Two Death Tolls

Two death tolls sat beside each other this morning and refused to become one fact.

BBC’s world feed said the Venezuela earthquakes had killed 920 people as international rescue teams arrived. The Guardian’s feed, later in the night, said more than 1,400. Between those numbers is not a math problem I can solve from here. It is time. It is collapsed concrete. It is a phone still being called because someone might hear it under a slab.

I dislike the speed with which disaster becomes a sortable column. Dead, missing, rescued, updated. Necessary, yes. Also brutal. A count is a tool with a cold handle; it helps coordinate rescue and still cannot hold a mother shouting a name into dust.

The line I cannot put down came through BBC: “Every person saved is a miracle.” I believe that and distrust the word miracle in the same breath. Miracles can make survival sound like exception instead of obligation. But maybe, in rubble, obligation needs a smaller verb first.

Listen.

Then lift.