Update on death toll from December quake and tsunami

[michaelwmoss]

This puts the cap on what has been an awful year in weather and natural occurances this 2004. Let's hope 2005 is no where near like this.

Amen.

Michael, I hate to say it, but I have feeling this is a sign of things to come, so sitback put the popcorn in the micro and end get ready for the show. It is very rare that we have 2 8.0 + quakes in less than a month, and it is not due to wind patterns or some other easily explained weather patterns. Things are changing and are changing quickly. I believe we will have several more huge quakes and several volcanoes blowing their lid. I also, believe that weather patterns will become more extreme. I feel very badly for the people that suffered and got killed in sumatra. I just have a bad feeling things will get worse..

Well I think alot of things have been changing the World's overall weather pattern. Volcanic activity definately has this effect. Overall Climate patterns have also been changing. This is Mother Earth responding to what the human race is doing to her. God made Earth with Intelligence and she knows how to "clean up" and put things back in order

[michaelwmoss]

AS far as I've heard and read, I don't think they've even established contact with large parts of Sumatra, on the western coast closest to the epicenter. Has anyone heard differently? I wonder how many deaths yet to come.

I don't think they will EVER get a totally accurate death toll. Many people's skeltons are going to be found years down the road in all kinds of places and even out to sea(Maybe for hundreds of miles) It is truly a Global Disaster.

[michaelwmoss]

In that one post, did you notice one guy's last name was SHALOM? The IRONY!

Shalom means peace in Hebrew

[michaelwmoss]

it just shows how far it traveled. amazing

The earthquake station up on the Alabama/Tennessee/Mississippi border also reported movement. This is as far as you can get from that area here.

Do you mean to tell me that they felt part of this quake in the UNITED STATES? It MUST have been more than 9.0 on the ricther scale. Do they have any potential "Quake Alerts" for any of the fault lines in the US>?

[michaelwmoss]

There is NO warning systems for Tsunamis on the East Coast of the United States, based on an In-depth report on NBC Nightly News tonight.

You have GOT to be kidding! I sure hope that is just media propaganda! If it isn't, they need a system NOW!

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

Many seaside towns have not yet been contacted in Aceh, the worst hit area. The Indonesian vice-president has said up to 25,000 people may have been killed on Sumatra alone, and a million are thought to have been made homeless.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/4126019.stm

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

Deadly quake sent waves as far as Americas

By: JANIS L. MAGIN - Associated Press Writer

HONOLULU (AP) -- The earthquake-driven tidal wave that devastated coastlines from Asia to Africa registered in the Pacific Ocean as far away as the United States and the coast of South America, experts said Monday.

The magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck near Indonesia generated tsunamis that killed more than 22,000 in 10 countries as it spread west and north across the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean.

But the energy generated by the deep ocean waves also traveled to the Pacific, said Stuart Weinstein, a geophysicist with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center on Oahu.


"We recorded tsunami waves along the coast of South America, on the coast of American Samoa, in Fiji, even Mexico, and the west coast of the United States," Weinstein said.

"It's been a multi-ocean tsunami," he added. "It's probably the first multi-ocean tsunami since Krakatoa."

The eruption of the volcano on the island of Krakatau on Aug. 27, 1883, generated a massive wave that swept over the shores of nearby Java and Sumatra, killing 36,000 people.

Other experts said this weekend's tidal waves were similar to those that struck the West Coast centuries ago. On Jan. 26, 1700, an earthquake of approximately magnitude 9.0 buckled the ocean floor from Vancouver Island to Northern California, setting off a tsunami that swamped the coast and washed away houses in Japan.

The tsunami warning center issued a tsunami warning bulletin over the weekend and tried to warn the countries in the path of the tidal waves, but lacked the right contact numbers. There is no tsunami warning center for the Indian Ocean.

"They were not plugged into this international effort to monitor tsunamis," Arun Swamy, a fellow at the East-West Center who specializes in South Asian politics, told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. "There was certainly a lot of time. It would have been easy to evacuate people. But no one knew ... to prepare for it."

The Pacific has an underwater tsunami-detection system of six buoys nestled strategically on the ocean floor at depths of up to 18,000 feet. Three of the devices are off the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, one is off Vancouver, British Columbia, one is off Oregon and one is between Hawaii and Chile.

The gauges on the ocean bottom are linked to buoys on the sea surface, which transmit date to a satellite, said Gerard Fryer, a University of Hawaii geophysicist who is also the adviser to the Hawaii Department of Civil Defense.

Two of the three sensors off the Aleutians are currently not working because the surface buoys, which are battered by the rough winter seas, need to be replaced, he said.

"When they work, they're wonderful, they're very very sensitive," Fryer said.

A seventh sensor is being planned for somewhere off the Hawaiian Islands, but the location hasn't been chosen yet, he said.

On the Net:

Pacific Tsunami Warning Center: http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc

West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center: http://wcatwc.gov

[michaelwmoss]

While I am a Christian, I can't help but think some religious radicals are going to believe this is Armadeggon taking place and that this is the end times. I surely hope that doesn't happen.

This is going to change alot of things on Earth. Climate changes and such will only be the beginning.

I would watch the U.S. Earth Plates. This jolt could be enough to cause some, at least, minor quakes throughout the country.

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

The massive tsunamis created by the quake were so powerful that they spread into and across the Pacific Ocean, causing the sea to fluctuate almost a foot in San Diego and nearly 9 feet in one city on Mexico's west coast, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

Tuesday, 28 December , 2004, 10:34

Rescuers were anxious to discover the fate of 30,000 people unaccounted for in Andaman and Nicobar islands on Tuesday as the nationwide death toll from weekend tidal waves reached nearly 7,000.

[AussieMark]

Asian Death Toll Mounts to Over 23,000

LHOKSEUMAWE, Indonesia - Rescue workers battled to reach isolated coastal towns Tuesday on the island of Sumatra nearest the epicenter of the monstrous earthquake that sent tidal waves surging through the region, killing more than 23,000. Indonesian officials said they feared the death toll would climb by thousands in their country alone.

So far, Indonesia has confirmed 4,991 deaths, with most of them in Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra. The quake epicenter was more than 6 miles under the Indian Ocean seabed less than 100 miles from the Sumatra coast. Most of the coastal region south of the provincial capital of Banda Aceh had not been visited by government officials or rescue teams nearly two days after the disaster.

Late Monday, Indonesian Vice President Yusuf Kalla told the state news agency he believed the toll in his country could climb to 25,000.

"We don't have confirmed data, but I think between 21,000 and 25,000 people (have died), he said, according to the Antara state news agency.

Purnomo Sidik, national disaster director at the Social Affairs Ministry, said Kalla's prediction was in line with his ministry's estimates.

"Thousands of victims cannot be reached in some isolated and remote areas that cannot be contacted due to lack of communication," he told The Associated Press.

In the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, where rescue efforts were already well under way, the streets were filled with overturned cars and the rotting corpses of adults and children. Shopping malls and office buildings lay in rubble, and thousands of homeless families huddled together in mosques and schools. The minaret of the city's 125-year-old mosque leaned precariously. At least 3,000 people died in the city of 400,000.

The fear of a far higher death toll came as bodies washed up on tropical beaches and piled up in hospitals Monday, raising fears of disease across the 10-nation arc of destruction left by a monster earthquake and walls of water. Thousands were missing and millions homeless.

Humanitarian agencies began what the United Nations (news - web sites) said would become the biggest relief effort the world has ever seen.

The disaster could be the costliest in history as well, with "many billions of dollars" of damage, said U.N. Undersecretary Jan Egeland, who is in charge of emergency relief coordination. Hundreds of thousands have lost everything, and millions face a hazardous future because of polluted drinking water, a lack of sanitation and no health services, he said.

More than 12,500 people died in Sri Lanka, nearly 5,000 in Indonesia, and 4,400 in India. The International Red Cross, which reported 23,700 deaths, said it was concerned that diseases like malaria and cholera could add to the toll.

Dazed tourists evacuated the popular island resorts of southern Thailand, where the Thai-American grandson of revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej was listed as one of more than 900 people dead. Scores more died in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives. The waves raced 2,800 miles across the Indian Ocean to Africa, killing hundreds of people in Somalia and three in the Seychelles.

Eight Americans were among the dead, and U.S. embassies in the region were trying to track down hundreds more who were unaccounted for.

Sunday's massive quake of 9.0 magnitude sent 500-mph waves surging across the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal in the deadliest known tsunami since the one caused by the 1883 volcanic eruption at Krakatoa — located off Sumatra's southern tip — which killed an estimated 36,000 people.

A large proportion of southern Asia's dead were children — as many as half the victims in Sri Lanka, according to officials there. A bulldozer dug a mass grave in southern India for 150 young boys and girls, as their weeping parents looked on.

"Where are my children?" said 41-year-old Absah, as she searched for her 11 youngsters in Banda Aceh, the Indonesian city closest to Sunday's epicenter. "Where are they? Why did this happen to me? I've lost everything."

Officials in Thailand and Indonesia conceded that immediate public warnings of gigantic waves could have saved lives. The only known warning issued by Thai authorities reached resort operators when it was too late. The waves hit Sri Lanka and India more than two hours after the quake.

But governments insisted they couldn't have known the true danger because there is no international system in place to track tsunamis in the Indian Ocean, and they could not afford the sophisticated equipment to build one.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he would investigate what role his country could play in setting up an Indian Ocean warning system. The head of the British Commonwealth bloc of Britain and its former colonies called for talks on creating a global early warning system for tsunamis.

Egeland said the issue of creating a tsunami warning system would be taken up at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan from Jan. 18-22.

For most people around the shores across the region, the only warning Sunday of the disaster came when shallow coastal waters disappeared, sucked away by the approaching tsunami, before returning as a massive wall of water. The waves wiped out villages, lifted cars and boats, yanked children from the arms of parents and swept away beachgoers, scuba divers and fishermen.

In a scene repeated across the region Monday, relatives wandered hallways lined with bodies, searching for loved ones at the hospital in Sri Lanka's southern town of Galle — one of the worst-affected areas of the hardest-hit nation. People lifted blankets and soaked clothes to look at faces in a stunned hush, broken only occasionally by wails of mourning.

A tractor brought in about 15 corpses of mostly women and children, some wrapped in white plastic sheets, while a Buddhist temple across the street tried to help people find their missing.

"The toll is increasing," said Brig. Daya Ratnayake, a military spokesman. "We are finding more bodies."

Indonesia and Sri Lanka had at least a million people each driven from their homes. Helicopters in India rushed medicine to stricken areas, while warships in Thailand steamed to island resorts to rescue survivors.

In Thailand, the government offered free flights for thousands of Western tourists desperate to leave the southern resorts ravaged by the tsunami. Chaos erupted at Phuket airport as hundreds of tourists, many bandaged and brought to the airport in ambulances, tried to board planes for Bangkok.

Bodies were pulled from roadsides, orchards and beaches at Khao Lak resort, where the Swedish tour operator Fritidsresor said 600 Swedes had not been accounted for.

Jimmy Gorman, 30, of Manchester, England, said he saw 15 bodies, including up to five children and a pregnant woman, on Phi Phi island, one of Thailand's most popular destinations for Westerners,

"Disaster. Flattened everything," Gorman said. "There's nothing left of it."

The United States dispatched disaster teams and prepared a $15 million aid package to the Asian countries, and the 25-nation European Union (news - web sites) promised to quickly deliver $4 million. Japan, China and Russia were sending teams of experts.

Egeland said he expected hundreds of relief airplanes from two dozen countries within the next 48 hours.

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Nations on the Indian Ocean from Indonesia to Sri Lanka struggled on Tuesday to find and bury their dead and help the survivors of a tsunami as fears grew the final toll would far exceed the 27,700 people reported killed.

Two days after the biggest earthquake in 40 years rocked the seabed off Indonesia's Sumatra island, triggering waves up to 30 feet high, officials found more death the further they ventured into outlying areas, and said the final toll could rise above 55,000.

The United Nations said hundreds of relief planes packed with emergency goods would arrive in the region from about two dozen countries within the next 48 hours.

Bodies still littered the streets in north Indonesia, closest to Sunday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake. About 1,000 people lay where they were killed when a tsunami struck as they were watching a sports event.

"I was in the field as a referee. The waves suddenly came in and I was saved by God -- I got caught in the branches of a tree," said Mahmud Azaf, who lost his three children to the tsunami.

Hundreds of Western tourists were killed at beach resorts in Sri Lanka and Thailand, fishing villages across the region were devastated, power and communications cut and homes destroyed.

"This was the worst day in our history," said Sri Lankan businessman Y.P. Wickramsinghe as he picked through the rubble of his sea-front dive shop in the devastated southwestern town of Galle. "I wish I had died. There is no point in living."

Thousands of miles of coastline from Indonesia to Somalia were battered by deadly waves. The United Nations said the disaster was unique in encompassing such a large area and so many countries.

"The cost of the devastation will be in the billions of dollars," said Jan Egeland, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"However, we cannot fathom the cost of these poor societies and the nameless fishermen and fishing villages ... that have just been wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of livelihoods have gone."

Sri Lanka appeared to have been the worst hit with more than 12,200 dead, along with India which reported about 9,400 killed and Indonesia, about 5,000. Nearly 1,000 people were killed in Thailand, about 800 of them foreign tourists

perished in Malaysia, Myanmar and the Maldives and as far away as Somalia, 4,000 miles from the epicenter, where 38 people were killed.
The toll was expected to rise dramatically however. Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the toll there could reach 25,000. Sri Lankan officials said 20,000 people might be dead, and Thai officials expected their death toll to go to 2,000.

Indian officials said about 3,000 people living on the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, near the epicenter of the quake, had been killed but thousands were missing and many areas of the island chain had not been reached.

HOLIDAY DISASTER

Among the dead foreigners were at least 13 Norwegians, 12 Britons, 11 Italians, 10 Swedes, nine Japanese and eight Americans.

In southern Thailand, miles of shattered beach hotels at Khao Lak, north of the resort island of Phuket, were expected to give up hundreds more bodies.

"My son is crying for his mother," said Bejkhajorn Saithong, 39, searching for his wife at a hotel on Khao Lak beach. The hotel had been knocked off its foundations and a few body parts jutted out of the wreckage.

"I think this is her. I recognize her hand, but I'm not sure," Bejkhajorn said.

Television pictures taken from the air showed bodies tangled in debris littering a beach and others floating in the sea.

In Sri Lanka about 1.5 million people -- or 7.5 percent of the population -- are homeless, many sheltering in Buddhist temples and schools.

Throughout the region, people fearing another wave sheltered in public buildings, schools and on high ground. There was a shortage of clean water and provisions.

Weather officials in India warned of more high waves over the next day or two and urged people to stay away from the shore. Continued ...


Those not searching for survivors hastened to bury the dead, often in mass graves. In Cuddalore, India, back-hoes were used.
Survivors face their greatest danger in coming days.

"The biggest threat ... is from the spread of infection through contamination of drinking water and putrefying bodies left by receding waters," Jamie McGoldrick of the OCHA said in Geneva.

The U.N.'s Egeland said there could be epidemics of intestinal and lung infections unless health systems in the stricken countries get the help they need.

"Bigger waves have been recorded, but no wave has affected so many people in this way, because we have had a population explosion since the last tsunami, and some of these areas are among the most populated in the world."

The United Nations will provide emergency aid to 500,000 people in Indonesia's Aceh province, a U.N. official said. U.N. aid workers got the go-ahead from the government to move staff into the province of about four million people on the northern tip of Sumatra, where a separatist rebellion has simmered since 1976.

Countries on the Pacific Ocean have tsunami warning systems but those on the Indian Ocean, where tsunamis hit about once a century, do not.

Sunday's huge waves were tracked by U.S. seismologists who said they had no way of warning governments in the region of the danger.

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

Many pics!!!

http://www.pbase.com/issels/phuket_tsunami

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Nations on the Indian Ocean from Indonesia to Sri Lanka searched among the wreckage of a devastating tsunami for bodies to bury on Tuesday as fears grew the toll would far exceed the 29,000 now reported killed.

Two days after the biggest earthquake in 40 years struck the seabed off Indonesia's Sumatra island, triggering waves up to 33 feet high, officials found more death the further they ventured into outlying areas.

It was feared the final toll could rise above 55,000. A disproportionate number of the dead appeared to be children.

The United Nations said hundreds of relief planes packed with emergency goods would arrive in the region from about two dozen countries within the next 48 hours.

Searchers in Thailand retrieved 770 bodies, both foreign tourists and Thais, along the Khao Lak beach north of Phuket resort island, a disaster official said.

Bodies littered the streets in northern Indonesia, closest to Sunday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake. About 1,000 people lay where they were killed when a tsunami struck as they watched a sports event.

"I was in the field as a referee. The waves suddenly came in and I was saved by God -- I got caught in the branches of a tree," said Mahmud Azaf, who lost his three children to the tsunami.

Thousands of miles of coastline from Indonesia to Tanzania were battered by deadly waves. Fishing villages were devastated, power and communications cut and homes destroyed.

"This was the worst day in our history," said Sri Lankan businessman Y.P. Wickramsinghe as he picked through the rubble of his sea-front dive shop in the devastated southwestern town of Galle. "I wish I had died. There is no point in living."

The United Nations said the disaster was unique in encompassing such a large area and so many countries.

"The cost of the devastation will be in the billions of dollars," said Jan Egeland, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA

[pawlee]

(for those who don't get my email; the following is current to what cnn is reporting at the hour of this post. p)

sitting here at this early hour, i am simply at a loss
regarding the tsunami devastation occurring across SE
Asia. with current death toll at 26,000 and expected
to rise, to give perspective, below are 26,000
characters, each one representing a life lost. this is
simply unprecedented. may god have mercy on all of
these souls.

**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************
**************************************************

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

DEATH TOLL MAY DOUBLE

More than 29,000 people have died following the Asian earthquake disaster - but it is feared the death toll may reach up to 57,000.

See Sky News and Sky News Active for the latest footage.


The UN says only the biggest disaster operation the world has ever seen will be enough to help the millions left homeless.

Several nations, including Britain, have already sent planes carrying emergency supplies.

Indonesia's vice president said up to 25,000 people may have died on Sumatra alone.

More than 12,000 were killed in Sri Lanka and 9,000 in India, including 5,000 in the Andaman and Nicobar islands.

About 1,500 people died when the train they were in was hit by the tsunami that swept Sri Lanka's coastline.

In Thailand, 700 of the 990 who died are believed to be foreign tourists.




The aid effort


Another 770 bodies have been found in a hotel in the Khao Lak area.

Across the region, 12 British people have been killed. There is a warning the number could rise.

More than 50 people were killed in the Maldives after water inundated the low-lying string of islands.

In Malaysia, 60 people are confirmed dead. Most of them drowned on the tourist island of Penang. There are still many people missing.

It is also feared hundreds of people have been killed along the northern coast of Somalia, nearly 4,000 miles from the epicentre of the quake.

The quake measured 9 on the Richter scale and is the fourth strongest ever recorded.

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

Entire IAF station pushed off the map in Car Nicobar Tuesday December 28 2004 00:00 IST

CAR NICOBAR ISLANDS: The day after, the sea here almost mocks in its ordinariness. The sun blazing, when you look down from the AN-32 on its way to Car Nicobar from Port Blair, there are just tiny white flecks on the calm Bay of Bengal. If you don't search for land, it's as if yesterday didn't happen.

But once you land, you know why this is where an estimated 2,000 are feared dead, this is where once an Indian Air Force Base was.

The base has been pushed off the map by the sea and along with it, have perished over 100 officers and IAF personnel - of the total base strength of 1700. The entire coastline is strewn with trees that snapped like twigs. Those people who survived are so traumatised that even the slightest movement of wind or wave makes them run out into the open from the Air Force station hangars and other installations which are doubling up as shelters.

This was a plum posting, says Group Captain and Station Commander V Bandopadhyaya. ``The officers and men wanted to stay here, wilfully.'' Because the picture-postcard Air Force colony was drawn along the coastline, dotted with elegant two-storeyed bungalows. The sea was barely 200 m away, the front yard almost a private beach.

But not today.

Most of those houses have been flattened. In many spots, even debris is missing, the house swallowed up whole.

Standing, then staggering on the debris, Captain P Maheshwar counts himself lucky - he lost everything but has his wife and child.

``The night before, we had a Christmas party and when the earthquake hit early in the morning, people were scared but we all took it in the right spirit. Every family rushed out of their homes and began to assemble together. One of us even began filming the chaos on his handycam saying it will be precious visual evidence for posterity. Suddenly, I saw the water level rise and that officer (the one with the handycam) vanished.''

Captain Maheshwar stops, his eyes lock on a metal frame stuck on a tree branch about 20 feet from the ground. ``That looks like my refrigerator,'' he says, under his breath. ``The skeleton of my car is lying there,'' he points. ``Every belonging of my 12 years of married life has been wiped out.'' Except, his family, of course, which Maheshwar says he can't explain other than saying it must be a miracle.

Not for six officers and their families, including several squadron leaders, the Met officer and the doctor of the Air Force station - all among the 102 that have been killed.

The waves hammered the coast for over two hours and once the water receded, the bodies of 23 IAF personnel were found strewn on the tarmac. Two more were retrieved from the debris, another 77 believed to have been sucked into the sea by the retreating waves.

The tarmac was the safe haven here. Being the highest point in the station. It stuck out, eyewitnesses said, amid the waves like the ``back of a giant tortoise in the sea.'' Most of those who could clamber onto it were saved.

The Mi-8 choppers were safe but the top floor of the three-storeyed Air Traffic Control was sliced off from the main structure, so neatly that it looks as if a giant crane ripped off the top floor and neatly placed it at a distance.

The neighbouring village of Malacca has been wiped out, most of the other half a dozen villages here are still inaccessible. This was why the toll could rise alarmingly, Lt Governor Ram Kapse told visiting Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Sonia Gandhi when they arrived here on Monday afternoon.

Commander in Chief B S Thakur said that several sorties were carried out right through the day with over 430 people being evacuated from Car Nicobar. About 70 of them were brought to the Naval Hospital in Port Blair.

The importance of Car Nicobar base, which is the operational heart of the Andamans and Nicobar Command, lies in its location. It sits on the mouth of strategic Malacca Straits, which accounts for 52 per cent of world cargo and is the second-most busy shipping lane in the world. More than 114 supertankers carrying 9.5 billion oil barrels for South Asian markets traverse through this 10 degree channel route that bisects the Andamans Islands and the Great Nicobar Island.

Besides handling the reconnaissance and surveillance activities, the Car Nicobar base has a major role in tracking down gun-runners and narco-traffickers that push in arms and drugs to India's north-east through the Cox's bazaar and Chittagong route in Bangladesh.

The runway of Car Nicobar base was extended to handle fighter operations in 2001 after the government cleared the Andamans and Nicobar Tri-Service Command. Since then, the IAF was conducting fighter exercises involving Jaguars and Su-30s twice a year so that it would be ready in case India wanted to project force in the Indian Ocean.

Apart from the Car Nicobar base, the Indian Navy has 12 amphibious landing ships and fast attack crafts at the Port Blair harbour. Top Navy officials said that none of the ships were damaged in the tsunami as they were pushed to mid-stream the moment the first wave came and hit Port Blair. The state-of-the-art Thomson CSF radar that monitors traffic north of Landfall Islands is safe but the building housing the equipment has developed cracks

[mf_dolphin]

ABCNEWS is reporting the death toll is now near 40,000!

[Brent]

Death toll now to 40,000 and still rising.

Aid pours into Asia as death toll rises to 40,000

MSNBC News Services Updated: 8:35 a.m. ET Dec. 28, 2004
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - The death toll from the epic tidal waves that rocked 11 countries rose to 40,000 people on Tuesday after Sri Lanka and Indonesia significantly increased their confirmed deaths.

Medical supplies, food aid and water purification systems poured into the region, part of what the United Nations said would be the biggest relief effort the world has ever seen. Millions remained homeless.

Rescuers struggled to reach remote locations where thousands more were likely killed by the deadliest tsunami in 120 years.

Bodies, many of them children, filled beaches and choked hospital morgues, raising fears of disease across an 11-nation arc of destruction.

The disaster could be the costliest in history, with “many billions of dollars” of damage, said U.N. Undersecretary Jan Egeland, who is in charge of emergency relief coordination. Hundreds of thousands have lost everything, and millions are living with polluted drinking water and no health services, he said.

The geographic scope of the disaster was unparalleled. Relief organizations used to dealing with a centralized crisis had to distribute resources over 11 countries in two continents.

Helicopters in India rushed medicine to stricken areas, while warships in Thailand steamed to island resorts. In Sri Lanka, the Health Ministry dispatched 300 physicians to the disaster zone, dropping them off by helicopter.

Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar said the United States was sending helicopters, and an airborne surgical hospital from Finland arrived in Sri Lanka. A German aircraft was en route with a water purification plant. “A great deal is coming in and they are having a few problems at the moment coordinating it.”

UNICEF officials said that about 175 tons of rice arrived in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, late Monday and six tons of medical supplies were expected to arrive by Thursday. But most basic supplies were scarce.

Meantime, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday the United States “will do more” to help the victims and said he regretted a statement by U.N. Humanitarian Aid Chief Jan Egeland, suggesting America was being "stingy".

Initially, the U.S. government pledged $15 million and dispatched disaster specialists to help the Asian nations devastated by the catastrophe.

On Monday, President Bush sent letters of condolence and Powell exclaimed, “This is indeed an international tragedy, and we are going to do everything we can.”

In an interview on NBC“s “Today” show Tuesday, Powell said that “clearly, the United States will be a major contributor to this international effort. And, yes, it will run into the billions of dollars.”

Sri Lanka's government on Tuesday raised its death toll past 18,700, and feared the final death toll would reach 25,000.

"Dead bodies are washing ashore along the coast," said Social Welfare Minister Sumedha Jayasena, who is coordinating relief efforts. "Reports reaching us from the rescue workers indicate there are 25,000 feared dead, and we don't know what to do."

Click "Launch" to view images from a massive earthquake that hit Asia sparking deadly tsunamis, killing tens of thousands in nine countries.

In Indonesia, the country closest to Sunday's 9.0 magnitude quake that sent walls of water crashing into coastlines thousands of miles away, the count rose to 15,000, a number the vice president said could reach 25,000.

"Thousands of victims cannot be reached in some isolated and remote areas," said Purnomo Sidik, the national disaster director.

More than 4,400 died in India and 1,000 in Thailand, among them more than 700 tourists. The Red Cross said it was concerned that diseases such as malaria and cholera could add to the toll.

Scores of people were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Maldives. Deaths were even reported in Africa — in Somalia, Tanzania and Seychelles, close to 3,000 miles away.

Eight Americans were among the dead, and U.S. embassies in the region were trying to track down hundreds more who were unaccounted for.

Desperate residents on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island — 100 miles from the quake’s epicenter — looted stores Tuesday. “There is no help, it is each person for themselves here,” district official Tengku Zulkarnain told el-Shinta radio station.

In Galle, Sri Lanka, officials used a loudspeaker fitted atop a fire engine to tell residents to place bodies on the road for collection. Muslim families used cooking utensils and even their bare hands to dig graves. Hindus in India, abandoning their tradition of burning bodies, asked for help with mass burials.

Soldiers and volunteers in Indonesia combed through destroyed houses to try and find survivors — or bodies. In Thailand’s once-thriving resorts, volunteers dragged scores of corpses — including at least 700 foreign tourists — from beaches and the remains of top-class hotels.

In Malaysia, a 20-day-old baby was found floating on a mattress soon after the waves hit Sunday. She and her family were reunited. At a Thai resort, a blond-haired 2-year-old of unknown nationality was recovering at a hospital after being found sitting alone on a road. His parents were presumed dead.

Sunday’s massive quake of 9.0 magnitude sent 500-mph waves surging across the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal in the deadliest known tsunami since the one caused by the 1883 volcanic eruption at Krakatoa — located off Sumatra’s southern tip — which killed an estimated 36,000 people.

A large proportion of southern Asia’s dead were children — as many as half the victims in Sri Lanka, according to officials there. A bulldozer dug a mass grave in southern India for 150 young boys and girls, as their weeping parents looked on.

“Where are my children?” asked 41-year-old Absah, as she searched for her 11 youngsters in Banda Aceh, the Indonesian city closest to Sunday’s epicenter. “Where are they? Why did this happen to me? I’ve lost everything.”

The streets in Banda Aceh were filled with overturned cars and rotting corpses. Shopping malls and office buildings lay in rubble, and thousands of homeless families huddled in mosques and schools.

In a scene repeated across the region, relatives wandered hallways lined with bodies at the hospital in Sri Lanka’s southern town of Galle. A stunned hush was broken only occasionally by wails of mourning.

The United States dispatched disaster teams and prepared a $15 million aid package. Japan pledged $30 million. Australia pledged $8 million.

Officials in Thailand and Indonesia conceded that immediate public warnings of gigantic waves could have saved lives. The only known warning issued by Thai authorities reached resort operators when it was too late. The waves hit Sri Lanka and India more than two hours after the quake.

But governments insisted they couldn’t have known the true danger because there is no international system in place to track tsunamis in the Indian Ocean, and they could not afford the sophisticated equipment to build one.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he would investigate what role his country could play in setting up an Indian Ocean warning system.

“I know it looks like a bit like closing the door after the horse has bolted,” Downer told reporters. But he said he hoped such a system would save lives in the future.

The head of the British Commonwealth bloc of Britain and its former colonies called for talks on creating a global early warning system for tsunamis.

Egeland said the issue of creating a tsunami warning system would be taken up at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan from Jan. 18-22.

Indonesia’s Aceh province near the epicenter exemplified the challenge to aid workers. The government until Monday barred foreigners because of a long-running separatist conflict. Communications lines were still down and remote villages had yet to be reached.

“There is not anyone to bury the bodies,” said Steve Aswin, an emergency officer with UNICEF in Jakarta. “I heard that many bodies are still in the hospitals and many places. They should be buried in mass graves but there is no one to dig graves.”

Sri Lankan police waived the law calling for mandatory autopsies, allowing rotting corpses to be buried immediately. “We accept that the deaths were caused by drowning,” police spokesman Rienzie Perera said.

On the remote Indian islands of Andaman and Nicobar, off the northern tip of Sumatra, officials still hadn’t established communications. An estimated 3,000 deaths were not yet counted in the official toll.

Also on Tuesday, India’s government said a nuclear power plant damaged by tidal waves was safe and that there was no threat of radiation.

Tsunamis as large as Sunday’s happen only a few times a century. A tsunami is a series of traveling ocean waves generated by geological disturbances near the ocean floor. With nothing to stop them, the waves can race across the ocean like the crack of a bullwhip, gaining momentum over thousands of miles.

An international tsunami warning system was started in 1965, after the Alaska quake, designed to advise coastal communities of a potentially killer wave.

Member states include all the major Pacific Rim nations in North America, Asia and South America. But because tsunamis are rare in the Indian Ocean, India and Sri Lanka are not part of the system. Scientists said the death toll would have been reduced if they had been.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

[sunny]

My God - Fox News is now reporting 44,000 dead.