t qualify for the Champions League next season.

They, of all clubs, know what a real disaster is, marking – as they did last Thursday – the 21st anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster when 96 people died at the FA Cup semi final between the Reds and Nottingham Forest.

Others have apparently suffered honeymoon disasters because their accommodation has fleas; Whitney Houston’s comeback gig in London was a disaster, and either Gordon Brown or Dave Cameron is facing political disaster over the next few weeks.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.