Today's shallow, thrust-type earthquake occurred off the west coast of northern Sumatra at the interface between the India and Burma plates. In this region, the Burma plate is characterized by significant strain partitioning due to oblique convergence of the India and Australia plates to the west and the Sunda and Eurasian plates to the east. Off the west coast of northern Sumatra, the India plate is moving in a northeastward direction at about 5 cm per year relative to the Burma plate. Preliminary locations of larger aftershocks following today's earthquake show that approximately 1000 km of the plate boundary slipped as a result of the earthquake. Aftershocks are distributed along much of the shallow plate boundary between northern Sumatra (approximately 3 degrees north) to near Andaman Island (at about 14 degrees north).
Update on death toll from December quake and tsunami
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AussieMark
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this is interesting
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Brent
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Matt-hurricanewatcher wrote:Super Quake!!! http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/ ... usslav.htm
I can't find a word to describe it.
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AussieMark
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More than 4,300 killed in Sri Lanka's worst-ever disaster
COLOMBO (AFP) - At least 4,300 people, mostly children and the elderly, were killed and hundreds were missing after giant tidal waves caused the worst ever disaster in Sri Lanka, prompting appeals for international help.
Sri Lanka's President Chandrika Kumaratunga cut short her holiday in London and was headed home after declaring a state of disaster to deal with the unprecedented calamity that shocked this nation of 19 million people.
The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said they recovered the bodies of at least 800 people killed in the disaster in the coastal region of Wanni where they have their main military bases.
"This is the first time Tamil people in our areas have witnessed such a large scale disaster," Tiger political wing leader S.P. Thamilselvan told the pro-rebel Tamilnet Website. The Tigers made an appeal for international assistance.
Outside the rebel-held regions, the top relief official Lalith Weeratunga said another 3,500 people had died raising the official death toll to 4,300.
"The reports we have confirm that 3,500 people have been killed outside the northern regions where the Tigers are in control," Weeratunga told AFP. "We also estimate that about a million people have been affected."
He said about 250,000 people were believed to have lost their homes and appealed for urgent foreign aid to deal with the destruction.
"We had no mechanism to deal with this type of disaster," Weeratunga said. "We are getting systems in place now to distribute relief."
Hundreds of foreign holiday makers at beach resorts were evacuated to the capital ahead of flights back home, tourist industry officials said, adding that several tourists had died, but there were no immediate details of their nationalities.
Tourists who survived the tidal waves -- or tsunamis -- said walls of water slammed into their hotels and they were lucky to escape. Most had lost their baggage and travel documents.
An entire train was flooded, while buses and cars floated along the main Galle Road hugging the coastline from the capital to the south of the island. Officials said restoring rail transport could take months.
Bodies of men, women and children were seen on tree tops after the waters receded, while many more floated in sea, some strewn with the debris from homes and business premises along the coast.
Police clamped local curfews in most areas to prevent looting.
Inspector-General Chandra Fernando said reinforcements were rushed to the southern and eastern regions to clear the roads and expedite the release of bodies of victims piling up in hospitals.
"This is a gigantic task for us," Fernando told AFP. "We have never had to deal with such a tragedy. Our main task is to clear the roads so that relief supplies can get through."
"We need to ensure that relatives are able to get the bodies of their loved ones to conduct funerals. We are engaged in that process right now. The release of bodies to families has begun."
The tsunamis were triggered by a huge earthquake off northeast Indonesia, several thousand kilometres (miles) from Sri Lanka. Giant waves also slammed into Thailand, Myanmar, southern India, Malaysia and the Maldives.
The Sri Lankan army, navy and air force were called out to help. Officials said combat aircraft were being deployed to air drop bottled drinking water and food to marooned residents.
At least 300 prisoners in Matara fled from a high-security jail as inmates took advantage of the disaster, police said.
Hundreds of villages and towns along the island's coast were battered by the high waves with many houses completely destroyed, police said. Tourist resorts along the coast said they were badly hit with almost all of them flooded.
"The destruction is widespread along the coast and we fear for many people who were along the beach at the time," Prime Minister Rajapakse told AFP.
The tidal waves were caused by a massive earthquake west of the Indonesian island of Sumatra that registered 8.9 on the Richter scale. It was the fifth-strongest temblor since the beginning of the 20th century.
The main Colombo harbour was affected, with at least one ship listing after the huge waves, a port official said. The tidal waves eased as they reached the capital, but five people were killed when low-lying areas were flooded.
COLOMBO (AFP) - At least 4,300 people, mostly children and the elderly, were killed and hundreds were missing after giant tidal waves caused the worst ever disaster in Sri Lanka, prompting appeals for international help.
Sri Lanka's President Chandrika Kumaratunga cut short her holiday in London and was headed home after declaring a state of disaster to deal with the unprecedented calamity that shocked this nation of 19 million people.
The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said they recovered the bodies of at least 800 people killed in the disaster in the coastal region of Wanni where they have their main military bases.
"This is the first time Tamil people in our areas have witnessed such a large scale disaster," Tiger political wing leader S.P. Thamilselvan told the pro-rebel Tamilnet Website. The Tigers made an appeal for international assistance.
Outside the rebel-held regions, the top relief official Lalith Weeratunga said another 3,500 people had died raising the official death toll to 4,300.
"The reports we have confirm that 3,500 people have been killed outside the northern regions where the Tigers are in control," Weeratunga told AFP. "We also estimate that about a million people have been affected."
He said about 250,000 people were believed to have lost their homes and appealed for urgent foreign aid to deal with the destruction.
"We had no mechanism to deal with this type of disaster," Weeratunga said. "We are getting systems in place now to distribute relief."
Hundreds of foreign holiday makers at beach resorts were evacuated to the capital ahead of flights back home, tourist industry officials said, adding that several tourists had died, but there were no immediate details of their nationalities.
Tourists who survived the tidal waves -- or tsunamis -- said walls of water slammed into their hotels and they were lucky to escape. Most had lost their baggage and travel documents.
An entire train was flooded, while buses and cars floated along the main Galle Road hugging the coastline from the capital to the south of the island. Officials said restoring rail transport could take months.
Bodies of men, women and children were seen on tree tops after the waters receded, while many more floated in sea, some strewn with the debris from homes and business premises along the coast.
Police clamped local curfews in most areas to prevent looting.
Inspector-General Chandra Fernando said reinforcements were rushed to the southern and eastern regions to clear the roads and expedite the release of bodies of victims piling up in hospitals.
"This is a gigantic task for us," Fernando told AFP. "We have never had to deal with such a tragedy. Our main task is to clear the roads so that relief supplies can get through."
"We need to ensure that relatives are able to get the bodies of their loved ones to conduct funerals. We are engaged in that process right now. The release of bodies to families has begun."
The tsunamis were triggered by a huge earthquake off northeast Indonesia, several thousand kilometres (miles) from Sri Lanka. Giant waves also slammed into Thailand, Myanmar, southern India, Malaysia and the Maldives.
The Sri Lankan army, navy and air force were called out to help. Officials said combat aircraft were being deployed to air drop bottled drinking water and food to marooned residents.
At least 300 prisoners in Matara fled from a high-security jail as inmates took advantage of the disaster, police said.
Hundreds of villages and towns along the island's coast were battered by the high waves with many houses completely destroyed, police said. Tourist resorts along the coast said they were badly hit with almost all of them flooded.
"The destruction is widespread along the coast and we fear for many people who were along the beach at the time," Prime Minister Rajapakse told AFP.
The tidal waves were caused by a massive earthquake west of the Indonesian island of Sumatra that registered 8.9 on the Richter scale. It was the fifth-strongest temblor since the beginning of the 20th century.
The main Colombo harbour was affected, with at least one ship listing after the huge waves, a port official said. The tidal waves eased as they reached the capital, but five people were killed when low-lying areas were flooded.
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AussieMark
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Asia Quake's Tsunamis Kill Nearly 11,800
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - An earthquake of epic power struck deep beneath the Indian Ocean on Sunday, unleashing 20-foot tidal waves that ravaged coasts across thousands of miles and killed nearly 11,800 people. On Monday, legions of rescuers spread across Asia, searching for survivors and rushing aid to the hundreds of thousands injured or left homeless.
The death toll along the southern coast of Asia — and as far west as Somalia, on the African coast, where nine people were reported lost — steadily increased Monday as authorities sorted out a far-flung disaster caused by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake, strongest in 40 years and fourth-largest in a century.
More than one million people were driven from their homes in Indonesia alone, and rescuers there on Monday combed seaside villages for survivors. The Indian air force used helicopters to rush food and medicine to stricken seashore areas. And in Sri Lanka, 20,000 soldiers were deployed as rescuers.
The earthquake hit at 6:58 a.m.; the tsunami came as much as 2 1/2 hours later, without warning, on a morning of crystal blue skies. Sunbathers and snorkelers, cars and cottages, fishing boats and even a lighthouse were swept away.
Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India each reported thousands dead, and Thailand, a Western tourist hotspot, said hundreds were dead and thousands missing. Deaths were also reported in Malaysia, Maldives and Bangladesh.
"It's an extraordinary calamity of such colossal proportions that the damage has been unprecedented," said Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa of India's Tamil Nadu, a southern state which reported 1,705 dead, many of them strewn along beaches, virtual open-air mortuaries.
"It all seems to have happened in the space of 20 minutes. A massive tidal wave of extreme ferocity ... smashed everything in sight to smithereens," she said.
At least three Americans were among the dead — two in Sri Lanka and one in Thailand, according to State Department spokesman Noel Clay. He said a number of other Americans were injured, but he had no details.
"We're working on ways to help. The United States will be very responsive," Clay said.
The quake was centered 155 miles south-southeast of Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia's Aceh province on Sumatra, and six miles under the Indian Ocean's seabed. The temblor leveled dozens of buildings on Sumatra — and was followed by at least a half-dozen powerful aftershocks, ranging in magnitude from almost 6 to 7.3. The waves that followed the first massive jolt were far more lethal.
An Associated Press reporter in Aceh province saw bodies wedged in trees as the waters receded. More bodies littered the beaches. Authorities said at least 4,448 were dead in Indonesia; the full impact of the disaster was not known, as communications were cut to the towns most affected.
The waves barreled across the Bay of Bengal, pummeling Sri Lanka, where more than 4,500 were reported killed — at least 3,000 in areas controlled by the government and about 1,500 in regions controlled by rebels, who listed the death toll on their Web site. There was an unconfirmed report of 500 more deaths on another Web site that provided no details. Some 170 children were feared lost in an orphanage. More than a million people were displaced from wrecked villages.
The carnage was incredibly widespread. About 2,300 were reported dead along the southern coasts of India, at least 431 in Thailand, 42 in Malaysia and 32 in the Maldives, a string of coral islands off the southwestern coast of India. At least two died in Bangladesh — children who drowned as a boat with about 15 tourists capsized in high waves.
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.
"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.
In India's Andhra Pradesh state, 32 people were drowned when they went into the sea for a Hindu religious ceremony to mark the full moon. Among them were 15 children.
"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, of that state.
The earthquake that caused the tsunami was the largest since a 9.2 temblor hit Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1964, according to geophysicist Julie Martinez of the U.S. Geological Survey (news - web sites).
"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 quake occurred at a place where several huge geological plates push against each other with massive force. The survey said a 620-mile section along the boundary of the plates shifted, motion that triggered the sudden displacement of a huge volume of water.
Scientists said the death toll 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, the west coast of its southern peninsula does not have the system's wave sensors mounted on ocean buoys.
As it was, there was no warning. Gemunu Amarasinghe, an AP photographer in Sri Lanka, said he saw young boys rushing to catch fish that had been scattered on the beach by the first wave.
"But soon afterward, the devastating second series of waves came," he said. He climbed onto the roof of his car, but "In a few minutes my jeep was under water. The roof collapsed.
"I joined masses of people in escaping to high land. Some carried their dead and injured loved ones. Some of the dead were eventually placed at roadside, and covered with sarongs. Others walked past dazed, asking if anyone had seen their family members."
Michael Dobbs, a reporter for The Washington Post, was swimming around a tiny island off a Sri Lankan beach at about 9:15 a.m. when his brother called out that something strange was happening with the sea.
Then, within minutes, "the beach and the area behind it had become an inland sea, rushing over the road and pouring into the flimsy houses on the other side. The speed with which it all happened seemed like a scene from the Bible — a natural phenomenon unlike anything I had experienced before," he wrote on the Post's Web site.
Dobbs weathered the wave, but then found himself struggling to keep from being swept away when the floodwaters receded.
On Phuket, in Thailand, Somboon Wangnaitham, deputy director of the Wachira Hospital, said one of the worst-hit areas was Patong beach, where at least 32 people died and 500 were injured. 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.
Many areas were without electricity. In Tamil Nadu in India, a unit of the Madras Atomic Power Station was shut down after water entered the plant.
Some 20,000 Sri Lankan soldiers were deployed in relief and rescue and to help police maintain law and order. The international airport was closed in the Maldives after a tidal wave that left 51 people missing in addition to the 32 dead.
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 along the ocean floor between Australia and Antarctica caused buildings to shake hundreds of miles away. The earlier temblor caused 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 Peru on June 23, 2001, killed 74.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - An earthquake of epic power struck deep beneath the Indian Ocean on Sunday, unleashing 20-foot tidal waves that ravaged coasts across thousands of miles and killed nearly 11,800 people. On Monday, legions of rescuers spread across Asia, searching for survivors and rushing aid to the hundreds of thousands injured or left homeless.
The death toll along the southern coast of Asia — and as far west as Somalia, on the African coast, where nine people were reported lost — steadily increased Monday as authorities sorted out a far-flung disaster caused by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake, strongest in 40 years and fourth-largest in a century.
More than one million people were driven from their homes in Indonesia alone, and rescuers there on Monday combed seaside villages for survivors. The Indian air force used helicopters to rush food and medicine to stricken seashore areas. And in Sri Lanka, 20,000 soldiers were deployed as rescuers.
The earthquake hit at 6:58 a.m.; the tsunami came as much as 2 1/2 hours later, without warning, on a morning of crystal blue skies. Sunbathers and snorkelers, cars and cottages, fishing boats and even a lighthouse were swept away.
Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India each reported thousands dead, and Thailand, a Western tourist hotspot, said hundreds were dead and thousands missing. Deaths were also reported in Malaysia, Maldives and Bangladesh.
"It's an extraordinary calamity of such colossal proportions that the damage has been unprecedented," said Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa of India's Tamil Nadu, a southern state which reported 1,705 dead, many of them strewn along beaches, virtual open-air mortuaries.
"It all seems to have happened in the space of 20 minutes. A massive tidal wave of extreme ferocity ... smashed everything in sight to smithereens," she said.
At least three Americans were among the dead — two in Sri Lanka and one in Thailand, according to State Department spokesman Noel Clay. He said a number of other Americans were injured, but he had no details.
"We're working on ways to help. The United States will be very responsive," Clay said.
The quake was centered 155 miles south-southeast of Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia's Aceh province on Sumatra, and six miles under the Indian Ocean's seabed. The temblor leveled dozens of buildings on Sumatra — and was followed by at least a half-dozen powerful aftershocks, ranging in magnitude from almost 6 to 7.3. The waves that followed the first massive jolt were far more lethal.
An Associated Press reporter in Aceh province saw bodies wedged in trees as the waters receded. More bodies littered the beaches. Authorities said at least 4,448 were dead in Indonesia; the full impact of the disaster was not known, as communications were cut to the towns most affected.
The waves barreled across the Bay of Bengal, pummeling Sri Lanka, where more than 4,500 were reported killed — at least 3,000 in areas controlled by the government and about 1,500 in regions controlled by rebels, who listed the death toll on their Web site. There was an unconfirmed report of 500 more deaths on another Web site that provided no details. Some 170 children were feared lost in an orphanage. More than a million people were displaced from wrecked villages.
The carnage was incredibly widespread. About 2,300 were reported dead along the southern coasts of India, at least 431 in Thailand, 42 in Malaysia and 32 in the Maldives, a string of coral islands off the southwestern coast of India. At least two died in Bangladesh — children who drowned as a boat with about 15 tourists capsized in high waves.
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.
"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.
In India's Andhra Pradesh state, 32 people were drowned when they went into the sea for a Hindu religious ceremony to mark the full moon. Among them were 15 children.
"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, of that state.
The earthquake that caused the tsunami was the largest since a 9.2 temblor hit Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1964, according to geophysicist Julie Martinez of the U.S. Geological Survey (news - web sites).
"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 quake occurred at a place where several huge geological plates push against each other with massive force. The survey said a 620-mile section along the boundary of the plates shifted, motion that triggered the sudden displacement of a huge volume of water.
Scientists said the death toll 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, the west coast of its southern peninsula does not have the system's wave sensors mounted on ocean buoys.
As it was, there was no warning. Gemunu Amarasinghe, an AP photographer in Sri Lanka, said he saw young boys rushing to catch fish that had been scattered on the beach by the first wave.
"But soon afterward, the devastating second series of waves came," he said. He climbed onto the roof of his car, but "In a few minutes my jeep was under water. The roof collapsed.
"I joined masses of people in escaping to high land. Some carried their dead and injured loved ones. Some of the dead were eventually placed at roadside, and covered with sarongs. Others walked past dazed, asking if anyone had seen their family members."
Michael Dobbs, a reporter for The Washington Post, was swimming around a tiny island off a Sri Lankan beach at about 9:15 a.m. when his brother called out that something strange was happening with the sea.
Then, within minutes, "the beach and the area behind it had become an inland sea, rushing over the road and pouring into the flimsy houses on the other side. The speed with which it all happened seemed like a scene from the Bible — a natural phenomenon unlike anything I had experienced before," he wrote on the Post's Web site.
Dobbs weathered the wave, but then found himself struggling to keep from being swept away when the floodwaters receded.
On Phuket, in Thailand, Somboon Wangnaitham, deputy director of the Wachira Hospital, said one of the worst-hit areas was Patong beach, where at least 32 people died and 500 were injured. 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.
Many areas were without electricity. In Tamil Nadu in India, a unit of the Madras Atomic Power Station was shut down after water entered the plant.
Some 20,000 Sri Lankan soldiers were deployed in relief and rescue and to help police maintain law and order. The international airport was closed in the Maldives after a tidal wave that left 51 people missing in addition to the 32 dead.
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 along the ocean floor between Australia and Antarctica caused buildings to shake hundreds of miles away. The earlier temblor caused 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 Peru on June 23, 2001, killed 74.
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Matt-hurricanewatcher
Asian Tsunami Kills 12,300, Many More Homeless
Sun Dec 26, 6:55 PM ET Top Stories - Reuters
By Simon Gardner
COLOMBO (Reuters) - More than 12,300 people were killed and tens of thousands left homeless after a powerful undersea earthquake unleashed giant tsunami waves that crashed into the coasts of south and southeast Asia.
Slideshow: Indonesia Quake Sparks Fatal Tidal Waves
Death Toll Climbs After Tidal Waves Lash 5 Countries
(Reuters Video)
The 8.9 magnitude earthquake that struck off the Indonesian island of Sumatra early on Sunday was the biggest in 40 years.
It triggered waves that reared up into walls of water as high as 10 meters (30 feet) as they hit coastlines in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.
Aid agencies rushed staff, equipment and money to the region, warning that bodies rotting in the water were already beginning to threaten the water supply for survivors.
Rescue workers also spoke of bodies still caught up on trees after being flung inland by the waves.
"I just couldn't believe what was happening before my eyes," Boree Carlsson said from a hotel in the Thai resort of Phuket.
"As I was standing there, a car actually floated into the lobby and overturned because the current was so strong," said the 45-year-old Swede.
"I heard an eerie sound that I have never heard before. It was a high pitched sound followed by a deafening roar," said a 55-year-old Indian fishermen who gave his name as Chellappa.
"I told everyone to run for their life."
In Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands, one official said nearly 4,500 people had died.
The worst affected area was Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province, where 3,000 were killed. More than 200 prisoners escaped from a jail when the tsunami knocked down its walls.
In Sri Lanka, the death toll also reached 4,500 and 1 million people, or 5 percent of its population, were affected.
It was the worst natural disaster to hit Sri Lanka.
Hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans sheltered in schools and temples overnight, and officials expected the death toll to rise further once rescuers resumed searches after daybreak.
In southern India, where at least 3,000 were estimated to have died, beaches were littered with submerged cars and wrecked boats. Shanties on the coast were under water.
Thai government officials said at least 392 bodies had been retrieved and they expected the final toll to approach 1,000.
NO WARNING SYSTEM
In Los Angeles, the head of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said U.S. officials who detected the undersea quake tried frantically to get a warning out about the tsunami.
But there was no official alert system in the region, said Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's center in Honolulu.
"It took an hour and a half for the wave to get from the earthquake to Sri Lanka and an hour for it to get ... to the west coast of Thailand and Malaysia," he said. "You can walk inland for 15 minutes to get to a safe area."
"We tried to do what we could," he said. "We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world."
The earthquake, of magnitude 8.9 as measured by the U.S. Geological Survey (news - web sites), struck at 7:59 a.m. (1959 EST). It was the world's biggest since 1964, said Julie Martinez at the USGS (news - web sites).
The tsunami was so powerful it smashed boats and flooded areas along the east African coast, 3,728 miles away.
In the Maldives, where thousands of foreign visitors were holidaying in the beach paradise, damage appeared to be significantly more limited, according to initial reports.
Twenty-eight people were estimated to have died in Malaysia and 10 in Myanmar.
SCALE OF DISASTER NOT YET KNOWN
Aid agencies said with communications cut to remote areas, it was impossible to assess the full scale of the disaster.
The Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it was seeking 7.5 million Swiss francs ($6.5 million) for emergency aid funding.
The United States said it would offer "all appropriate assistance," while the European Union (news - web sites) pledged an initial three million euros ($4 million).
Experts said the top five areas to be addressed were water, sanitation, food, shelter and health.
"We've had reports already from the south of India of bodies rotting where they have fallen and that will immediately affect the water supply especially for the most impoverished people," Christian Aid emergency officer Dominic Nutt said.
A tsunami, a Japanese word that translates as "harbor wave," is usually caused by a sudden rise or fall of part of the earth's crust under or near the ocean.
It is not a single wave, but a series of waves that can travel across the ocean at speeds of more than 500 miles an hour. As the tsunami enters the shallows of coastlines in its path, its velocity slows but its height increases.
A tsunami that is just a few centimeters or meters high from trough to crest can rear up to heights of 100 to 150 feet as it hits the shore, striking with devastating force.
Sun Dec 26, 6:55 PM ET Top Stories - Reuters
By Simon Gardner
COLOMBO (Reuters) - More than 12,300 people were killed and tens of thousands left homeless after a powerful undersea earthquake unleashed giant tsunami waves that crashed into the coasts of south and southeast Asia.
Slideshow: Indonesia Quake Sparks Fatal Tidal Waves
Death Toll Climbs After Tidal Waves Lash 5 Countries
(Reuters Video)
The 8.9 magnitude earthquake that struck off the Indonesian island of Sumatra early on Sunday was the biggest in 40 years.
It triggered waves that reared up into walls of water as high as 10 meters (30 feet) as they hit coastlines in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.
Aid agencies rushed staff, equipment and money to the region, warning that bodies rotting in the water were already beginning to threaten the water supply for survivors.
Rescue workers also spoke of bodies still caught up on trees after being flung inland by the waves.
"I just couldn't believe what was happening before my eyes," Boree Carlsson said from a hotel in the Thai resort of Phuket.
"As I was standing there, a car actually floated into the lobby and overturned because the current was so strong," said the 45-year-old Swede.
"I heard an eerie sound that I have never heard before. It was a high pitched sound followed by a deafening roar," said a 55-year-old Indian fishermen who gave his name as Chellappa.
"I told everyone to run for their life."
In Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands, one official said nearly 4,500 people had died.
The worst affected area was Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province, where 3,000 were killed. More than 200 prisoners escaped from a jail when the tsunami knocked down its walls.
In Sri Lanka, the death toll also reached 4,500 and 1 million people, or 5 percent of its population, were affected.
It was the worst natural disaster to hit Sri Lanka.
Hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans sheltered in schools and temples overnight, and officials expected the death toll to rise further once rescuers resumed searches after daybreak.
In southern India, where at least 3,000 were estimated to have died, beaches were littered with submerged cars and wrecked boats. Shanties on the coast were under water.
Thai government officials said at least 392 bodies had been retrieved and they expected the final toll to approach 1,000.
NO WARNING SYSTEM
In Los Angeles, the head of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said U.S. officials who detected the undersea quake tried frantically to get a warning out about the tsunami.
But there was no official alert system in the region, said Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's center in Honolulu.
"It took an hour and a half for the wave to get from the earthquake to Sri Lanka and an hour for it to get ... to the west coast of Thailand and Malaysia," he said. "You can walk inland for 15 minutes to get to a safe area."
"We tried to do what we could," he said. "We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world."
The earthquake, of magnitude 8.9 as measured by the U.S. Geological Survey (news - web sites), struck at 7:59 a.m. (1959 EST). It was the world's biggest since 1964, said Julie Martinez at the USGS (news - web sites).
The tsunami was so powerful it smashed boats and flooded areas along the east African coast, 3,728 miles away.
In the Maldives, where thousands of foreign visitors were holidaying in the beach paradise, damage appeared to be significantly more limited, according to initial reports.
Twenty-eight people were estimated to have died in Malaysia and 10 in Myanmar.
SCALE OF DISASTER NOT YET KNOWN
Aid agencies said with communications cut to remote areas, it was impossible to assess the full scale of the disaster.
The Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it was seeking 7.5 million Swiss francs ($6.5 million) for emergency aid funding.
The United States said it would offer "all appropriate assistance," while the European Union (news - web sites) pledged an initial three million euros ($4 million).
Experts said the top five areas to be addressed were water, sanitation, food, shelter and health.
"We've had reports already from the south of India of bodies rotting where they have fallen and that will immediately affect the water supply especially for the most impoverished people," Christian Aid emergency officer Dominic Nutt said.
A tsunami, a Japanese word that translates as "harbor wave," is usually caused by a sudden rise or fall of part of the earth's crust under or near the ocean.
It is not a single wave, but a series of waves that can travel across the ocean at speeds of more than 500 miles an hour. As the tsunami enters the shallows of coastlines in its path, its velocity slows but its height increases.
A tsunami that is just a few centimeters or meters high from trough to crest can rear up to heights of 100 to 150 feet as it hits the shore, striking with devastating force.
Last edited by Matt-hurricanewatcher on Sun Dec 26, 2004 10:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Matt-hurricanewatcher
REUTERS:
[b][b]"Asian Tsunami Kills 12,600, Many More Homeless"[/b][/b]
Sun Dec 26, 2004 10:06 PM ET
By Chamintha Thilakarathna
COLOMBO (Reuters) - "Soldiers searched for bodies in treetops, families wept over the dead lined up on beaches and rescuers scoured coral isles for missing tourists as Asia counted the cost on Monday of a tsunami that killed at least 12,600.
Idyllic palm-fringed beaches across southern Asia were transformed into scenes of death and devastation by the waves unleashed by the world's biggest earthquake in 40 years that struck off the Indonesian island of Sumatra early on Sunday.
"Death came from the sea," Satya Kumari, a construction worker living on the outskirts of the former French enclave of Pondicherry, India, told Reuters. "The waves just kept chasing us. It swept away all our huts. What did we do to deserve this?"
The wall of water up to 30 feet tall flattened houses, hurled fishing boats onto coastal roads, sent cars spinning through swirling waters into hotel lobbies and sucked sunbathers and fishermen off beaches and out to sea.
"We are not well equipped to deal with a disaster of this magnitude because we have never known a disaster like this," Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who declared a national disaster and appealed for donor aid, said from holiday in Britain.
It was the worst natural disaster to hit Sri Lanka in recorded history. Officials placed the death toll at 4,500 and said that figure could rise substantially as troops recovered bodies dragged out to sea or smashed on golden beaches.
Indonesian soldiers searched for bodies in tree tops and in the wreckage of homes smashed by the tsunami, triggered by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of northern Sumatra island killing at least 4,448 people there.
Many of the dead were children and elderly who drowned in waters churning with huge rocks, logs and the remains of homes.
"It smells so bad, fishy. The human bodies are mixed in with dead animals like dogs, fish, cats and goats," said marine colonel Buyung Lelana, head of an evacuation team in Lhokseumawe in Sumatra's Aceh province.
"There are still a lot of bodies under the wreckage of collapsed houses and in rivers and swamps that we have not yet evacuated. Most of them are children and their mothers," he said.
International aid agencies rushed staff, equipment and money to the region, warning that bodies rotting in the water were already beginning to threaten the water supply for survivors.
The Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it was seeking 7.5 million Swiss francs ($6.5 million) for emergency aid funding.
BATTERED BY ROCKS
"Many of the dead bodies were found in houses. Their heads were cracked, probably battered by rocks," said Mustofa, mayor of Bireuen regency on the north coast of Sumatra.
Hundreds of thousands left homeless in Sri Lanka and fearing another devastating wave sheltered in temples and schools.
In the seaside town of Kalutara, holidaymakers staying at a seafront luxury hotel described a 8-foot wall of water crashing onto the coast.
"We were sitting by the water when people started shouting a wave was coming in," said visiting British car salesman Richard Freeman. "We left everything behind and ran inside."
The southern coastal town of Galle, a major industrial hub famed for its historic fort, was submerged by a 30-foot wave. Frightened residents spent the night on roofs.
Officials said more than 500,000 people were left homeless.
On India's southeast coast, thousands of villagers huddled inside emergency shelters, too scared to sleep in case of another tsunami. Up to 3,300 people have been reported dead in the area.
"I could see dead bodies all around and the devastation is of colossal proportions," Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa said after touring the worst hit areas of her state.
Rows and rows of dead bodies were lined up on the floor inside hospitals, in corridors and in the grounds of government buildings. Distraught mothers checked the bodies of young boys and girls looking for their missing children.
"I have been waiting for my husband and brother since yesterday," wept 38-year-old Narasamma as she stood on a beach near Mypadu, a fishing hamlet 375 miles south of Hyderabad, capital of southern Andhra Pradesh state.
"I am not sure they will come back as I can see wrecked boats floating in the water," she said. On the horizon, the wreckage of wooden fishing boats dotted the sea.
TOURIST ISLE DEVASTATED
The tourist islands and beaches of southern Thailand were directly in the path of the wave that had killed up to 400. On the main Patong tourist beach in Phuket, plastic chairs lay scattered, hotels and restaurants were wrecked and small speed boats had been rammed into buildings. "I was sitting on the first floor of a bar, not far from the beach, watching cricket," said Australian tourist, Stephen Dicks, 42. "And suddenly all these people came screaming from the beach.
"I looked around and saw a massive wall of water rushing down the street. It completely wiped out the ground floor of my bar ... It happened very fast, in a matter of minutes."
In Los Angeles, the head of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said U.S. officials who detected the undersea quake tried frantically to get a warning out about the tsunami.
But there was no official alert system in the region, said Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's center in Honolulu.
"It took an hour and a half for the wave to get from the earthquake to Sri Lanka and an hour for it to get ... to the west coast of Thailand and Malaysia," he said.
"We tried to do what we could. We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world," he said.
The earthquake was the world's biggest since 1964 and the fourth-largest since 1900.
The tsunami was so powerful it smashed boats and flooded areas along the east African coast, 3,728 miles away.
In the Maldives, where thousands of foreign visitors were holidaying in the beach paradise, damage appeared to be limited.
With communications cut to remote areas, it was impossible to assess the full scale of the disaster, aid agencies said.
The Indian air force was trying to reach the remote Nicobar and Andaman archipelagos near the heart of the quake.
The United States said it would offer "all appropriate assistance." The European Union pledged 3 million euros ($4 million).
A tsunami, a Japanese word that translates as "harbor wave," is usually caused by a sudden rise or fall of part of the earth's crust under or near the ocean.
It is not a single wave, but a series of waves that can travel across the ocean at speeds of more than 500 miles an hour. As the tsunami enters the shallows of coastlines in its path, its velocity slows but its height increases.
A tsunami that is just a few centimeters or meters high from trough to crest can rear up to heights of 30 to 50 meters as it hits the shore, striking with devastating force."
[b][b]"Asian Tsunami Kills 12,600, Many More Homeless"[/b][/b]
Sun Dec 26, 2004 10:06 PM ET
By Chamintha Thilakarathna
COLOMBO (Reuters) - "Soldiers searched for bodies in treetops, families wept over the dead lined up on beaches and rescuers scoured coral isles for missing tourists as Asia counted the cost on Monday of a tsunami that killed at least 12,600.
Idyllic palm-fringed beaches across southern Asia were transformed into scenes of death and devastation by the waves unleashed by the world's biggest earthquake in 40 years that struck off the Indonesian island of Sumatra early on Sunday.
"Death came from the sea," Satya Kumari, a construction worker living on the outskirts of the former French enclave of Pondicherry, India, told Reuters. "The waves just kept chasing us. It swept away all our huts. What did we do to deserve this?"
The wall of water up to 30 feet tall flattened houses, hurled fishing boats onto coastal roads, sent cars spinning through swirling waters into hotel lobbies and sucked sunbathers and fishermen off beaches and out to sea.
"We are not well equipped to deal with a disaster of this magnitude because we have never known a disaster like this," Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who declared a national disaster and appealed for donor aid, said from holiday in Britain.
It was the worst natural disaster to hit Sri Lanka in recorded history. Officials placed the death toll at 4,500 and said that figure could rise substantially as troops recovered bodies dragged out to sea or smashed on golden beaches.
Indonesian soldiers searched for bodies in tree tops and in the wreckage of homes smashed by the tsunami, triggered by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of northern Sumatra island killing at least 4,448 people there.
Many of the dead were children and elderly who drowned in waters churning with huge rocks, logs and the remains of homes.
"It smells so bad, fishy. The human bodies are mixed in with dead animals like dogs, fish, cats and goats," said marine colonel Buyung Lelana, head of an evacuation team in Lhokseumawe in Sumatra's Aceh province.
"There are still a lot of bodies under the wreckage of collapsed houses and in rivers and swamps that we have not yet evacuated. Most of them are children and their mothers," he said.
International aid agencies rushed staff, equipment and money to the region, warning that bodies rotting in the water were already beginning to threaten the water supply for survivors.
The Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it was seeking 7.5 million Swiss francs ($6.5 million) for emergency aid funding.
BATTERED BY ROCKS
"Many of the dead bodies were found in houses. Their heads were cracked, probably battered by rocks," said Mustofa, mayor of Bireuen regency on the north coast of Sumatra.
Hundreds of thousands left homeless in Sri Lanka and fearing another devastating wave sheltered in temples and schools.
In the seaside town of Kalutara, holidaymakers staying at a seafront luxury hotel described a 8-foot wall of water crashing onto the coast.
"We were sitting by the water when people started shouting a wave was coming in," said visiting British car salesman Richard Freeman. "We left everything behind and ran inside."
The southern coastal town of Galle, a major industrial hub famed for its historic fort, was submerged by a 30-foot wave. Frightened residents spent the night on roofs.
Officials said more than 500,000 people were left homeless.
On India's southeast coast, thousands of villagers huddled inside emergency shelters, too scared to sleep in case of another tsunami. Up to 3,300 people have been reported dead in the area.
"I could see dead bodies all around and the devastation is of colossal proportions," Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa said after touring the worst hit areas of her state.
Rows and rows of dead bodies were lined up on the floor inside hospitals, in corridors and in the grounds of government buildings. Distraught mothers checked the bodies of young boys and girls looking for their missing children.
"I have been waiting for my husband and brother since yesterday," wept 38-year-old Narasamma as she stood on a beach near Mypadu, a fishing hamlet 375 miles south of Hyderabad, capital of southern Andhra Pradesh state.
"I am not sure they will come back as I can see wrecked boats floating in the water," she said. On the horizon, the wreckage of wooden fishing boats dotted the sea.
TOURIST ISLE DEVASTATED
The tourist islands and beaches of southern Thailand were directly in the path of the wave that had killed up to 400. On the main Patong tourist beach in Phuket, plastic chairs lay scattered, hotels and restaurants were wrecked and small speed boats had been rammed into buildings. "I was sitting on the first floor of a bar, not far from the beach, watching cricket," said Australian tourist, Stephen Dicks, 42. "And suddenly all these people came screaming from the beach.
"I looked around and saw a massive wall of water rushing down the street. It completely wiped out the ground floor of my bar ... It happened very fast, in a matter of minutes."
In Los Angeles, the head of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said U.S. officials who detected the undersea quake tried frantically to get a warning out about the tsunami.
But there was no official alert system in the region, said Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's center in Honolulu.
"It took an hour and a half for the wave to get from the earthquake to Sri Lanka and an hour for it to get ... to the west coast of Thailand and Malaysia," he said.
"We tried to do what we could. We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world," he said.
The earthquake was the world's biggest since 1964 and the fourth-largest since 1900.
The tsunami was so powerful it smashed boats and flooded areas along the east African coast, 3,728 miles away.
In the Maldives, where thousands of foreign visitors were holidaying in the beach paradise, damage appeared to be limited.
With communications cut to remote areas, it was impossible to assess the full scale of the disaster, aid agencies said.
The Indian air force was trying to reach the remote Nicobar and Andaman archipelagos near the heart of the quake.
The United States said it would offer "all appropriate assistance." The European Union pledged 3 million euros ($4 million).
A tsunami, a Japanese word that translates as "harbor wave," is usually caused by a sudden rise or fall of part of the earth's crust under or near the ocean.
It is not a single wave, but a series of waves that can travel across the ocean at speeds of more than 500 miles an hour. As the tsunami enters the shallows of coastlines in its path, its velocity slows but its height increases.
A tsunami that is just a few centimeters or meters high from trough to crest can rear up to heights of 30 to 50 meters as it hits the shore, striking with devastating force."
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Matt-hurricanewatcher
REUTERS:
"Indian Villagers Fear Another Deadly Tsunami"
Sun Dec 26, 2004 10:23 PM ET
By Y.P. Rajesh and Suresh Seshadri
PONDICHERRY/MADRAS, India (Reuters) - "Thousands of villagers huddled in emergency shelters on India's southeast coast overnight, too scared to sleep in case more tsunamis struck after a giant wave killed up to 3,300 people.
A tsunami triggered on Sunday by the biggest earthquake in 40 years wreaked havoc around the Indian Ocean, killing more than 12,600 people, swamping coastal villages and towns, destroying buildings and sweeping away boats and vehicles.
Weeping relatives began to abandon hope of seeing missing loved ones again as the hours passed with no word from hundreds of fishermen who were at sea in flimsy wooden boats when the wave reared up across the Indian Ocean on Sunday morning.
"Death came from the sea," Satya Kumari, a construction worker living on the outskirts of the former French enclave of Pondicherry, told Reuters. "The waves just kept chasing us. It swept away all our huts. What did we do to deserve this?"
Officials in Tamil Nadu, India's worst-affected state, reported almost 300 more deaths overnight, bringing the toll in that state alone to at least 2,000.
Officials in Andhra Pradesh said about 1,300 people were missing in the state, including many fishermen and 200 Hindu pilgrims who had gone for a holy dip on the beach.
"I have been waiting for my husband and brother since yesterday," wept 38-year-old Narasamma as she stood on a beach near Mypadu, a fishing hamlet 600 km south of Hyderabad, the state capital. The men went out to sea on Sunday morning.
"Around 40 people from my village have not come back from the sea. I am not sure they will come back as I can see wrecked boats floating in the water," she said.
Dozens of other women and children are also waiting for fathers, brothers and husbands nearby.
About 300 people were killed in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala states and 1,000 were feared dead in the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands just off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, near the epicenter of the 9.0 magnitude quake.
"I could see dead bodies all around and the devastation is of colossal proportions," Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa said after touring the worst-hit areas.
"The giant tidal wave has smashed through everything in sight. Houses have been flattened. Fishing boats have been thrown one over the other in a mangled heap. Buses, vans and auto-rickshaws have been smashed to smithereens."
HUNDREDS MISSING
A powerful aftershock measuring 6.0 on Richter scale struck the Andaman and Nicobar islands early on Monday.
"More aftershocks cannot be ruled out as they occur when an earthquake of such a huge magnitude takes place," an Indian weather office official said in New Delhi.
In Tamil Nadu, television showed rows and rows of dead bodies lined up on the floor inside hospitals, in corridors and in the grounds of government buildings.
Distraught mothers checked the bodies of young boys and girls looking for their missing children.
Survivors carried aluminum pots and pans and cloth bundles of their belongings they managed to retrieve from the waters and walked miles to the nearest government shelter for the night.
"We are too scared to sleep. What if the sea rises again and takes us away in our sleep?" asked N. Arasu, a vegetable hawker.
At least 100 people died in the Tamil Nadu capital, Madras. Police in the city of 10 million people closed roads leading to the seafront to prevent more casualties from any aftershocks.
A coast guard officer said the toll could have been even higher had the tsunami occurred during the night or at dawn.
"Thankfully, most of the fishermen would have returned to shore early in the morning. But we still have seven ships patrolling the eastern coast looking for survivors," he said.
"Our helicopters have rescued several dozen stranded people from rooftops and in low-lying areas."
At least 10 ships moored at Madras port, including bulk carriers, car transporters and container vessels, broke loose and were damaged, a senior shipping official said.
In the Andaman and Nicobars, India's easternmost territory, an air force base housing fighters and transport planes was badly damaged.
"At least 23 air force personnel and their family members are feared killed. A major part of the runway has been submerged," squadron leader Mahesh Upsani said in New Delhi.
Damage was still being assessed but some transport planes were able to use the unsubmerged part of the runway, he said.
Air force transports were flying food, tarpaulins and medicine to the islands." (Additional reporting by Kamil Zaheer and Unni Krishnan in NEW DELHI)
"Indian Villagers Fear Another Deadly Tsunami"
Sun Dec 26, 2004 10:23 PM ET
By Y.P. Rajesh and Suresh Seshadri
PONDICHERRY/MADRAS, India (Reuters) - "Thousands of villagers huddled in emergency shelters on India's southeast coast overnight, too scared to sleep in case more tsunamis struck after a giant wave killed up to 3,300 people.
A tsunami triggered on Sunday by the biggest earthquake in 40 years wreaked havoc around the Indian Ocean, killing more than 12,600 people, swamping coastal villages and towns, destroying buildings and sweeping away boats and vehicles.
Weeping relatives began to abandon hope of seeing missing loved ones again as the hours passed with no word from hundreds of fishermen who were at sea in flimsy wooden boats when the wave reared up across the Indian Ocean on Sunday morning.
"Death came from the sea," Satya Kumari, a construction worker living on the outskirts of the former French enclave of Pondicherry, told Reuters. "The waves just kept chasing us. It swept away all our huts. What did we do to deserve this?"
Officials in Tamil Nadu, India's worst-affected state, reported almost 300 more deaths overnight, bringing the toll in that state alone to at least 2,000.
Officials in Andhra Pradesh said about 1,300 people were missing in the state, including many fishermen and 200 Hindu pilgrims who had gone for a holy dip on the beach.
"I have been waiting for my husband and brother since yesterday," wept 38-year-old Narasamma as she stood on a beach near Mypadu, a fishing hamlet 600 km south of Hyderabad, the state capital. The men went out to sea on Sunday morning.
"Around 40 people from my village have not come back from the sea. I am not sure they will come back as I can see wrecked boats floating in the water," she said.
Dozens of other women and children are also waiting for fathers, brothers and husbands nearby.
About 300 people were killed in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala states and 1,000 were feared dead in the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands just off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, near the epicenter of the 9.0 magnitude quake.
"I could see dead bodies all around and the devastation is of colossal proportions," Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa said after touring the worst-hit areas.
"The giant tidal wave has smashed through everything in sight. Houses have been flattened. Fishing boats have been thrown one over the other in a mangled heap. Buses, vans and auto-rickshaws have been smashed to smithereens."
HUNDREDS MISSING
A powerful aftershock measuring 6.0 on Richter scale struck the Andaman and Nicobar islands early on Monday.
"More aftershocks cannot be ruled out as they occur when an earthquake of such a huge magnitude takes place," an Indian weather office official said in New Delhi.
In Tamil Nadu, television showed rows and rows of dead bodies lined up on the floor inside hospitals, in corridors and in the grounds of government buildings.
Distraught mothers checked the bodies of young boys and girls looking for their missing children.
Survivors carried aluminum pots and pans and cloth bundles of their belongings they managed to retrieve from the waters and walked miles to the nearest government shelter for the night.
"We are too scared to sleep. What if the sea rises again and takes us away in our sleep?" asked N. Arasu, a vegetable hawker.
At least 100 people died in the Tamil Nadu capital, Madras. Police in the city of 10 million people closed roads leading to the seafront to prevent more casualties from any aftershocks.
A coast guard officer said the toll could have been even higher had the tsunami occurred during the night or at dawn.
"Thankfully, most of the fishermen would have returned to shore early in the morning. But we still have seven ships patrolling the eastern coast looking for survivors," he said.
"Our helicopters have rescued several dozen stranded people from rooftops and in low-lying areas."
At least 10 ships moored at Madras port, including bulk carriers, car transporters and container vessels, broke loose and were damaged, a senior shipping official said.
In the Andaman and Nicobars, India's easternmost territory, an air force base housing fighters and transport planes was badly damaged.
"At least 23 air force personnel and their family members are feared killed. A major part of the runway has been submerged," squadron leader Mahesh Upsani said in New Delhi.
Damage was still being assessed but some transport planes were able to use the unsubmerged part of the runway, he said.
Air force transports were flying food, tarpaulins and medicine to the islands." (Additional reporting by Kamil Zaheer and Unni Krishnan in NEW DELHI)
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Matt-hurricanewatcher
Asian Tsunamis Kill at Least 13,340 People
6 minutes ago World - AP Asia
By DILIP GANGULY, Associated Press Writer
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Legions of rescuers spread across Asia Monday after an earthquake of epic power struck deep beneath the Indian Ocean, unleashing 20-foot tidal waves that ravaged coasts across thousands of miles and killed more than 13,340 people and left millions homeless in the fourth-largest temblor in a century.
The death toll along the southern coast of Asia — and as far west as Somalia, on the African coast, where nine people were reported lost — steadily increased as authorities sorted out a far-flung disaster caused by Sunday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake, strongest in 40 years.
Signs of the carnage were everywhere: Dozens of bodies still clad in swimming trunks lined beaches in Thailand. Villagers in Indonesia picked through the debris of destroyed houses amid the smell of rotting corpses. Hundreds of prisoners escaped a coastal jail in Sri Lanka.
More than one million people were driven from their homes in Indonesia alone, and rescuers there on Monday combed seaside villages for survivors. The Indian air force used helicopters to rush food and medicine to stricken seashore areas.
Another million were driven from their homes in Sri Lanka where some 25,000 soldiers and 10 air force helicopters were deployed in relief and rescue efforts, authorities said.
At Thailand's beach resorts, packed with Europeans fleeing the winter cold at the peak of the holiday season, families and friends had tearful reunions Monday after a day of fear that their loved ones had been swept away.
Katri Seppanen, 27, of Helsinki, Finland, walked around barefoot, in her salt water-stained T-shirt and skirt, at the Patong Hospital waiting room where she spent the night with her mother and sister. She had a bandaged cut on her leg.
"The water went back, back, back, so far away, and everyone wondered what it was — a full moon or what? Then we saw the wave come, and we ran," said a tearful Seppanen, who was on the popular Patong beach with her family. The wave washed over their heads and separated them.
Fifty-eight half-naked and swimming suit-clad corpses lay in rows outside the Patong Hospital emergency room. Three babies under the age of one were among the victims. A photo of one baby was posted on the wall of victims, the little corpse in a nearby refrigerator.
The earthquake hit at 6:58 a.m.; the tsunami came as much as 2 1/2 hours later, without warning, on a morning of crystal blue skies. Sunbathers and snorkelers, cars and cottages, fishing boats and even a lighthouse were swept away.
Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India each reported thousands dead. Deaths were also reported in Malaysia, Maldives and Bangladesh.
"It's an extraordinary calamity of such colossal proportions that the damage has been unprecedented," said Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa of India's Tamil Nadu, a southern state which reported 1,705 dead, many of them strewn along beaches, virtual open-air mortuaries.
"It all seems to have happened in the space of 20 minutes. A massive tidal wave of extreme ferocity ... smashed everything in sight to smithereens," she said.
At least three Americans were among the dead — two in Sri Lanka and one in Thailand, according to State Department spokesman Noel Clay. He said a number of other Americans were injured, but he had no details.
"We're working on ways to help. The United States will be very responsive," Clay said.
John Krueger, 34, of Winter Park, Colorado, described being inside his bungalow Sunday on Khao Luk Beach, north of Phuket, with his wife, Romina Canton, 26, of Rosario, Argentina, when the water filled it and blew it apart.
"The water rushed under the bungalow, brought our floor up and raised us to the ceiling. The water blew out our doors, our windows and the back concrete wall. My wife was swept away with the wall, and I had to bust my way through the roof," Krueger said while waiting to talk to a U.S. Embassy official at Phuket City Hall. "It was like being in a washing machine."
Canton was dragged into the ocean for more than an hour until a wave brought her back to land again, with a broken nose and foot scratches all over her body, Krueger said.
The quake was centered 155 miles south-southeast of Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia's Aceh province on Sumatra, and six miles under the Indian Ocean's seabed. The temblor leveled dozens of buildings on Sumatra — and was followed Sunday by at least a half-dozen powerful aftershocks, ranging in magnitude from almost 6 to 7.3, and one aftershock Monday that hit India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
The waves that followed the first massive jolt were far more lethal.
An Associated Press reporter in Aceh province saw bodies wedged in trees as the waters receded. More bodies littered the beaches. Authorities said at least 4,448 were dead in Indonesia; the full impact of the disaster was not known, as communications were cut to the towns most affected.
The waves barreled across the Bay of Bengal, pummeling Sri Lanka, where more than 4,500 were reported killed — at least 3,000 in areas controlled by the government and about 1,500 in regions controlled by rebels, who listed the death toll on their Web site. There was an unconfirmed report of 500 more deaths on another Web site that provided no details. Some 170 children were feared lost in an orphanage. More than a million people were displaced from wrecked villages.
Devinda R. Subasinghe, the Sri Lanka ambassador to the United States, said the extensive damage will make the rescue effort more difficult. "It's going to take time to figure out access to these areas that have been impacted," Subasinghe said Monday in an interview on CNN. Up to 70 percent of the island's coastline was damaged, he said.
There was sporadic, small-scale looting in the towns of Galle and Matara, and authorities said about 200 inmates escaped from a prison, taking advantage of the chaos after guards panicked and fled when water entered the building.
About 2,300 were reported dead along the southern coasts of India. The private Aaj Tak television channel put the death toll there at up to 3,300, but the report could not be confirmed. At least 431 in Thailand, 48 in Malaysia and 32 in the Maldives, a string of coral islands off the southwestern coast of India. At least two died in Bangladesh — children who drowned as a boat with about 15 tourists capsized in high waves.
In India's Andhra Pradesh state, at least 32 Hindu devotees were drowned when they went into the sea for a religious ceremony to mark the full moon. Among them were 15 children. On Monday, bodies of women and children lay strewn on the sand.
"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, of that state.
In Cuddalore, in the worst-hit Tamil Nadu state, survivors huddled Monday in a marriage hall turned makeshift shelter, as fire engine sirens whined outside. Broken boats law on the shore near smashed huts with only frail bamboo frames jutting out of the ground.
The earthquake that caused the tsunami was the largest since a 9.2 temblor hit Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1964, according to geophysicist Julie Martinez of the U.S. Geological Survey (news - web sites).
"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 quake occurred at a place where several huge geological plates push against each other with massive force. The survey said a 620-mile section along the boundary of the plates shifted, motion that triggered the sudden displacement of a huge volume of water.
Scientists said the death toll 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, the west coast of its southern peninsula does not have the system's wave sensors mounted on ocean buoys.
As it was, there was no warning. Gemunu Amarasinghe, an AP photographer in Sri Lanka, said he saw young boys rushing to catch fish that had been scattered on the beach by the first wave.
"But soon afterward, the devastating second series of waves came," he said. He climbed onto the roof of his car, but "In a few minutes my jeep was under water. The roof collapsed.
"I joined masses of people in escaping to high land. Some carried their dead and injured loved ones. Some of the dead were eventually placed at roadside, and covered with sarongs. Others walked past dazed, asking if anyone had seen their family members."
Michael Dobbs, a reporter for The Washington Post, was swimming around a tiny island off a Sri Lankan beach at about 9:15 a.m. when his brother called out that something strange was happening with the sea.
Then, within minutes, "the beach and the area behind it had become an inland sea, rushing over the road and pouring into the flimsy houses on the other side. The speed with which it all happened seemed like a scene from the Bible — a natural phenomenon unlike anything I had experienced before," he wrote on the Post's Web site.
Dobbs weathered the wave, but then found himself struggling to keep from being swept away when the floodwaters receded.
The international airport was closed in the Maldives after a tidal wave that left 51 people missing in addition to the 32 dead.
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 along the ocean floor between Australia and Antarctica caused buildings to shake hundreds of miles away. The earlier temblor caused 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 Peru on June 23, 2001, killed 74.
6 minutes ago World - AP Asia
By DILIP GANGULY, Associated Press Writer
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Legions of rescuers spread across Asia Monday after an earthquake of epic power struck deep beneath the Indian Ocean, unleashing 20-foot tidal waves that ravaged coasts across thousands of miles and killed more than 13,340 people and left millions homeless in the fourth-largest temblor in a century.
The death toll along the southern coast of Asia — and as far west as Somalia, on the African coast, where nine people were reported lost — steadily increased as authorities sorted out a far-flung disaster caused by Sunday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake, strongest in 40 years.
Signs of the carnage were everywhere: Dozens of bodies still clad in swimming trunks lined beaches in Thailand. Villagers in Indonesia picked through the debris of destroyed houses amid the smell of rotting corpses. Hundreds of prisoners escaped a coastal jail in Sri Lanka.
More than one million people were driven from their homes in Indonesia alone, and rescuers there on Monday combed seaside villages for survivors. The Indian air force used helicopters to rush food and medicine to stricken seashore areas.
Another million were driven from their homes in Sri Lanka where some 25,000 soldiers and 10 air force helicopters were deployed in relief and rescue efforts, authorities said.
At Thailand's beach resorts, packed with Europeans fleeing the winter cold at the peak of the holiday season, families and friends had tearful reunions Monday after a day of fear that their loved ones had been swept away.
Katri Seppanen, 27, of Helsinki, Finland, walked around barefoot, in her salt water-stained T-shirt and skirt, at the Patong Hospital waiting room where she spent the night with her mother and sister. She had a bandaged cut on her leg.
"The water went back, back, back, so far away, and everyone wondered what it was — a full moon or what? Then we saw the wave come, and we ran," said a tearful Seppanen, who was on the popular Patong beach with her family. The wave washed over their heads and separated them.
Fifty-eight half-naked and swimming suit-clad corpses lay in rows outside the Patong Hospital emergency room. Three babies under the age of one were among the victims. A photo of one baby was posted on the wall of victims, the little corpse in a nearby refrigerator.
The earthquake hit at 6:58 a.m.; the tsunami came as much as 2 1/2 hours later, without warning, on a morning of crystal blue skies. Sunbathers and snorkelers, cars and cottages, fishing boats and even a lighthouse were swept away.
Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India each reported thousands dead. Deaths were also reported in Malaysia, Maldives and Bangladesh.
"It's an extraordinary calamity of such colossal proportions that the damage has been unprecedented," said Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa of India's Tamil Nadu, a southern state which reported 1,705 dead, many of them strewn along beaches, virtual open-air mortuaries.
"It all seems to have happened in the space of 20 minutes. A massive tidal wave of extreme ferocity ... smashed everything in sight to smithereens," she said.
At least three Americans were among the dead — two in Sri Lanka and one in Thailand, according to State Department spokesman Noel Clay. He said a number of other Americans were injured, but he had no details.
"We're working on ways to help. The United States will be very responsive," Clay said.
John Krueger, 34, of Winter Park, Colorado, described being inside his bungalow Sunday on Khao Luk Beach, north of Phuket, with his wife, Romina Canton, 26, of Rosario, Argentina, when the water filled it and blew it apart.
"The water rushed under the bungalow, brought our floor up and raised us to the ceiling. The water blew out our doors, our windows and the back concrete wall. My wife was swept away with the wall, and I had to bust my way through the roof," Krueger said while waiting to talk to a U.S. Embassy official at Phuket City Hall. "It was like being in a washing machine."
Canton was dragged into the ocean for more than an hour until a wave brought her back to land again, with a broken nose and foot scratches all over her body, Krueger said.
The quake was centered 155 miles south-southeast of Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia's Aceh province on Sumatra, and six miles under the Indian Ocean's seabed. The temblor leveled dozens of buildings on Sumatra — and was followed Sunday by at least a half-dozen powerful aftershocks, ranging in magnitude from almost 6 to 7.3, and one aftershock Monday that hit India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
The waves that followed the first massive jolt were far more lethal.
An Associated Press reporter in Aceh province saw bodies wedged in trees as the waters receded. More bodies littered the beaches. Authorities said at least 4,448 were dead in Indonesia; the full impact of the disaster was not known, as communications were cut to the towns most affected.
The waves barreled across the Bay of Bengal, pummeling Sri Lanka, where more than 4,500 were reported killed — at least 3,000 in areas controlled by the government and about 1,500 in regions controlled by rebels, who listed the death toll on their Web site. There was an unconfirmed report of 500 more deaths on another Web site that provided no details. Some 170 children were feared lost in an orphanage. More than a million people were displaced from wrecked villages.
Devinda R. Subasinghe, the Sri Lanka ambassador to the United States, said the extensive damage will make the rescue effort more difficult. "It's going to take time to figure out access to these areas that have been impacted," Subasinghe said Monday in an interview on CNN. Up to 70 percent of the island's coastline was damaged, he said.
There was sporadic, small-scale looting in the towns of Galle and Matara, and authorities said about 200 inmates escaped from a prison, taking advantage of the chaos after guards panicked and fled when water entered the building.
About 2,300 were reported dead along the southern coasts of India. The private Aaj Tak television channel put the death toll there at up to 3,300, but the report could not be confirmed. At least 431 in Thailand, 48 in Malaysia and 32 in the Maldives, a string of coral islands off the southwestern coast of India. At least two died in Bangladesh — children who drowned as a boat with about 15 tourists capsized in high waves.
In India's Andhra Pradesh state, at least 32 Hindu devotees were drowned when they went into the sea for a religious ceremony to mark the full moon. Among them were 15 children. On Monday, bodies of women and children lay strewn on the sand.
"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, of that state.
In Cuddalore, in the worst-hit Tamil Nadu state, survivors huddled Monday in a marriage hall turned makeshift shelter, as fire engine sirens whined outside. Broken boats law on the shore near smashed huts with only frail bamboo frames jutting out of the ground.
The earthquake that caused the tsunami was the largest since a 9.2 temblor hit Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1964, according to geophysicist Julie Martinez of the U.S. Geological Survey (news - web sites).
"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 quake occurred at a place where several huge geological plates push against each other with massive force. The survey said a 620-mile section along the boundary of the plates shifted, motion that triggered the sudden displacement of a huge volume of water.
Scientists said the death toll 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, the west coast of its southern peninsula does not have the system's wave sensors mounted on ocean buoys.
As it was, there was no warning. Gemunu Amarasinghe, an AP photographer in Sri Lanka, said he saw young boys rushing to catch fish that had been scattered on the beach by the first wave.
"But soon afterward, the devastating second series of waves came," he said. He climbed onto the roof of his car, but "In a few minutes my jeep was under water. The roof collapsed.
"I joined masses of people in escaping to high land. Some carried their dead and injured loved ones. Some of the dead were eventually placed at roadside, and covered with sarongs. Others walked past dazed, asking if anyone had seen their family members."
Michael Dobbs, a reporter for The Washington Post, was swimming around a tiny island off a Sri Lankan beach at about 9:15 a.m. when his brother called out that something strange was happening with the sea.
Then, within minutes, "the beach and the area behind it had become an inland sea, rushing over the road and pouring into the flimsy houses on the other side. The speed with which it all happened seemed like a scene from the Bible — a natural phenomenon unlike anything I had experienced before," he wrote on the Post's Web site.
Dobbs weathered the wave, but then found himself struggling to keep from being swept away when the floodwaters receded.
The international airport was closed in the Maldives after a tidal wave that left 51 people missing in addition to the 32 dead.
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 along the ocean floor between Australia and Antarctica caused buildings to shake hundreds of miles away. The earlier temblor caused 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 Peru on June 23, 2001, killed 74.
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Matt-hurricanewatcher
Wow this is felt over the whole earth!!! http://aslwww.cr.usgs.gov/Seismic_Data/heli2.shtml
They pick up this on all most all of these!!!
Also reports of a 600 mile wide hole has formed!!!
This latest earthquake apparently broke along a 600-mile section of the Sumatran "subduction zone," starting just north of where Sieh does his research. A subduction zone is a plate boundary where a slab of the Earth's crust surges downward beneath another slab
They pick up this on all most all of these!!!
Also reports of a 600 mile wide hole has formed!!!
This latest earthquake apparently broke along a 600-mile section of the Sumatran "subduction zone," starting just north of where Sieh does his research. A subduction zone is a plate boundary where a slab of the Earth's crust surges downward beneath another slab
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Matt-hurricanewatcher
Indonesian Earthquake, Waves Kill 14,000 Across Asia (Update4)
Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The death toll rose above 14,000 after an earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the world's biggest in four decades, caused tsunami waves that devastated coastal towns from Thailand to India.
Yesterday's magnitude 9.0 quake generated waves as high as 10 meters (33 feet) that struck tourist resorts in Thailand, Malaysia and the Maldives. Sri Lanka reported more than 5,000 dead, while in Indonesia at least 4,448 were killed, prompting the governments of both countries to declare national disasters.
``The numbers are going to rise for a couple of days,'' said Megan Chisholm, senior emergencies officer at CARE Australia, an aid group with staff in most of the affected countries. ``I don't think we'll really know the full extent of the damage for a couple of days yet, until access to all places is achieved.''
Further waves and aftershocks may cause more flooding over the next few days, officials in India and Malaysia warned. Since the earthquake struck at 7 a.m. local time yesterday, there have been another 25 aftershocks, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
``After such a great earthquake, there would be aftershocks for days,'' said Wong Wing Tak, senior scientific officer at the Hong Kong Observatory. ``It could generate even more waves. With the tsunami waves, you should take caution for a longer time. It could at least take one or two days.''
In India at least 4,278 people are dead following the freak waves that hit the country's south coast, according to updated death tolls reported by the Press Trust of India.
`Thousands of Children'
Freak waves may flood coastal cities in India for the next two days, said A.K. Shukla, head of the Indian Meteorological Department.
``The power of this earthquake, and its huge geographical reach, are just staggering,'' said Carol Bellamy, executive director for the United Nations Children's Fund, in a statement. ``Hundreds of thousands of children in coastal communities in six countries may be in serious jeopardy.''
As many as 200,000 may have lost their homes in Sri Lanka, President Chandrika Kumaratunga said.
Peak Season
In Thailand, at least 392 people were killed by tsunamis, which struck during the south coast's peak holiday season. Thousands more were injured on popular resort beaches including Phuket and Krabi.
``From yesterday morning to now we have treated about 500 patients and 290 of those are still in a serious condition,'' said Tiyanooch Ananpakdee, communications manager for Bangkok Phuket hospital, via telephone from Phuket. ``People turned up at the hospital just in their bathing costumes with no shoes, possessions or money. We are providing food and shelter but the beds only go the seriously injured.''
Most of the casualties are foreign tourists, and many are being treated for bone fractures, Ananpakdee said.
Australia's Prime Minister John Howard said about 5,500 of the country's citizens are holidaying in the affected countries. At least one Taiwanese tourist is dead and three are injured out of about 470 that were holidaying in Phuket, said Wu Chao-yen, director of Taiwan's tourism bureau.
A New Zealand woman who was holidaying in Thailand is dead, according to the country's government.
``We're still missing about 10 or 20 people who were out on the islands,'' said Giancarlo Giacomelli, an Italian, 29, who is room division manager at Phra Nang Inn, a hotel at Ao Nang beach, 25 kilometers from Krabi, which sustained limited damage. ``One huge wave came in. It was the time when people were going to the islands. Many of the boats went under water and some people died.
Malaysia, Maldives, Bangladesh
In Malaysia, at least 53 people were killed, the Star newspaper reported. Popular holiday spot Penang was hardest hit, officials said.
A further 32 people were killed in the Maldives, including a British tourist, Agence France-Presse reported. About 100 islands in the Maldives, an archipelago of more than 1,000 coral isles, house resorts that cater to about half a million tourists each year. Tourism makes up almost one third of the nation's economy, according to data from the Asian Development Bank.
Two people were drowned in Bangladesh, India's northeastern neighbor, and one baby was washed away by the waves, said Abdul Baset, spokesman for Bangladesh's High Commission in Singapore. He said he expects an update from the government later today.
``The death rate was low compared to the gravity of the earthquake,'' he said. ``People have been told to avoid the coastal areas because it may occur again.''
Further Tremors
The earthquake was centered 1,605 kilometers (1,000 miles) northwest of Jakarta at a depth of 10 kilometers, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Since the first tremor struck yesterday, there have been a further 25 after-shocks, one of 7.3 magnitude, according to the survey's Web site. The latest was centered near the Andaman Islands, off India, at 6.19 a.m. local time.
In India, the threat from tsunamis isn't over, officials said.
``We expect the big waves to lash Chennai and parts of Tamil Nadu for the next two days,'' A.K. Shukla, head of the Indian Meteorological Department, said in an interview from New Delhi.
The Malaysian Meteorological Service has warned of further high waves along its northern coast.
Death Toll Rising
The toll will rise further as more bodies are found, Doti Indrasanto, head of the Center for Health Emergency Preparedness said in a phone interview from Palembang in South Sumatra.
``We cannot yet determine the economic loss of the disaster, for sure it's going to be huge and we welcome help from everyone,'' Indrasanto said.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono today declared three days of national mourning for the quake victims. Vice President Jusuf Kalla is heading a national team to coordinate help from Medan, the provincial capital of North Sumatra, southeast of Aceh.
Sri Lanka has declared a state of disaster, with more than 5,000 killed on the island and more expected, according to Harim Peiris, spokesman for President Chandrika Kumaratunga.
``That's the estimate as of now,'' Peiris said. ``The count is going up all the time.''
The southern state of Tamil Nadu was the hardest hit in India, with more than 600 dead, Home Minister Shivraj Patil told reporters in New Delhi.
``The entire coastal area of northern Jaffna to Colombo has been severely affected, and we have asked (for) international help to evacuate people,'' M.A. Hasan, information spokesman for the Sri Lankan government, said in an interview from the capital of Colombo.
International Aid
The U.S. said it's already providing aid to Sri Lanka and the Maldives and is prepared to give assistance to other affected countries. Canada has also pledged assistance.
Australia's government will give A$10 million ($7.7 million) to the quake zone, it said in a statement. Australia has two military plans on standby to ferry emergency supplies such as bottled water and tarpaulins to the affected countries, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. The government has also sent consular staff from Kuala Lumpur to Sri Lanka's capital of Colombo.
Massive Scale
The Indonesian quake is the second in the world this year of magnitude 8 or greater on the Richter scale. A magnitude 8.1 temblor was recorded on Dec. 24 in the Southern Ocean between Australia and Antarctica by the U.S. Geological Survey.
Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The death toll rose above 14,000 after an earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the world's biggest in four decades, caused tsunami waves that devastated coastal towns from Thailand to India.
Yesterday's magnitude 9.0 quake generated waves as high as 10 meters (33 feet) that struck tourist resorts in Thailand, Malaysia and the Maldives. Sri Lanka reported more than 5,000 dead, while in Indonesia at least 4,448 were killed, prompting the governments of both countries to declare national disasters.
``The numbers are going to rise for a couple of days,'' said Megan Chisholm, senior emergencies officer at CARE Australia, an aid group with staff in most of the affected countries. ``I don't think we'll really know the full extent of the damage for a couple of days yet, until access to all places is achieved.''
Further waves and aftershocks may cause more flooding over the next few days, officials in India and Malaysia warned. Since the earthquake struck at 7 a.m. local time yesterday, there have been another 25 aftershocks, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
``After such a great earthquake, there would be aftershocks for days,'' said Wong Wing Tak, senior scientific officer at the Hong Kong Observatory. ``It could generate even more waves. With the tsunami waves, you should take caution for a longer time. It could at least take one or two days.''
In India at least 4,278 people are dead following the freak waves that hit the country's south coast, according to updated death tolls reported by the Press Trust of India.
`Thousands of Children'
Freak waves may flood coastal cities in India for the next two days, said A.K. Shukla, head of the Indian Meteorological Department.
``The power of this earthquake, and its huge geographical reach, are just staggering,'' said Carol Bellamy, executive director for the United Nations Children's Fund, in a statement. ``Hundreds of thousands of children in coastal communities in six countries may be in serious jeopardy.''
As many as 200,000 may have lost their homes in Sri Lanka, President Chandrika Kumaratunga said.
Peak Season
In Thailand, at least 392 people were killed by tsunamis, which struck during the south coast's peak holiday season. Thousands more were injured on popular resort beaches including Phuket and Krabi.
``From yesterday morning to now we have treated about 500 patients and 290 of those are still in a serious condition,'' said Tiyanooch Ananpakdee, communications manager for Bangkok Phuket hospital, via telephone from Phuket. ``People turned up at the hospital just in their bathing costumes with no shoes, possessions or money. We are providing food and shelter but the beds only go the seriously injured.''
Most of the casualties are foreign tourists, and many are being treated for bone fractures, Ananpakdee said.
Australia's Prime Minister John Howard said about 5,500 of the country's citizens are holidaying in the affected countries. At least one Taiwanese tourist is dead and three are injured out of about 470 that were holidaying in Phuket, said Wu Chao-yen, director of Taiwan's tourism bureau.
A New Zealand woman who was holidaying in Thailand is dead, according to the country's government.
``We're still missing about 10 or 20 people who were out on the islands,'' said Giancarlo Giacomelli, an Italian, 29, who is room division manager at Phra Nang Inn, a hotel at Ao Nang beach, 25 kilometers from Krabi, which sustained limited damage. ``One huge wave came in. It was the time when people were going to the islands. Many of the boats went under water and some people died.
Malaysia, Maldives, Bangladesh
In Malaysia, at least 53 people were killed, the Star newspaper reported. Popular holiday spot Penang was hardest hit, officials said.
A further 32 people were killed in the Maldives, including a British tourist, Agence France-Presse reported. About 100 islands in the Maldives, an archipelago of more than 1,000 coral isles, house resorts that cater to about half a million tourists each year. Tourism makes up almost one third of the nation's economy, according to data from the Asian Development Bank.
Two people were drowned in Bangladesh, India's northeastern neighbor, and one baby was washed away by the waves, said Abdul Baset, spokesman for Bangladesh's High Commission in Singapore. He said he expects an update from the government later today.
``The death rate was low compared to the gravity of the earthquake,'' he said. ``People have been told to avoid the coastal areas because it may occur again.''
Further Tremors
The earthquake was centered 1,605 kilometers (1,000 miles) northwest of Jakarta at a depth of 10 kilometers, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Since the first tremor struck yesterday, there have been a further 25 after-shocks, one of 7.3 magnitude, according to the survey's Web site. The latest was centered near the Andaman Islands, off India, at 6.19 a.m. local time.
In India, the threat from tsunamis isn't over, officials said.
``We expect the big waves to lash Chennai and parts of Tamil Nadu for the next two days,'' A.K. Shukla, head of the Indian Meteorological Department, said in an interview from New Delhi.
The Malaysian Meteorological Service has warned of further high waves along its northern coast.
Death Toll Rising
The toll will rise further as more bodies are found, Doti Indrasanto, head of the Center for Health Emergency Preparedness said in a phone interview from Palembang in South Sumatra.
``We cannot yet determine the economic loss of the disaster, for sure it's going to be huge and we welcome help from everyone,'' Indrasanto said.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono today declared three days of national mourning for the quake victims. Vice President Jusuf Kalla is heading a national team to coordinate help from Medan, the provincial capital of North Sumatra, southeast of Aceh.
Sri Lanka has declared a state of disaster, with more than 5,000 killed on the island and more expected, according to Harim Peiris, spokesman for President Chandrika Kumaratunga.
``That's the estimate as of now,'' Peiris said. ``The count is going up all the time.''
The southern state of Tamil Nadu was the hardest hit in India, with more than 600 dead, Home Minister Shivraj Patil told reporters in New Delhi.
``The entire coastal area of northern Jaffna to Colombo has been severely affected, and we have asked (for) international help to evacuate people,'' M.A. Hasan, information spokesman for the Sri Lankan government, said in an interview from the capital of Colombo.
International Aid
The U.S. said it's already providing aid to Sri Lanka and the Maldives and is prepared to give assistance to other affected countries. Canada has also pledged assistance.
Australia's government will give A$10 million ($7.7 million) to the quake zone, it said in a statement. Australia has two military plans on standby to ferry emergency supplies such as bottled water and tarpaulins to the affected countries, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. The government has also sent consular staff from Kuala Lumpur to Sri Lanka's capital of Colombo.
Massive Scale
The Indonesian quake is the second in the world this year of magnitude 8 or greater on the Richter scale. A magnitude 8.1 temblor was recorded on Dec. 24 in the Southern Ocean between Australia and Antarctica by the U.S. Geological Survey.
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Matt-hurricanewatcher
Tsunami Kills 15,500, Rush to Find Bodies
Mon Dec 27, 2004 02:48 AM ET
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Asia Tsunami Kills 15,500, Rush to Find Bodies
By Chamintha Thilakarathna
COLOMBO (Reuters) - Soldiers searched for bodies in treetops, families wept over the dead laid on beaches and rescuers scoured coral isles for missing tourists as Asia counted the cost on Monday of a tsunami that killed more than 15,500.
Idyllic palm-fringed beaches across southern Asia were transformed into scenes of death and devastation by the waves unleashed from the world's biggest earthquake in 40 years that struck off the Indonesian island of Sumatra early on Sunday.
International aid agencies rushed staff, equipment and money to the region, warning that bodies rotting in the water were already beginning to threaten the water supply for survivors.
"Death came from the sea," Satya Kumari, a construction worker living on the outskirts of the former French enclave of Pondicherry, India, told Reuters. "The waves just kept chasing us. It swept away all our huts. What did we do to deserve this?"
The wall of water up to 10 meters (30 ft) tall flattened houses, hurled fishing boats onto coastal roads, sent cars spinning through swirling waters into hotel lobbies and sucked sunbathers, babies and fishermen off beaches and out to sea.
Worst affected were Sri Lanka where 4,890 were killed, India where officials reported as many as 5,600 could be dead, northern Indonesia with 4,500 drowned and the southern tourist isles of Thailand where as many as 430 were feared to have lost their lives. Many of the dead were foreign tourists.
"This is a massive humanitarian disaster and the communications are so bad we still don't know the full scale of it. Unless we get aid quickly to the people many more could die," said Phil Esmond, head of Oxfam in Sri Lanka.
The Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it was seeking 7.5 million Swiss francs ($6.5 million) for emergency aid funding.
"We are not well equipped to deal with a disaster of this magnitude because we have never known a disaster like this," Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who declared a national disaster and appealed for donor aid, said from holiday in the UK.
It was Sri Lanka's worst natural disaster in recorded history. Officials expected the death toll to rise as troops recovered bodies dragged out to sea or smashed on golden beaches.
ROWS OF DEAD CHILDREN
Soldiers in Indonesia searched for bodies in tree tops and in the wreckage of homes smashed by the tsunami, triggered by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of northern Sumatra island killing at least 4,491 people there.
"It smells so bad ... The human bodies are mixed in with dead animals like dogs, fish, cats and goats," said marine colonel Buyung Lelana, head of an evacuation team in Sumatra's Aceh province searching for more dead.
Volunteers laid bodies of children in rows under sarongs at makeshift morgues. Others were stacked in white fish crates. Wailing mothers clutched dead babies.
Smaller tremors followed Sunday's earthquake, the world's biggest since 1964 and the fourth-largest since 1900.
Hundreds of thousands left homeless in Sri Lanka and fearing another devastating wave sheltered in temples and schools. The southern coastal town of Galle, a major industrial hub famed for its historic fort, had been submerged by a 9-meter (30-ft) wave.
Weeping relatives scrambled over hundreds of bodies piled in a hospital in nearby Karapitiya, shirts or handkerchiefs clutched over their noses against the stench of decaying bodies.
"We are struggling to cope. Bodies are still coming in," said Karapitiya Teaching Hospital administrator Dr H.G. Jayaratne.
On India's southeast coast, thousands of villagers huddled in emergency shelters, too scared to sleep in case of another wave.
"I have been waiting for my husband and brother since yesterday," wept 38-year-old Narasamma as she stood on a beach near Mypadu, a fishing hamlet 600 km (375 miles) south of Hyderabad, capital of southern Andhra Pradesh state.
DEVASTATED REMOTE ISLES
Among the missing were 200 Hindu pilgrims who had gone for a holy dip on the beach. Hundreds scattered petals on the sea and sacrificed chickens to pray for the safe return of the missing.
"We are continuously recovering bodies. We are also seeing wrecked fishing trawlers and boats by the coast," Coast Guard Commandant Navin Chandra Pandey said in New Delhi.
One of the most devastated regions was India's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, near the epicenter of the quake and where officials said the tsunami had killed 3,000 people.
The toll in the strategic islands, most of which is barred to visitors and home to several primitive tribes, included at least 68 air force personnel and families at a base, officials said.
The tourist islands and beaches of southern Thailand lay in the path of the wave that had killed 431.On the Patong tourist beach on the island of Phuket, hotels and restaurants were wrecked and speed boats were rammed into buildings.
Belgian tourist Christian Patouraux was on the island of Kho Phi Phi, famed as the site of the Leonardo di Caprio film "The Beach," and said he narrowly escaped the wave.
"I saw lots of dead bodies and many injured people, many with cuts and broken bones," he said.
The tsunami was so powerful it smashed boats and flooded areas along the east African coast, 6,000 km (3,728 miles) away. In the Maldives, where thousands of foreign visitors were vacationing in the beach paradise, damage appeared to be limited.
With communications cut to remote areas, it was impossible to assess the full scale of the disaster, aid agencies said.
A tsunami, a Japanese word that translates as "harbor wave," is usually caused by a sudden rise or fall of part of the earth's crust under or near the ocean.
It comprises a series of waves that can travel across the ocean at speeds of over 800 kph (500 mph). As the tsunami enters the shallows of coastlines in its path, its velocity slows but its height increases and it can strike with devastating force. (For more news about emergency relief visit Reuters AlertNet http://www.alertnet.org email: alertnet@reuters.com; +44 207 542 24 32.)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtm ... geNumber=2
Mon Dec 27, 2004 02:48 AM ET
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Asia Tsunami Kills 15,500, Rush to Find Bodies
By Chamintha Thilakarathna
COLOMBO (Reuters) - Soldiers searched for bodies in treetops, families wept over the dead laid on beaches and rescuers scoured coral isles for missing tourists as Asia counted the cost on Monday of a tsunami that killed more than 15,500.
Idyllic palm-fringed beaches across southern Asia were transformed into scenes of death and devastation by the waves unleashed from the world's biggest earthquake in 40 years that struck off the Indonesian island of Sumatra early on Sunday.
International aid agencies rushed staff, equipment and money to the region, warning that bodies rotting in the water were already beginning to threaten the water supply for survivors.
"Death came from the sea," Satya Kumari, a construction worker living on the outskirts of the former French enclave of Pondicherry, India, told Reuters. "The waves just kept chasing us. It swept away all our huts. What did we do to deserve this?"
The wall of water up to 10 meters (30 ft) tall flattened houses, hurled fishing boats onto coastal roads, sent cars spinning through swirling waters into hotel lobbies and sucked sunbathers, babies and fishermen off beaches and out to sea.
Worst affected were Sri Lanka where 4,890 were killed, India where officials reported as many as 5,600 could be dead, northern Indonesia with 4,500 drowned and the southern tourist isles of Thailand where as many as 430 were feared to have lost their lives. Many of the dead were foreign tourists.
"This is a massive humanitarian disaster and the communications are so bad we still don't know the full scale of it. Unless we get aid quickly to the people many more could die," said Phil Esmond, head of Oxfam in Sri Lanka.
The Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it was seeking 7.5 million Swiss francs ($6.5 million) for emergency aid funding.
"We are not well equipped to deal with a disaster of this magnitude because we have never known a disaster like this," Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who declared a national disaster and appealed for donor aid, said from holiday in the UK.
It was Sri Lanka's worst natural disaster in recorded history. Officials expected the death toll to rise as troops recovered bodies dragged out to sea or smashed on golden beaches.
ROWS OF DEAD CHILDREN
Soldiers in Indonesia searched for bodies in tree tops and in the wreckage of homes smashed by the tsunami, triggered by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of northern Sumatra island killing at least 4,491 people there.
"It smells so bad ... The human bodies are mixed in with dead animals like dogs, fish, cats and goats," said marine colonel Buyung Lelana, head of an evacuation team in Sumatra's Aceh province searching for more dead.
Volunteers laid bodies of children in rows under sarongs at makeshift morgues. Others were stacked in white fish crates. Wailing mothers clutched dead babies.
Smaller tremors followed Sunday's earthquake, the world's biggest since 1964 and the fourth-largest since 1900.
Hundreds of thousands left homeless in Sri Lanka and fearing another devastating wave sheltered in temples and schools. The southern coastal town of Galle, a major industrial hub famed for its historic fort, had been submerged by a 9-meter (30-ft) wave.
Weeping relatives scrambled over hundreds of bodies piled in a hospital in nearby Karapitiya, shirts or handkerchiefs clutched over their noses against the stench of decaying bodies.
"We are struggling to cope. Bodies are still coming in," said Karapitiya Teaching Hospital administrator Dr H.G. Jayaratne.
On India's southeast coast, thousands of villagers huddled in emergency shelters, too scared to sleep in case of another wave.
"I have been waiting for my husband and brother since yesterday," wept 38-year-old Narasamma as she stood on a beach near Mypadu, a fishing hamlet 600 km (375 miles) south of Hyderabad, capital of southern Andhra Pradesh state.
DEVASTATED REMOTE ISLES
Among the missing were 200 Hindu pilgrims who had gone for a holy dip on the beach. Hundreds scattered petals on the sea and sacrificed chickens to pray for the safe return of the missing.
"We are continuously recovering bodies. We are also seeing wrecked fishing trawlers and boats by the coast," Coast Guard Commandant Navin Chandra Pandey said in New Delhi.
One of the most devastated regions was India's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, near the epicenter of the quake and where officials said the tsunami had killed 3,000 people.
The toll in the strategic islands, most of which is barred to visitors and home to several primitive tribes, included at least 68 air force personnel and families at a base, officials said.
The tourist islands and beaches of southern Thailand lay in the path of the wave that had killed 431.On the Patong tourist beach on the island of Phuket, hotels and restaurants were wrecked and speed boats were rammed into buildings.
Belgian tourist Christian Patouraux was on the island of Kho Phi Phi, famed as the site of the Leonardo di Caprio film "The Beach," and said he narrowly escaped the wave.
"I saw lots of dead bodies and many injured people, many with cuts and broken bones," he said.
The tsunami was so powerful it smashed boats and flooded areas along the east African coast, 6,000 km (3,728 miles) away. In the Maldives, where thousands of foreign visitors were vacationing in the beach paradise, damage appeared to be limited.
With communications cut to remote areas, it was impossible to assess the full scale of the disaster, aid agencies said.
A tsunami, a Japanese word that translates as "harbor wave," is usually caused by a sudden rise or fall of part of the earth's crust under or near the ocean.
It comprises a series of waves that can travel across the ocean at speeds of over 800 kph (500 mph). As the tsunami enters the shallows of coastlines in its path, its velocity slows but its height increases and it can strike with devastating force. (For more news about emergency relief visit Reuters AlertNet http://www.alertnet.org email: alertnet@reuters.com; +44 207 542 24 32.)
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Matt-hurricanewatcher
Oman warns of possible tidal wave hitting coast following Asian quake
MUSCAT (AFP) Dec 27, 2004
Oman warned Monday of a tidal wave possibly developing around its coast as a result of a massive earthquake in Asia that unleashed tsunamis across the region killing thousands, newspapers reported.
"The Omani coast witnessed increasing wave heights owing to the earthquake in Asia. The phenomena led to high tides which endangered coastal areas, ports, boats and vessels," said a statement by the Royal Oman Police, appealing to residents, and fishermen in particular, to be wary.
The death toll from the earthquake off Indonesia and tidal waves that it unleashed rose to more than 16,000 Monday as officials reported deaths in eight countries in southern and southeastern Asia.
MUSCAT (AFP) Dec 27, 2004
Oman warned Monday of a tidal wave possibly developing around its coast as a result of a massive earthquake in Asia that unleashed tsunamis across the region killing thousands, newspapers reported.
"The Omani coast witnessed increasing wave heights owing to the earthquake in Asia. The phenomena led to high tides which endangered coastal areas, ports, boats and vessels," said a statement by the Royal Oman Police, appealing to residents, and fishermen in particular, to be wary.
The death toll from the earthquake off Indonesia and tidal waves that it unleashed rose to more than 16,000 Monday as officials reported deaths in eight countries in southern and southeastern Asia.
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