I readily concede that you can be forgiven a little compassion fatigue. After all, mainstream and social media have been replete recently with heartrending stories about wildfires destroying homes in California, ethnic conflict causing death and starvation in South Sudan, religious conflict causing death and destruction in the Central African Republic, and simmering civil war threatening to tear Ukraine apart, not to mention the despairing search for kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria and the even more despairing search for missing Flight MH370 in the Southern Indian Ocean.
And these do not represent even 10 percent of the places around the world where people are suffering unspeakable natural and man-made disasters today.
Therefore, I raise concerns about the historic floods now leaving a path of destruction throughout the Balkans advisedly. Reports are that three months of rainfall in just three days triggered landslides that left vast areas looking like “a huge muddy lake, with houses, roads and rail lines submerged” and caused the mighty Sava to overflow its banks, leaving the streets outside Belgrade looking like the canals of Venice.
Alas, those landslides are also unearthing hundreds of thousands of land mines all over Bosnia, giving deadly meaning to the idiom: chickens coming home to roost….
As of this writing, the death toll across the region had risen to 44.
‘What happened to us happens not once in 100 years, but once in 1,000 years.’ Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said at a government meeting broadcast live on Serbian television.
(The Associated Press, May 18, 2014)
Mind you, the Italian prime minister was saying much the same two years ago, when floods of Biblical proportions were causing similar destruction in idyllic places like Tuscany and Venice. Indeed, I remember pictures showing the famed Piazza San Marco looking more like Lake Como.
I share this to offer hope to those suffering Mother Nature’s wrath in the Balkans today. But I know all too well that disasters or even massacres befalling people elsewhere mean little to the people who are losing their livelihoods, if not their lives.
This is why Serbians, Bosnians, and Croatians must be heartened to know that the EU and Russia have put aside their differences over Ukraine to coordinate massive relief efforts. And the United States, Israel, and Turkey are among the many other countries that have pledged hundreds of millions for recovery and rebuilding.
Still, I urge you to do whatever you can to help those affected.
With all due respect to the International Red Cross, the most direct and reliable way to donate funds is probably through Serbian Tennis player Novak Djokovic’s charitable foundation: here.
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Now Venice…
* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Sunday, at 2:16 pm