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Tidal Waves Kill More Than 120,000 in Asia
From here...
:eek: Tidal Waves Kill More Than 3,800 in Asia World - AP Asia By LELY T. DJUHARI, Associated Press Writer JAKARTA, Indonesia - The world's most powerful earthquake in 40 years triggered massive tidal waves that slammed into villages and seaside resorts across Asia on Sunday, killing more than 3,800 people in six countries. Tourists, fishermen, homes and cars were swept away by walls of water up to 20 feet high that swept across the Bay of Bengal, unleashed by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake centered off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. In Sri Lanka, 1,000 miles west of the epicenter, more than 2,150 people were killed, the prime minister's office said. Indian officials said as many as 1,130 died along the southern coast. At least 408 died on Sumatra from floods and collapsing buildings. Another 168 were confirmed dead in Thailand, 28 in Malaysia and 2 in Bangladesh. But officials expected the death toll to rise dramatically, with hundreds reported missing and all communications cut off to Sumatran towns closest to the epicenter. Hundreds of bodies were found on various beaches along India's southern state of Tamil Nadu, and more were expected to be washed in by the sea, officials said. |
Jeez... sitting here in my landlocked home, this kind of thing is really hard to fathom.
Nature is sucky sometimes. |
Reuters is now reporting over 6300 as of 1340 GMT.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ts_nm/quake_dc |
Wow. One of the unfortunate things of living in those areas, is that you're on sea level. Great places but if nature decides to shake irregularly, well, you got problems.
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I'm worried. My favorite Indian girls on this "webcam site";) are in Thailand. :(
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I'm really worried. It's the Christmas holidays, and I have friends who went on vacations to Phuket and India. I hope they're OK.
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Yahoo now reporting "more than 7000 dead"
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...sia_earthquake God help those people. :( |
Originally Posted by DVD Polizei
Wow. One of the unfortunate things of living in those areas, is that you're on sea level. Great places but if nature decides to shake irregularly, well, you got problems.
(Not trying to be callous here. Just the truth. Give any people freedom and they will make themselves wealthier.) |
Originally Posted by movielib
Much worse than living at sea level is being poor. Wealthier is healthier.
(Not trying to be callous here. Just the truth. Give any people freedom and they will make themselves wealthier.) How do you measure wealth? By money? By how many TV's a person has? I know this is hard to conceive, but in some cultures, money is not as important as enjoying friendships or truly living. |
First the 8.5 quake then the tidal wave... :( I know a couple of people down there and hope they're ok.
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Originally Posted by DoogieHowser
-ohbfrank-
How do you measure wealth? By money? By how many TV's a person has? I know this is hard to conceive, but in some cultures, money is not as important as enjoying friendships or truly living. By the way he said "Wealthier is healthier" meaning the people with the money will probably get a doctor and help faster than people without. Jeeze like to argue for no reason? Fox News is saying over 9000 dead now. Holy shit, marry freaking christmas! |
I wish there was some video of the Tsunami wave event. A tremendous act of mother nature. Sad that so many people died, but scientifically, amazing.
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Originally Posted by movielib
Much worse than living at sea level is being poor. Wealthier is healthier.
(Not trying to be callous here. Just the truth. Give any people freedom and they will make themselves wealthier.) I'd also argue that the existence of a beachfront resort suggests capitalism and a substantial amount of wealth. |
Thank god - my friends vacationing in India just contacted me back, and they're fine. But they are in the affected state of Kerala, where at least 121 people have been killed. It's chaos right now over there, but I'm very glad they're OK.
*EDIT* the death toll in Kerala is now over 300. yikes. |
Total death toll from the tsunami as of right now: 11,300
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ts_nm/quake_dc |
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People as far away as east africa have been killed by tsunamis.
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Holy shit, how the hell did the waves get that big?
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Dude. 8.9 quake.
That's huge. It's amazing there's been nothing on the hawaiian or california coast. |
You know, it's funny. The article mentions the rarity of magnitude 8 and over quakes, and then goes on to mention the 8+ magnitude between australia and antarctica two days ago, the 8.5 in Japan a year ago, and the over 8 a year before that somewhere in that general vicinity.
That doesn't seem all that rare to me. For the record, I believe Chile had the world's largest quake early in the 20th century. It measured around a 9.5 or greater. I will dig up the link. |
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List of largest quakes in history http://earthquake.usgs.gov/docs/sign_eqs.htm
Chile registered as 9.5 in the 1950s. I was a little off. |
List of aftershocks including yesterday's sumatran quake:
6.3 2004/12/26 11:05:01 13.542 92.877 10.0 ANDAMAN ISLANDS, INDIA REGION MAP 6.2 2004/12/26 10:19:30 13.455 92.791 10.0 ANDAMAN ISLANDS, INDIA REGION MAP 5.5 2004/12/26 10:18:13 8.950 93.730 10.0 NICOBAR ISLANDS, INDIA REGION MAP 6.5 2004/12/26 09:20:01 8.867 92.382 10.0 NICOBAR ISLANDS, INDIA REGION MAP 5.8 2004/12/26 07:38:25 13.119 93.051 10.0 ANDAMAN ISLANDS, INDIA REGION MAP 5.7 2004/12/26 07:07:10 10.336 93.756 10.0 ANDAMAN ISLANDS, INDIA REGION MAP 5.7 2004/12/26 06:21:58 10.623 92.323 10.0 ANDAMAN ISLANDS, INDIA REGION MAP 7.3 2004/12/26 04:21:26 6.901 92.952 10.0 NICOBAR ISLANDS, INDIA REGION 6.1 2004/12/26 03:08:42 13.808 92.974 10.0 ANDAMAN ISLANDS, INDIA REGION MAP 5.9 2004/12/26 02:59:12 3.177 94.259 10.0 OFF THE WEST COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA MAP 6.0 2004/12/26 02:51:59 12.511 92.592 10.0 ANDAMAN ISLANDS, INDIA REGION MAP 5.8 2004/12/26 02:36:06 12.139 93.011 10.0 ANDAMAN ISLANDS, INDIA REGION MAP 5.8 2004/12/26 02:34:50 4.104 94.184 10.0 OFF THE WEST COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA MAP 6.0 2004/12/26 02:22:02 8.838 92.532 10.0 NICOBAR ISLANDS, INDIA REGION MAP 5.8 2004/12/26 02:15:58 12.375 92.509 10.0 ANDAMAN ISLANDS, INDIA REGION MAP 5.9 2004/12/26 01:48:47 5.393 94.423 10.0 NORTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA MAP 8.9 2004/12/26 00:58:51 3.298 95.779 10.0 OFF THE WEST COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA |
Reuters is now reporting almost 10,000 killed. Jeez.
edit: Just saw the 11,300....double Jeez |
Wow. My sister is in India right now, but I know she is just fine as they are on the Western side of the country.
11,000 though. Holy shit. |
This news is sad and shocking. I mean I can't imagine 11,000 people being killed like that. They said the "luckily" the wave hit in the early morning <i>before</i> the beaches were full of people.
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The problem with soemthing like this is all the aftershocks are severe enough to spawn more tidal waves.
Some of the aftershocks were as big as the Loma Prieta quake in '89. (7.1) |
Its up to 12,300 and counting!!! -ohbfrank-
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Originally Posted by DoogieHowser
-ohbfrank-
How do you measure wealth? By money? By how many TV's a person has? I know this is hard to conceive, but in some cultures, money is not as important as enjoying friendships or truly living. I'd like to see everyone have the degree of freedom (both personal and economic) which we have enjoyed for a few hundred years. I suspect we'd see them get richer until they also romanticize the good old days when they had a life expectancy of forty and lived in abject poverty "in harmony with nature." What makes you think that being wealthier makes it harder to "enjoy friendships" or "truly live"? Are they somehow mutually exclusive? |
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Originally Posted by vhgong
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Originally Posted by ChiTownAbs, Inc
Wow. Where did you find these pictures??
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Those pics look fake...that guy would be getting thousands from the papers for those shots instead of posting them on p-base
And as far as the whole rich/poor nonsence that someone brought up...1000's more will die from disease and lack of clean drinking water and inefficient rescue operations because these countries are piss poor than would have died in the US...end of story |
BTW...for the guy who said rich/poor has nothing to do with it...
Warnings could have saved thousands: USGS December 27, 2004 - 6:22AM A warning centre such as those used around the Pacific could have saved most of the thousands of people who died in Asia's earthquake and tsunamis, a US Geological Survey official said. None of the countries most severely affected - including India, Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka - had a tsunami warning mechanism or tidal gauges to alert people to the wall of water that followed a massive earthquake, said Waverly Person of the USGS National Earthquake Information Centre. "Most of those people could have been saved if they had had a tsunami warning system in place or tide gauges," he said yesterday. "And I think this will be a lesson to them," he said, referring to the governments of the devastated countries. Person also said that because large tsunamis, or seismic sea waves, are extremely rare in the Indian Ocean, people were never taught to flee inland after they felt the tremors of an earthquake. Tsunami warning systems and tide gauges exist around the Pacific Ocean, for the Pacific Rim as well as South America. The United States has such warning centres in Hawaii and Alaska operated by the US Geological Survey. But none of these monitors the Indian Ocean region. The 8.9-magnitude underwater quake - one of the most powerful in history - off the Indonesian island of Sumatra devastated southern Asia and triggered waves of up to 10 metres high. US seismologists said it was unlikely the Indian Ocean region would be hit any time soon by a similarly devastating tsunami because it takes an enormously strong earthquake to generate one. "That's really what has created all of these problems - is that the earthquake is just so massive," said Dan Blakeman, a USGS earthquake analyst. But Person said governments should instruct people living along the coast to move after a quake. Since a tsunami is generated at the source of an underwater earthquake, there is usually time - from 20 minutes to two hours - to get people away as it builds in the ocean. "People along the Japanese coasts, along the coasts of California - people are taught to move away from the coasts. But a lot of these people in the area where this occurred - they probably had no kind of lessons or any knowledge of tsunamis because they are so rare." A major tsunami, a Japanese word meaning "harbor wave," occurs in the Pacific Ocean about once a decade. It is generated by vertical movement during an earthquake and sometimes incorrectly referred to as a tidal wave, according to the Web site of the US National Geophysical Data Centre. Because of the lack of monitoring mechanisms, the US Geological Survey had no access to government or scientific information in the areas affected by the latest tsunamis. "I've been talking to our tsunami people and they have no contact with any of these nations on the tsunamis," said Person. "We don't have anyone there. We get it from the press." http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/War...oneclick=true# |
Originally Posted by Tommy Ceez
Those pics look fake...that guy would be getting thousands from the papers for those shots instead of posting them on p-base
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This is aweful!
it's like the Day after Tommorrow and the Perfect storm come to live tenfold! |
Any video of the wave?
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(CNN) -- A celebrity interior decorator vacationing in Sri Lanka said Monday that all he could see was "utter devastation" in the wake of a deadly tsunami that slammed the island.
"We were completely devastated yesterday morning," Nate Berkus told CNN. "There was absolutely no warning." Berkus, a regular contributor to "The Oprah Winfrey Show," said he and a friend were sleeping in a beachfront cottage at Arugam Bay on Sri Lanka's eastern coast when he heard a loud noise and the roof was ripped off. Berkus, 33, said they were swept into the sea along with debris, animals and other people. The two grabbed a telephone pole, he said, but lost their grips when a second large wave hit. Berkus told CNN that he climbed onto the roof of a home; his friend was missing. Berkus said he and about 50 other survivors -- tourists and locals -- spent the rest of the night in a field, but were without water and food. Many of the group were injured, including a pregnant woman who had broken ribs, he said. Members of the Sri Lankan army had taken a few of the injured away in helicopters, he said, and told the rest of the group that other helicopters would arrive at sunrise. "It's just been utter devastation. Bodies everywhere," Berkus said. "I'm very scraped up, but luckily I'm OK ... against that kind of force of nature, there was nothing any of us could do." Berkus said that lost everything he had with him. "I'm sitting here with nothing -- no passport, no money, no anything, in shorts that somebody gave me ... the bottom line is, we desperately need help here." Berkus is the founder of Nate Berkus Associates in Chicago, Illinois. He has made at least 20 appearances on "Oprah. Crazy what mother nature can do. |
Originally Posted by Tommy Ceez
Those pics look fake...that guy would be getting thousands from the papers for those shots instead of posting them on p-base
Brianr |
Originally Posted by Tommy Ceez
Those pics look fake...that guy would be getting thousands from the papers for those shots instead of posting them on p-base
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