Post-quake callers overload phone systems
The state Office of Emergency Services issues an appeal to limit dialing so that 911 calls can get through.

Ignoring repeated warnings, and isolating acquired knowledge, points to systemic failures.

A 6.1 quake was reported hitting Iceland some 30 miles from the capital Reykjavik at 15.45PM local time. A few specialized news outlets picked up the event, which I reached some two hours after it happened. Minimal reference to the event was received in mainstream media outlets, and while not enormous a 6+ level event typically qualifies as strong with the potential to severely damage population and structures in a 100KM radius. It would only be much later that a brief snippet of the event would clarify the "minimal" effect of the damage. Two critical factors played an important role in giving it such a low profile: small population, and high wealth. The trouble is that relatively small poor populations may also be as a result of their size outside of the alert systems, something only fixable through proactive local preparedness.

Today the biggest news emerging regarding the Shichuan earthquake were the declarations of actress Sharon Stone. It would be easy to blame her for her unfortunate remarks regarding the tragedy as a possible "loss of karma" caused by the Chinese. However, the fact that the tangential declarations of a celebrity become the top feature around such a critical and complex topic resonates as deeply troubling. In this context, the interest would seem to reside not on the tragedy but on the celebrity. This symptom points to a common skewed cultural pattern, which utilizes the events surrounding a disaster eliminating critical thinking and attempting to isolate essential issues from their public exposure. I have commented elsewhere in depth how the critical abuses in Tibet are used to gloss over other equally if not more serious issues within China. This media attention hints at a similar distraction.

Another twist in the apparent media bias treating the disasters of China compared to that of Myanmar is the current push to question the value of the 3 days of mourning called by the dictatorship for the losses of Cyclone Nargis. While it is true that it follows late, and is second to the 3 days called for the Sichuan earthquake, this amount of questioning was absent when the Chinese authorities made their announcement.