I’m not quite sure how you can make the world’s most horrific natural disaster boring, but this piece accomplishes to sew together some chilling examples of the terror in a sleepy presentation.

First off, the narration is the kind of emotion-lacking-monotone that gives public radio a bad rap. The narrator is much more human and authentic during the interview segments. Emotion is ok to show in the transitions pieces too, after all, this is a humanity story, not a political event. But every time the piece goes back to narration I just want to take a nap.

Perhaps the time elapsed from the event to this review is too long. I am not sure if this piece for RN ran on the published creation date of January 27, 2005. As a month later piece, it tries to tie together too many emotions and elements of the story into one package. There are some powerful real time friends and family reunions but they are clouded by more sterile scenes and explanations of hospital scenes.

So at half an hour of time, this piece becomes muddy and dilutes the power of the tragedy by trying to cram too much into too long a time. It kind of turns into the public radio equivalent of those History Channel or Discovery Science documentaries that repeatedly relive the pain for those audiences who have become addicted to mass deaths caused by an event.

Perhaps the actualities could be reworked into a meaningful piece for the six month or one year anniversary. If the producer could find the people interviewed in this pieces then construct a then and now series of packages, I think it would make very very powerful radio.

The production of this piece is public radio perfect. The levels, ambient sound and mixing is top notch. But once again, producers wishing their pieces to gain wide acceptance should package their material into several lengths and purposes. This material would be more powerful, let alone heard by more people, if it was cut into five pieces for a week’s worth of stories.