Fox News foreign correspondent Greg Palkot files another must-read, moving reporter's notebook from the earthquake-ravaged Indonesian island of Java:
...Maybe it's the island culture, maybe it's the mix of Hindu and Buddhism in their past, but the Indonesians’ quiet stoic ability to endure is quite remarkable. I couldn’t imagine a food riot breaking out (although there certainly was a scramble for a chopper load of aid I saw). I couldn't imagine ugly epithets being hurled at foreigners, nor even any sort of resentment about being picked on by Mother Nature.
We saw the same attitude when we toured the hospitals in the area. One darling little 6-year-old girl (kids were unusually effected by this) suffered a concussion during the quake, when the ceiling of the room she was in fell on her. It looked like she was going to make it. Her mother was pleased. In my business, there's always a danger of getting a bit desensitized to casualty scenes like those in the aftermath of an earthquake. It just takes something like this to bring it all back home.
This time around, we journalists didn’t have it too rough. The city of Yogyakarta itself only suffered medium damage. Plus, there was a new, large hotel that served as a global media center, complete with a good supply of food.
I think we got the last available room, which seemed like a lucky thing until we saw it. It was in the basement, the walls were full of cracks, and the floor was still covered with concrete and other building material that had fallen down during the quake. This, at a time when there were still hundreds of aftershocks occurring.
My team and I were debating which would be preferable, getting caught under a pancaked five-story hotel, or being catapulted down five stories from an upper room. We didn’t actually have a choice. Every night, when we returned to the hotel we tried not to look too closely at the collapsed front of the shopping center next door...
I'll say it again: Greg Palkot is a journalistic gem. His dry-eyed yet compassionate, powerfully intense but also positive reporting sets him apart--and makes you want to follow him there.
