Latvian pride
A tragedy and a supportive community
Thursday evening the roof of a medium size supermarket crashed in the outskirts of Riga, Latvia, killing more than 50 people.
It is tragic and even upsetting as it is a fatality caused very probably by human errors.
Young and old died, kids are left without parents. It is very sad but it is amazing to see how the local community responded to the event.
Latvia and Latvians were not prepared for the tragedy. They are not used to natural calamities and at least since the second independence never got any conspicuous deadly accident. They were totally taken by surprise, shocked by the event, astonished by the situation. In such a small country (less than 2M inhabitants), almost every third family knows personally somebody directly touched by the tragedy: everybody feels involved and wants to contribute to improve the situations.
There were long queues to donate blood.
There were very consistent (at least for local standard) donations for the victims / injured.
There was huge backing for the rescuers.
I was surprised, positively surprised, to see how Latvians were taking this tragedy personally, empathizing with their unfortunate countrymen and rowing all in the same direction, putting aside for once social and racial differences.
Let’s hope we all will learn from this tragedy and avoid similar mistakes in the future.
I definitely look forward to see a stronger, more unite country next time I visit it.
