Here Today... Gone To Hell!

Tsunami Toll Jumps to Over 125,000, Fear Lingers

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=NZ4Q3OV3FEXVWCRBAEOCFFA?type=topNews&storyID=7210227

Tsunami Death Toll Rises to 76,700 in Asia

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=1&u=/ap/20041229/ap_on_re_as/quake_tsunami

Tsunami Death Toll Soars Past 55,000

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=1&u=/ap/20041229/ap_on_re_as/quake_tidal_wave

---

Asia Quakes' Tsunamis Kill Nearly 10,000

By LELY T. DJUHARI, Associated Press Writer

JAKARTA, Indonesia - The world's most powerful earthquake in 40 years struck deep under the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Sumatra on Sunday, triggering tidal waves up to 20 feet high that obliterated villages and seaside resorts in six countries across southern Asia. Nearly 10,000 people were killed in the devastation.


Tourists, fishermen, homes and cars were swept away by walls of water that rolled across the Bay of Bengal, unleashed by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake. The tsunami waves barreled nearly 3,000 miles across the ocean to Africa, where at least nine people were killed in Somalia, witnesses said.


At least 4,185 killed in Indonesia, the country's health ministry said.


In Sri Lanka, 1,000 miles west of the epicenter, more than 3,000 people were killed, the country's top police official said; that number, however, does not include the unconfirmed 1,500 deaths reported by rebels who control part of the country.


Elsewhere, about 2,300 were reported dead along the southern coasts of India, at least 289 in Thailand, 42 in Malaysia and two in Bangladesh.


But officials expected the death toll to rise, with hundreds reported missing and all communications cut off to towns in the Indonesian island of Sumatra that were closest to the epicenter. Hundreds of bodies were found on various beaches along India's southern state of Tamil Nadu, and more were expected to be washed in by the sea, officials said.


The rush of tsunami waves brought sudden disaster to people carrying out their daily activities on the ocean's edge. Sunbathers on the beaches of the Thai resort of Phuket were washed away. A group of 32 Indians ? including 15 children ? were killed while taking a ritual Hindu bath to mark the full moon day. Fishing boats, with their owners clinging to their sides, were picked up by the waves and discarded.


"All the planet is vibrating" from the quake, said Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute. Speaking on SKY TG24 TV, Boschi said the quake even disturbed the Earth's rotation.


The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake at a magnitude of 8.9. Geophysicist Julie Martinez said it was the world's fifth-largest since 1900 and the largest since a 9.2 temblor hit Prince William Sound Alaska in 1964.


The epicenter was located 155 miles south-southeast of Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province on Sumatra, and six miles under the seabed of the Indian Ocean. There were at least a half-dozen powerful aftershocks, ranging in magnitude from almost 6 and 7.3.


On Sumatra, the quake destroyed dozens of buildings ? but as elsewhere, it was the wall of water that followed that caused the most deaths and devastation.


Tidal waves leveled towns in Aceh province on Sumatra's northern tip. An Associated Press reporter saw bodies wedged in trees as the waters receded. More bodies littered the beaches.


Health ministry official Els Mangundap said 1,876 people had died across the region, including some 1,400 in the Aceh provincial capital, Banda Aceh. Communications to the town had been cut.


Relatives went through lines of bodies wrapped in blankets and sheets, searching for dead loved ones. Aceh province has long been the center of a violent insurgency against the government.


Some of the worst devastation was in Sri Lanka, where a million people were displaced from wrecked villages. Some 20,000 soldiers were deployed in relief and rescue and to help police maintain law and order. Police chief, Chandra Fernando said at least 3,000 people were dead in areas under government control.


An AP photographer saw two dozen bodies along a four-mile stretch of beach, some of children entangled in the wire mesh used to barricade seaside homes. Other bodies were brought up from the beach, wrapped in sarongs and laid on the road, while rows of men and women lined the roads asking if anyone had seen their relatives.


"It is a huge tragedy," said Lalith Weerathunga, secretary to the Sri Lankan prime minister. "The death toll is going up all the time." He said the government did not know what was happening in areas of the northeast controlled by Tamil Tiger rebels.

? ?



The pro-rebel www.nitharsanam.com Web site reported about 1,500 bodies were brought from various parts of Sri Lanka's northeast to a hospital in Mullaithivu district, 170 miles northeast of the capital, Colombo.

About 170 children at an orphanage were feared dead after tidal waves pounded it in Mullaithivu, the Web site said.

No independent confirmation of the report was available, but TamilNet ? another pro-rebel Web site ? said some guerrilla territory was badly hit. "Many parts ... are still inaccessible and it was difficult to provide damage estimates or death tolls there," it said.

In India, beaches were turned into virtual open-air mortuaries, with bodies of people caught in the tidal wave being washed ashore.

"I was shocked to see innumerable fishing boats flying on the shoulder of the waves, going back and forth into the sea, as if made of paper," said P. Ramanamurthy, 40, who lives in Kakinada, a town in Andra Pradesh state.

The huge waves struck around breakfast time on the beaches of Thailand's beach resorts ? probably Asia's most popular holiday destination at this time of year, particularly for Europeans fleeing the winter cold ? wiping out bungalows, boats and cars, sweeping away sunbathers and snorkelers, witnesses said.

"Initially we just heard a bang, a really loud bang," Gerrard Donnelly of Britain, a guest at Phuket island's Holiday Inn, told Britain's Sky News. "We initially thought it was a terrorist attack, then the wave came and we just kept running upstairs to get on as high ground as we could."

"People that were snorkeling were dragged along the coral and washed up on the beach, and people that were sunbathing got washed into the sea," said Simon Clark, 29, a photographer from London vacationing on Ngai island.

On Phuket, Somboon Wangnaitham, deputy director of the Wachira Hospital, said one of the worst hit areas was the populous Patong beach, where at least 32 people died and 500 were injured.

Another survivor on Phuket was Natalia Moyano, 22, of Sydney, Australia, who was being treated for torn ligaments.

"The water kept rising. It was very slow at first, then all of a sudden, it went right up," Moyano said. "At first I didn't think there was any danger, but when I realized the water kept rising so quickly, I tried to jump over a fence, but it broke."

On Phi Phi island ? where "The Beach" starring Leonardo DiCaprio was filmed ? 200 bungalows at two resorts were swept out to sea.

"I am afraid that there will be a high figure of foreigners missing in the sea and also my staff," said Chan Marongtaechar, owner of the PP Princess Resort and PP Charlie Beach Resort.

Some 200 seriously injured people, most of them foreigners, were evacuated by helicopter from the island after dark, said Maj. Gen. Winai Nilasri of the Border Patrol Police. He said the island, which was crammed with tourist facilities, was without electricity.

There was no tsunami threat for western North America or Hawaii, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

Scientists said the catastrophic death toll across the region might have been reduced if India and Sri Lanka had been part of an international warning system designed to advise coastal communities that a potentially killer wave was approaching.

Although Thailand is part of the system, it has not yet been implemented for the western coast of the Thailand penninsula, where the waves came smashing ashore Sunday, the scientists said. The system relies on a network of earthquake seismic sensors and tidal gauges attached to buoys in the oceans.

Indonesia, a country of 17,000 islands, is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on the margins of tectonic plates that make up the so-called the "Ring of Fire" around the Pacific Ocean basin.

The Indonesian quake struck just three days after an 8.1 quake struck the ocean floor between Australia and Antarctica, causing buildings to shake hundreds of miles away but no serious damage or injury.

Quakes reaching a magnitude 8 are very rare. A quake registering magnitude 8 rocked Japan's northern island of Hokkaido on Sept. 25, 2003, injuring nearly 600 people. An 8.4 magnitude tremor that struck off the coast of Peru on June 23, 2001, killed 74.

___

Associated Press reporters Dilip Ganguly and Gemunu Amarasinghe in Colombo, Sri Lanka, K.N. Arun in Madras, India, and Sutin Wannabovorn in Phuket, Thailand, contributed to this report.

---

It's hard to imagine what it must've been like.? :no:



/jarmo

News updated by Will

That is so sad.  RIP to all of those that died.  I have a good friend that went back to Indonesia for the holidays, I hope she is OK :'(

got friends out there. hope there ok.

What to say... I?m lost for words. 10 thousands! of drowned in Christmas season?Too horrendous.
RIP

Hope your friends are OK, 2Na n Nightrain.

I know it's sad, horrible...Watched the news early this afternoon.

I may have misheard it but, CNN reporters said the waves were 50 meters high around 160 feet? :o

Anyway, there's nothing human race can do when nature unleashes its wrath.

i dont know anyone there myself, but it doesnt make this any less tragic...i hope the death toll wont rise any further...although realisticly with lack of sanitation and food supplies it may be much more unless they get help quickly

"All the planet is vibrating" from the quake, said Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute. Speaking on SKY TG24 TV, Boschi said the quake even disturbed the Earth's rotation."

now thats almost beyond imagination...

Really makes you think how unimportant the minor problems we may have in out own life are; and how insignificant we are when faced with natural hazards.

Rest in peace  :'(

Tidal Waves Kill 22,000 in Nine Countries

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=1&u=/ap/20041227/ap_on_re_as/quake_tidal_wave  (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=1&u=/ap/20041227/ap_on_re_as/quake_tidal_wave)





/jarmo

that's horrible. :-\

What a tragedy.

It's incredible really, horrible, but incredible.

Up to 30,000 now

The Red Cross has set up a disaster relief fund, so people can help out. 

Well, I go to college in Chennai, India and abt 2500 people died there... The beach is only a km from where i stay... Don't know yet if everyone there is ok, guess i'll find out in a week when i go back

I'm doubting that. 

No way. Not possible.   I think they are just over excited.

 
Tidal Wave Began Beneath Indian Ocean

By BETH GARDINER

LONDON (AP) - The chain reaction that sent enormous, deadly tidal waves crashing into the coasts of Asia and Africa on Sunday started more than six miles beneath the ocean floor off the tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Geologic plates pressing against each other slipped violently, creating a bulge on the sea bottom that could be as high as 10 yards and hundreds of miles long, one scientist said.

``It's just like moving an enormous paddle at the bottom of the sea,'' said David Booth, a seismologist at the British Geological Survey. ``A big column of water has moved, we're talking about billions of tons. This is an enormous disturbance.''

Moving at about 500 mph, the waves took more than two hours to reach Sri Lanka, where the human toll has been horrific, and longer to spread to India and the east coast of Africa.


And because such tidal waves rarely occur in the Indian Ocean, there is no system in place to warn coastal communities they are about to be hit, such as exists in the Pacific, Booth said.


``With 20-20 vision of hindsight, that'll be reconsidered,'' he said.


An Australian scientist had suggested in September that an Indian Ocean warning system be set up, but it takes a year to create one. Also, those living along the Indian Ocean's shores were less likely than Pacific coastal dwellers to know the warning signs of an impending tidal wave - water receding unusually fast and far from the shore, Booth said.


Thousands were killed in countries from Indonesia to Somalia.


The underwater quake, which the U.S. Geological Survey put at magnitude 9.0, was the biggest since 1964, when a 9.2-magnitude temblor struck Alaska, also touching off tsunami waves. There were at least a half-dozen powerful aftershocks, one of magnitude 7.3.


Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute, likened the quake's power to detonating a million atomic bombs the size of those dropped on Japan during World War II, and said the shaking was so powerful it even disturbed the Earth's rotation.
``All the planet is vibrating'' from the quake, he told Italian state radio. Other scientists said it was early too say whether the rotation was affected by the quake.
The earthquake occurred at a spot where the Indian Ocean plate is gradually being forced underneath Sumatra, which is part of the Eurasian plate, at about the speed at which a human fingernail grows, Booth explained.


``This slipping doesn't occur smoothly,'' he said. Rocks along the edge stick against one another and pent-up energy builds over hundreds of years.


It's ``almost like stretching an elastic band, and then when the strength of the rock isn't sufficient to withstand the stress, then all along the fault line the rocks will move,'' he said.


Indonesia is well-known as a major quake center, sitting along a series of fault lines dubbed the ``Ring of Fire.'' But scientists are unable to predict where and when quakes will strike with any precision.


The force of Sunday's earthquake shook unusually far afield, causing buildings to sway hundreds of miles from the epicenter, from Singapore to the city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, and in Bangladesh.


The quake probably occurred about 6.2 miles beneath the ocean floor, causing the huge, step-like protrusion on the sea bed and the resulting tidal waves.


As the waves moved across deep areas of the ocean in the early morning, they may have been almost undetectable on the surface, with swells of about a yard or less. But when they approached land the huge volumes of water were forced to the surface and the waves grew higher, swamping coastal communities and causing massive casualties.


 

The waves were upto 10 m high, and at some point they were travelling at 500 km/h! they even hit Somalia in Africa, and about 100 Somalian fishermen are missing.

My best friend is honey mooning in Malysia. He told me that he woke up at his hotel room because of the noise he heard, so he opened the window and saw the waves hit, he said that the what-used-to-be-clear water became muddy (the waves were slicing the sand at the bottom), and the sea was filled with boats and jet skis from other hotels. When he got out, he was told that 3 people were killed from the next hotel, where the guests were diving, and about 15 people were killed along the beach.

The reports now say that around 45000 were killed (25000 in Indonesia alone) and 100 000 feared missing. Numbers are rising by the hour.

I was listening to BBC radio on my way to work this morning, and they said that the American Tsunami Center in Hawaii had indicators and warning signals of what was coming, but no alert was trigured! according to the BBC reporter, if they have informed CNN or BBC, thousands of people would have been alive today|! makes you mad how some people just don't take the initiative.

I wonder how early they received the warnings? That pisses me off. It probably wouldn't have saved everyone, but it could've made a big difference.

The whole world needs to help these people. Their loved ones, their homes and businesses are gone.? I heard on the news that a lot didn't have insurance or anything.

They are starting:

This list comes from the AP:

Action Against Hunger
247 West 37th Street, Suite 1201
New York, NY 10018
212-967-7800
http://www.aah-usa.org
 
American Jewish World Service
45 West 36th Street, 10th Floor
New York, NY 10018
800-889-7146
http://www.ajws.org

ADRA International
9-11 Fund
12501 Old Columbus Pike
Silver Spring, MD 20904
800-424-2372
http://www.adra.org

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC Crisis Fund)
1501 Cherry Street
Philadelphia, PA
215-241-7000
http://www.afsc.org
 
Catholic Relief Services
PO Box 17090
Baltimore, MD 21203-7090
800-736-3467
http://www.catholicrelief.org

Direct Relief International
27 South La Patera Lane
Santa Barbara, CA 93117
805-964-4767
http://www.directrelief.org

Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres
PO Box 2247
New York, NY 10116-2247
888-392-0392
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org
1919 Santa Monica Boulevard Suite 300
Santa Monica CA 90404
800-481-4462
http://www.imcworldwide.org
 
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
PO Box 372
CH-1211 Geneva 19
Switzerland
41-22-730-4222
http://www.ifrc.org /

International Orthodox Christian Charities
Middle East Crisis Response
PO Box 630225
Baltimore, MD 21263-0225
877-803-4622
http://www.iocc.org

Lutheran World Relief
PO Box 17061
Baltimore MD 21298-9832
800-597-5972
http://www.lwr.org

MAP International
2200 Glynco Parkway
PO Box 215000
Brunswick, GA 3121-5000
800-225-8550
http://www.map.org

Mercy Corps
PO Box 2669
Portland, OR 97208
800-852-2100
http://www.mercycorps.org

Northwest Medical Teams
PO Box 10
Portland, OR 97207-0010
503-624-1000
http://www.nwmedicalteams.org

Operation USA
8320 Melrose Avenue, Ste. 200
Los Angles, CA 90069
800-678-7255
http://www.opusa.org

Relief International
11965 Venice Blvd.?405
Los Angeles, CA 90066
800-572-3332
http://www.ri.org

Save the Children
Asia Earthquake/Tidal Wave Relief Fund
54 Wilton Road
Westport, CT 06880
800-728-3843
www.savethechildren.org

US Fund for UNICEF
333 East 38th Street
New York, NY 10016
800-FOR-KIDS
http://www.unicefusa.or
World Concern
19303 Fremont Ave. N
Seattle, WA 98133
800-755-5022
http://www.worldconcern.org

World Relief
7 E. Baltimore St.
Baltimore, MD 21202
443-451-1900
http://www.wr.org

World Vision
PO Box 70288
Tacoma, Washington 98481-0288
888-56-CHILD
http://www.worldvision.org

yes it is possible, even if its millisecond or micro-degrees differences...this is the most powerful event in recent modern history as far as i am aware

Jesus, now 44,000 have died in this.

 :-\

Czech supermodel injured in tidal wave

 
 
 
 
LONDON (AP) -- Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova, who appeared on the cover of 2003 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, was injured and her photographer boyfriend is missing after the pair were caught up in the Asian tsunami disaster, a spokeswoman for the boyfriend said Tuesday.

Nemcova and British photographer Simon Atlee had been vacationing in the resort of Phuket when the waves swept over them on Sunday, said Atlee's agent, Eve Stoner.

"She is in hospital and he is missing. We don't have any further information than that at the moment," Stoner said,

The Sun newspaper reported Tuesday that Nemcova clung to a tree for eight hours as the water swirled around her. It said she suffered a shattered hip and internal injuries.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Stoner said British authorities had no information on Atlee's fate.

"We are just very hopeful," she said. "As time goes on we are getting quite frantic and stressed about it. Our thoughts are really with Petra and Simon's family at the moment."

"It just seems horrific, like something out of a movie," she added.

Nemcova, 25, has appeared in magazines including Sports Illustrated, Marie Claire and Vogue, and also has modeled for Victoria's Secret.

 PHOTO GALLERY
 
Destruction in Asia
 
 
 
 
Interactive
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Earthquakes Explained
 
 
 
 
Latest News
WHO: Disease could double Asia death toll
Dead mourned at soccer game in Indonesia

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Munich Re: tsunami exposure is limited

Estimated 1,000 dead on Sri Lankan train

 
 
 
 
 
Atlee, 33, is a well-known fashion photographer who recently shot the pictures for Nemcova's 2005 calendar.

ive also heard that richard attenbrough's granddaughter has died and his daughter and another relative are still missing

There's something about this that tells me this isn't normal weather but I don't think it's the end of the world or anything.

Nearly 60,000 dead now, according to Reuters... :(

Poor people...my cousin was in Taiwan when it happened. He saw the wave coming in and basically had to run for his life. Fortunately he's safe but it's gonna take a long time before he can return to his country.

Red Cross donation pages:

USA: https://www.redcross.org/donate/donation-form.asp

Canada: http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=000043&tid=016

UK: http://www.redcross.org.uk/news_subsection.asp?id=40238 (scroll down)

Ireland: http://www.redcross.ie/help/donate_now.php

Germany: https://www.drk.de/spenden/index.html

The Netherlands: http://www.rodekruis.nl/geven/geven_index.phtml?rubriek=metcreditcard

Belgium: http://www.croixrouge.be/code/page.cfm?id_page=442

France: http://www.croix-rouge.fr/goto/aide/don/index.asp?action=Z707

Spain: http://194.224.226.158/servlet/page?_pageid=263,65,68&_dad=portal30&_schema=PORTAL30

Finland: http://www.redcross.fi/lahjoita/

Sweden: http://www.redcross.se/newrkweb/WebForms.nsf/Internetpaypriv?OpenForm

Norway: http://www.redcross.no/Article.asp?ArticleID=9857

Denmark: http://stl.p.a1.traceworks.com/walkto/?sstlcmpid=3019

Australia: https://www.redcross.org.au/Donations/onlineDonations.asp

Argentina: http://www.cruzroja.org.ar/cra/done/00done.html

---

/jarmo

The only positive thing I see out of this, is how the entire human society helps in. It's been reported that 60000 are officially dead now (32 000 in Indonesia alone) :'(

100,000

80000 only in Indonesia

I donated yesterday to the Red Cross. This is really sad.

Same here.





/jarmo

Hopefully more and more people will do the same, because they will need an insane amount of money to try to get back on their feet.

Yeah.

Everything you donate will go to people who really need it.




/jarmo

Just gonna continue to keep all of these victims in my heart and prayers. And donate money where I can.

Yeah, I don't have a credit card so I can't donate to the place that I tried but I'm gonna see if I can borrow somebody's credit card and then give him/her back the money when I can.

100, 000 ... this is just insane .... just insane ... and we were impressed by the twin towers ..... i mean, ok, this time "man" didnt do it ... but 100,000 this juts blows me away.

i am also so mad that tv and all continues as everyting's fine where they stopped everything when the towers fell or when diana died ...

100,000 !! this is NUTS ! it is like a whole TOWN !

i heard on the news today that when they saw the first wave coming they had just a little over a minute, so really there is nothing that couldve been done, no warning devices or anything wouldve made a difference

this is one of those things that makes u wonder what is goin on and why something like this happens.

It really shows u that u never know and better live life everyday like its your last.

imagine being on vacation, having a good time and something like that happening

or the people who have lived their entire lives there and see that coming


the saddest part to me is the fact they are shoveling everyone's dead bodies into mass graves

did u see them bulldozing those bodies into graves on the news?

that was a horrific site and its awful that the dead wont be given proper burials

they said if they didnt do the mass grave thing, half the people would die from contamination and disease that the rotten bodies would cause.

there is a special coming on NBC tonight at 10pm eastern for those who are able to watch it.

Last time I checked it was on heavy rotation on every US information channel/ web site and French news talked about it at length as well.

The number is indeed unbelievable...

COLOMBO - Sri Lankan wildlife officials are stunned -- the worst tsunami in memory has killed around 22,000 people along the Indian Ocean island?s coast, but they can?t find any dead animals.

 
Giant waves washed floodwaters up to 3 km (2 miles) inland at Yala National Park in the ravaged southeast, Sri Lanka?s biggest wildlife reserve and home to hundreds of wild elephants and several leopards.

?The strange thing is we haven?t recorded any dead animals,? H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of the national Wildlife Department, told Reuters on Wednesday.

?No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit,? he added. ?I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening.?

At least 40 tourists, including nine Japanese, were drowned.

The tsunami was triggered by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean on Sunday, which sent waves up to 5-meters (15-feet) high crashing onto Sri Lanka?s southern, eastern and northern seaboard, flooding whole towns and villages, destroying hotels and causing widespread destruction.



amazing how animals can sense danger isnt it?

maybe its like noahs ark, and the animals all escaped the flood with...............noah or..........something. ???

it really is amazing.

i still cant believe how many people have died. it is unbelievable.

it started off at like 3000 and i thought shit what a catastrophe. but 76 000! fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. i pray for all of the families and the loved ones lost. :no:

that whole area is often a holiday spot for many Australians too, i was thinking about heading there these holidays. unbelievable  :nervous:

are there any charaties where you dont need a credit card?

My mum showed me pictures of her holiday in Thailand and ones on the beach, they showed the pictures of the same beach on t.v and shit it looks completly different :o

they probably sensed the change in temperature, air pressure or the vibrations of the quake itself...

the thing with humans is that many on the beaches probably felt the quakes tremors so they would have had time to get to higher ground, maybe 10-15 minutes at the least...many humans are overconfident and arrogant and think that nothing will happen to them so in turn they failed to obey the warning sign

just when you think the worst is over

Tsunami toll jumps past 120,000

ANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters) - The mercilessness of Asia's tsunami has grown clearer as worst-hit Indonesia sharply raised its death toll, taking the number of fatalities around the whole Indian Ocean region above 120,000.

Health Ministry sources told Reuters just under 80,000 had died in Indonesia's northern Aceh province that was close to the undersea quake, some 28,000 more than previously announced. Two sources said the toll would be officially announced soon.

Aceh, already suffering a prolonged conflict, has emerged as the "ground zero" of Sunday's great earthquake just off its coast. It triggered monstrous waves all the way to Africa that killed thousands more in India, Thailand and elsewhere.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/041230/325/f9emq.html

France will offer about $56 million (41 million euros) as part of a huge global relief effort to help countries destroyed by the tsunamis (source: http://fr.news.yahoo.com/041230/5/4794u.html - in French, this was just announced by the French government).

Billions of dollars have been offered together by the U.S, Germany, Spain, Italy, U.K, France, etc.

I got an email from my friend yesterday, who went to Indonesia to visit her family for the holidays.? She said that her and her family are fine.? Thank God.?

this thing is gonna cause more deaths than any natural disaster, prob ever.

Personally I think the number is being kept low for tourist reasons.

The BBC reported this and I agree. Tourism is the tops the list for that region, for overall income.

These papers are reporting much higher and question the current numbers being reported.

http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v3/n...e.php?id=111574

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...show/975541.cms

One Indonesian town with 150k people had no survivors at all, NONE, it was totally wipped out. This far exceeds the total already.

Add in  death from cholera and lack of clean water (which could well be another 500k) and this could be the biggest human tragedy in some time.

It's been some quakes in China with like 300 000 casualties, or more. So this one is'n the worst yet but it's fuckin horrible.

I don't know if it matters whether the? tsunami killed ten or hundred thousand. Some people are gonna be scared of going there anyway.


I saw on the news yesterday how some small business owners were already trying to clean up and rebuild so they could open for business as soon as possible.?

These people don't have any other income and if the tourists dissappear, where will they get their income from?




/jarmo

Your links don't work, buddy.

If you don't have a credit card, you can send a check or money order to your local chapter, which is listed on the Red Cross homepage. Or, you can send it to this address:

 American Red Cross International Response Fund, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, DC 20013.

yeah i just learned about that a few hrs ago actully, its amazing.

I think it does matter Jarmo. It makes a difference because it magnifies the tragedy and more lives/families have been destroyed. I see what you are saying, but everyday the number of casualties rises in 10,000 at least. This is one of the biggest natural disasters in recent history. The whole area has been wiped out. I don't think people's biggest fear now is having gone out of business, right now people's main concern is getting their lives back.

Even if the tourists weren't scared to spend their holidays in Indonesia, there are some areas that will take years to rebuild. Even if the 100,000 tourists decide to spend the next few weeks in Sri Lanka, the probably wouldn't find their favorite hotel there anymore.


Satisfying their basic needs is all they care about right now.

Be thankful for all you have today....I sure am.