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5th largest earthquaake since 1900 (pg. 12)
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| Plastick |
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Tsunami death toll surges past 68,000 amid epidemic fears
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia : The death toll from the Asia tidal wave disaster surged past 68,000 on Wednesday as rescuers battled to head off hunger and disease epidemics and survivors told terrifying escape stories.
Nearly half of the confirmed dead were in the Indonesian province of Aceh, close to the epicentre of the biggest earthquake in 40 years which sparked the tsunami waves that devastated coastal villages and resorts across the Indian Ocean.
Another 22,000 were confirmed dead in Sri Lanka.
Thousands of European and American tourists remained unaccounted for and the toll rose with virtually every report from the 10 countries afflicted from Malaysia to Somalia on the African coast.
Carol Bellamy, executive director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), said children made up a large proportion of the dead.
Decomposing bodies and the destruction of sewage disposal facilities sparked fears of a catastrophic outbreak of disease.
Scores of planes carrying aid, doctors and emergency experts started arriving in the worst hit countries and the United States added 20 million dollars to its donation to the relief effort.
With the United Nations estimating that several billion dollars of devastation had been left, US Secretary of State Colin Powell denied however that the United States had been "stingy" in its contribution.
The United States, Australia, France, Russia and other countries sent planeloads of emergency aid.
But food and medicine was already desperately short in many stricken regions and Guido Bertolaso, an Italian civil emergency chief who is co-ordinating European Union rescue operations, warned the overall death toll could surpass 100,000.
The undersea quake, which hit 9.0 on the open-ended Richter scale, rocked the seabed about 150 kilometres from the Indonesian island of Sumatra island, which has suffered the most deaths.
The death toll leapt suddenly as casualties were tallied from Aceh province on Sumatra.
Indonesia's health ministry said there were nearly 80,000 refugees in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, and the western areas of Meulaboh and Aceh Jaya.
The stench of death hung over Banda Aceh as survivors struggled to dig graves in tropical heat. About 2,000 bodies were buried in mass graves, but many rotting corpses remained on the streets.
Police in the city of Meulaboh made a plea for help saying that looting had broken out and starvation loomed.
"If within three to four days relief does not arrive, there will be a
starvation disaster that will cause mass deaths," chief police detective Rilo Pambudi said in an e-mail message released by officials in Jakarta.
In Sri Lanka, the toll rose to nearly 18,000 as hundreds of decomposed corpses were pulled from washed out trains, cars and smashed buildings.
Mass burials were again staged as mortuaries were unable to cope with the number of bodies piling up.
But the Sri Lankan air force airlifted former German chancellor Helmut Kohl who was stranded at a holiday home near the southern resort of Galle.
At least 4,000 people were confirmed dead in India's isolated Andaman and Nicobar islands and coastguard officials said the toll on Car Nicobar alone could top 10,000.
Police said they had received no word from dozens of islands in the Andaman and Nicobar chain which stretch over 800 kilometres (500 miles) and were close to the earthquake epicentre.
In southern India, vultures gathered as survivors grimly buried or burnt their dead. The number of dead passed 8,500 Tuesday.
Thousands of foreigners remained missing in Thailand where the official toll was at 1,516 dead.
The missing included about 1,500 Swedes, whose government fears they are dead.
At least 700 foreign tourists are believed to be among those killed in
Thailand.
Survivors were evacuated from stricken areas told of the full horror wrought by waves up to 10 metres (30 feet) high that tore babies from the arms of their parents and carried children and the elderly out to sea.
Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova escaped being swept away by clinging to a palm tree for eight hours at the Thai resort of Khao Lakuntil until she could be rescued, her publicist said.
The 25-year-old Nemcova's British boyfriend was still missing.
"People were screaming and kids were screaming all over the place, screaming 'help, help'. And after a few minutes you didn't hear the kids any more," Nemcova told The New York Daily News from her hospital bed in Thailand.
She suffered a broken pelvis and internal injuries.
In the worst-hit Indian state of Tamil Nadu, fisherman A. Ravi wept as he recalled watching his family, including four children, swept away as his village was flattened.
"We went fishing in the early morning and a few hours later the water started swirling around us and suddenly the level went down so sharply we could see the seabed," said Ravi.
"Then I saw a huge sheet of water going towards the shore...when I got back I found my village under water and my family gone," he said.
Hundreds of rescue ships, helicopters and planes were mobilised to evacuate tourists from wrecked resorts to hospitals already overflowing with the injured and corpses.
The UN's chief disaster relief coordinator Jan Egeland said the biggest emergency operation would be needed after the disaster.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies appealed for 44 million dollars in immediate aid.
Yvette Stevens, UN Assistant Emergency Relief aid coordinator, said the international aid needed for the Indian Ocean was likely to exceed the previous record UN appeal of 1.6 billion dollars for Iraq last year.
But Egeland backed off an apparent attack he made on rich countries on Monday for being "stingy" in their aid donations. The Norwegian official said he had been "misinterpreted"
"The international assistance that has come and been pledged from the United States, Europe and countries from the region has also been very generous," Egeland told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York.
He said his comments had nothing to do with the tsunami disaster effort.
"The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive."
With the United States feeling it had been the target of Egeland's comments, the US secretary of state said "The United States is not stingy" and added "We will do more. I wish that comment hadn't been made." - AFP
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http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stor.../124616/1/.html |
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| Plastick |
TOLL as @ 1016 SST on 29 Dec>>
(All figures are preliminary)
Countries Deaths Injured
Bangladesh 2
East Africa 133*
India 12,419**
Indonesia 35,502 up to 100,000
Malaysia 64 218
Maldives 55
Myanmar 36 45
Sri Lanka 21,715
Thailand 1,538 8,950
Total 68,464 -
Source: Reuters
* This figure includes Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia and Tanzania.
** The figure includes an estimated 7,000 confirmed or presumed killed in India's Andaman and Nicobar islands.
FOREIGNERS DEATH TOLL as @ 0816 SST on 29 Dec>>
Countries Deaths Missing
Austria 5
Australia 8 10
Belgium 2 30
Brazil 2
Canada 3
China - 7
Croatia 1
Czech Republic - 224
Denmark 3 214
Finland 1 200
France 10 18
Germany* 4 100
Israel - 188
Italy 13 100
Japan 9
Netherlands 3
New Zealand 1
Norway 13
Poland 4 43
Portugal - 5
Singapore** 2
South Africa 4 12
South Korea 41 17
Sweden 6 1,500
Switzerland 9
Taiwan 1
Turkey - 26
UK 18
USA 11
Total 174 2,694
Source: Reuters
*Sri Lankan authorities have said they had identified four Germans among the dead, but Germany has yet to confirm the death of any of its citizens.
**Singapore's Foreign Affairs Ministry says 16 Singaporeans are also missing. |
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| Plastick |
| For 1 who asked earlier, it's Indonesia that took the full shock of the earthquake (rs 9) and then triggering tsunamis that rocked the other countried. |
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| Xavier |
| quote: | Originally posted by Plastick
East Africa 133*
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No way!!!!! :eyes: :eyes: |
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| Plastick |
28 Dec 20004: Two small Indian children share a plastic container of water at an emergency camp in the grounds of Santhome Church in Madras. - AFP Photo |
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| Sunsnail |
| This is too sad :( |
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| MiB |
54 swedes dead now and still 1400 missing.. over 400 children =( and there are ppl at phukets airport risking to die from infections still since there is so bad help there.. bah..
the ppl here that has helped now is regular ppl and chartercompanies.. the gouverment has done nothing in 4 days..
heard last night on the news when ppl called home that they had to steal food and water from stoores.. hmm |
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| Jackson |
Wednesday December 29, 10:40 AM
Swedish Olof Carlsson (R) comforts his Thai girlfriend, Oi, and her relatives during the cremation of her relative, who was killed by Sunday's tsunami, in Thap Lamu, about 600 miles south of Bangkok
Wednesday December 29, 10:16 AM
Thai soldiers search for victims of Sunday's tsunami that hit Phi Phi Island, south of Bangkok, December 29, 2004. Holiday group MyTravel says it is still searching for some customers missing in the areas devastated by Sunday's tsunamis and it would cancel its first January departures to the region.
Graphic Image....WARNING!
:( :( :( |
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| MiB |
| quote: | Originally posted by TranceMuzik02
That isn't really the case, however here’s what I have to say from my geology notes:
After the earthquake the ocean is displaced and waves radiate out from the source in all directions. The wave height is between 0.5-5.0 metres, and the wavelength is between 150-250 kilometres, this all depends on the intensity of the displacement of the sea floor. Therefore they are difficult to detect because of their short wave height and long wavelength. Wave periods are between 10-60 minutes. This should remain constant as it travels over the abyssal plain (deep sea floor). When the waves reach the continental slope they slow down and increase in height. When travelling over the continental shelf towards the coast they split into a sequence of waves that can last for several hours. The latter waves are generally the largest, however, 40% of the wave energy is scattered back to the sea. Waves that were 1 metre in the ocean can reach 20 metres when approaching the coast. |
http://www.usgs.com/ just took the info from there.. dunno much about it but since the picture is at alot of newspages all over the world i kinda beleived it... |
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| Dupz |
Just heard on the local news that the death toll is about 70,000, without taking into account the 1,000 or so isolated villages along the coast of Aceh (Sumatra) which havent been heard of since the tsunamis. Toll is expected to go as high as 100,000 (but seeing the previous posts of tallys, starting from 90 deaths and now to 70,000, who knows how far it'll go).. and lets not forget the threat of disease over the coming weeks and months. 500,000 would be a conservative estimate once this is all over.
Australian tourists have returned from Phuket telling stories of how Japanese tourists knew that the waves were coming (due to the tell-tale signs of a rapidly receding tide in the hours before the first hit). Their frantic pleas for evacuation went ignored.... sad...
Apparently, some islands off Sumatra where hit so hard by the initial earthquake that their geographical position has actually changed by up to 20-30 meters!!!... wtf...
The earth was shaken so hard that Boxing day was even shortened in length by 3 microseconds (or some ) due to the earth shaking slightly on its axis.
Planet earth sneezes, and humanity s itself... how piss weak we really are.. |
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| Plastick |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dupz
Apparently, some islands off Sumatra where hit so hard by the initial earthquake that their geographical position has actually changed by up to 20-30 meters!!!... wtf...
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Yep.... I heard of this. It has moved 100feet southwest due to the shock from the earthquake. |
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| Zureal |
If you are able to, donate money..
www.redcross.org
www.unicef.org
credit or phone or get your parents to, get your friends to.
it's that simple.
every dollar can help a life.
this really is something where thoughts and prayers can do little.
money = help.
please donate. |
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