Jeb Bush surveys 'awesome' Asia destruction

Florida Governor Jeb Bush said his experience in last year’s hurricanes will help him assess the damage in Asia’s tsunami catastrophe, but that the US disaster paled in comparison to the Asian one.

Bush, who arrived in Thailand with US Secretary of State Colin Powell to tour devastated areas here and in Indonesia, said the death and destruction across southern Asia was on an awesome scale.

“We had nothing compared to that,” Bush said at Bangkok’s Don Muang air force base. “When you have 150,000 people who died over 11 countries, that goes way beyond what anybody’s experienced in our own country.”

Bush joined Powell in meetings with Thai officials today before heading to the resort island of Phuket, which was ravaged in the tsunami that wiped out coastal communities across southern Asia.

The Florida governor said he was in the region at the request of President George Bush, his brother.

While Bush said he brings some natural disaster experience with the four hurricanes that hit his state last year, he said he also was here to demonstrate the president’s heartfelt commitment to the recovery effort.

“I will give him my observations,” said Bush, who plans to return to Washington on Thursday, before an international donors conference in Jakarta, Indonesia.

“What I’ll tell him … is that the United States’ response has been very impressive. It’s been quick and it’s been the kind that the American people would want for a tragedy like this.”

While the United States was initially accused of reacting too slowly to the crisis, Washington has now pledged $350m (€260m) to help with the relief effort, and the US military is mounting one of its largest missions in southern Asia since the Vietnam War to bring food and other supplies to devastated areas and rescue those in need of urgent care.

Despite the difference in scale, Florida’s and Thailand’s disasters have similarities, said Bush, who will also visit hard-hit Indonesia.

Both Florida and Thailand suffered environmental costs in their disasters, and Bush said he could offer some assessment of beach erosion and damage to mangroves and coral reefs, and on how to repair the damaged tourism economy.

“One of the elements that we’ve learned is economic development, (the need) to jump-start the economy quickly,” he said.

“It looks as though the Thai experience is really quite similar to Florida in the sense that they rely on tourism a lot.”