DISASTER IN ASIA - [updated!]
BBC NEWS: VIDEO AND AUDIO
See the devastation the tidal
waves left behind
[updated Tuesday Dec 28th, 2004 at 14:30:00 EST]
Latest news:
- Sri Lanka bears brunt of wave
toll rising 28,400+ feared dead
- epicentrum Aceh on Sumatra – extensive damage
Australian relief is mounting
- India east coast hard hit 12,000+ victims
- Thailand 6,000+ missing feared dead
mainly Scandinavians and 4,500 deaths
- worst Asia quake in 100 yrs
- quake 9.0 scale of Richter [USGS]
LATEST BREAKING NEWS:
- more than 125,000+ confirmed deaths
- Sri Lanka 28,400+
- India 12,000+ includes Andaman & Nicobar Islands
all survivors leave Andaman
- Indonesia 80,000+ Isolated Aceh Sumatra SW
coast city Meulaboh completely demolished
- CATASTROPHE feared 40,000+ deaths within first 15 min.
USGS website QUAKE 9.0 scale
Reuters news
Be Liberal, Be Free Especially Amongst Family And Friends
[WILL BE UPDATED FOR BREAKING NEWS ED.]
LATEST VIDEO NEWS REPORTS:
REUTERS Television World Channel:
Available VIDEO reports
- Tsunami Devastation
- Waves Hit Hotel
- Mass Burial Of Tsunami Victims
- Tsunami Survivors Tell Of Horror
- Tourists Lost In Deadly Tsunami
- Total Devastation In Aceh
- Aftermath Of Deadly Quake
- Recovering The Bodies
END OF BREAKING NEWS - END OF BREAKING NEWS - END OF BREAKING NEWS
BBC news –
In pictures: Asian quake disaster
MY RECOMMENDATION …
Excellent In Depth References
8.9 EARTHQUAKE,
KILLER TSUNAMI HITS SUNDAY
by cosa nostradamus [07:30:00 EST]
BBC news: At-a-glance Countries hit
- link to MAP and In Depth Asia Quake Disaster
SOUTH ASIAN LATEST
YAHOO news - Death toll from tidal waves
mounts to nearly 40,000 costliest disaster ever
Mourners in Sri Lanka buried their dead with bare hands Tuesday while displaced and hungry islanders in Indonesia turned to looting following explosive tidal waves that the United Nations said may be history's worst natural disaster.
About 40,000 people were dead, and officials expected the toll to rise further.
Eleven nations in a band of destruction spanning from Southeast Asia to Africa tallied corpses as they filled tropical beaches and choked hospital morgues. The International Red Cross feared malaria and cholera may add to the toll, as aid agencies mounted what U.N. officials said would be the world's biggest relief effort.
Idyllic palm-fringed beaches across southern Asia were transformed into scenes of death and devastation by the waves unleashed by the world's biggest earthquake in 40 years that struck off the Indonesian island of Sumatra early on Sunday.
Two-thirds of the Maldives capital, Male, was flooded and officials voiced anxiety for the fate of dozens of low-lying, palm-ringed coral atolls crowded with international tourists for the Christmas holiday season.
- capital Male 2/3 flooded - 5 ft high
- Seychelles also reports damage
- Oman and East Africa expect flood swell
INDIA HIT HARD – 6,000+ VICTIMS FEARED DEAD
CUDDALORE, India, (AFP) - The death toll in southern India from tidal waves that battered much of Asia in the wake of a huge earthquake climbed to nearly 4,280 as many people fled shorelines fearing more killer tsunami.
Panic swept the Tamil Nadu coastal fishing village of Talangubay Monday as fear spread of new tidal wave hits and policemen herded people back from the beach where they had been looking for missing relatives and friends.
Fresh tremors hit the Andaman islands early Monday registering 5.5 to 6.0 on the Richter scale, said H.P. Shukla, meteorologist at the Indian Meteorological Department. "We haven't got any report about damages. We don't have any communication about this from Andaman."
INDIAN ANDAMAN & NICOBAR ISLANDS HIT HARD
MAJOR DAMAGE AND CASUALTIES UP TO 5,000 DEATHS
Death toll Andaman and Nicobar crosses 4,500
By IndiaExpress Bureau
The toll in the Andaman and Nicobar, hit by a massive Tsunami wave on Sunday morning, has climbed to more than 4,500 with worst hit Car Nicobar and the Nancowrie group of islands still inaccessible.
Latest reports fear for 15,000+ persons missing
INDONESIAN SUMATRA, SOUTHWEST ACEH CATASTROPHE
UNKNOWN EXTEND OF DAMAGE AND CASUALTIES DUE TO ISOLATION
Indonesia catastrophe feared 20,000+ deaths
Indonesia leadership opens up hostile Aceh province for immediate and urgent International Aid. The South West part of Aceh is still isolated, a major catastrophe is feared with up to 20,000 dead in Indonesia alone. Urgent appeal for Relief Aid.
Located nearest to the epicentrum of the 9.0 quake and taking the brunt of the water masses within minutes, the government now fears a major disaster has come upon the people. The capital city Banda Aceh heavily damaged and the water came 3-4 miles inland from the shore line.
MAP of ACEH province of Indonesia
The Jakarta Post - Banda Aceh/Jayapura/Medan
Death toll from Asian quake, tsunami tops 23,300
COLOMBO (AFP): The death toll in from an earthquake off Indonesia and tsunamis that it unleashed passed on 23,300 Monday with officials in nine countries reporting deaths.
The toll soared as the military and Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka reported that nearly 11,000 people, including 70 foreigners, had been killed in Sunday's disaster.
The dead included at least 6,289 in southern India with more victims expected, officials said. Among them were some 3,000 in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, close to the epicenter of the quake and 2,790 in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, according to police.
In Indonesia, at least 4,491 people were killed as the country took the full force of the huge earthquake and tsunami that swallowed entire coastal villages.
RELIEF EFFORTS UNDERWAY
FOR RELIEF SUPPORT:
TSUNAMI HITS SOUTH ASIA
HOW YOU CAN HELP
LINKS To This Story added
NEW: Indonesia - South Asia
Earthquake and Tsunami:
OCHA Situation Report No.3
This report is developed by OCHA Office in Indonesia and based on information provided by the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG), National Coordination Board for Natural Disaster Management (Bakornas) and Media reports.
Included link to: Situation MAP - South Asia Earthquake and Tsunami.
All large relief agencies are now in region for assessment and setting up coordination and logistics support with gov’t agencies. Declared disaster areas are getting International Support and Funds. Europe, Japan, Russia and US have vowed aid.
Coastal areas in India and Indonesia lacking any communication. Effort is being made to get helicopters in place. In all, the toll of deaths and wounded is still rising. Many coastal areas crowded with foreign tourists due to holiday season, casualties unknown. Displaced persons on Sri Lanka and India tops a million each.
First focus on relief effort will be
- Water
- Food
- Shelter
- Health
- Sanitation
- Disease prevention
Massive rescue efforts as Asian quake and
tsunami toll soars near 23,000
COLOMBO (AFP) - Massive rescue operations were scrambled along Asia's devastated coastlines as the death toll from a powerful earthquake and the giant tsunamis it unleashed rose to almost 23,000 and hopes faded for many thousands more still missing.
Horrific scenes of destruction met emergency teams as bodies piled up by the hour from Sri Lanka to India, Indonesia to Thailand, while international aid agencies rushed food and clothing to hundreds of thousands left homeless.
Hundreds of rescue ships, helicopters and planes were mobilised to evacuate tourists from wrecked resorts and airlift stricken victims to hospitals already overflowing with the wounded and corpses.
RELATED STORIES:
NASA - The Digital Tectonic Activity Map (DTAM)
is a new visualization tool for both researcher and educator
alike to better understand tectonic activity of our planet
for the past 1 million years
USGS: Warnings Could Have
Saved Thousands in Asia
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A warning center such as those used around the Pacific could have saved most of the thousands of people who died in Asia's earthquake and tsunamis.
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.
Dive News
Japanese Shipwreck Adds to Evidence of
Great Cascadia Earthquake in 1700
USGS PDF file:
Natural Hazards in the Hawaiian Coastal Zone
Tsunami tidal wave explained
.
Yahoo news
Indonesia Quake Sparks Fatal Tidal Waves
Magnitude 8.5 on scale of Richter!
Reuters
JAKARTA, Indonesia - One of the world's most powerful earthquakes in years rocked northern Indonesia on Sunday and launched tidal waves that slammed shorelines across Asia, killing some 300 in Sri Lanka and almost 100 in Indonesia, officials said.
The U.S.G.S. said a magnitude-8.5 quake -- one capable of massive damage -- struck off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra at 8 a.m. Sunday.
Soon after, immense waves crashed into several countries, and aftershocks in the magnitude-7 range were seen, the USGS said, raising the possibility of a large regional death toll.
Waves crashed into coastal villages over a wide area of Sri Lanka -- some 1,000 miles west of the quake's epicenter -- killing some 300 people and displacing thousands of others.
[Updated [Tuesday Dec 28th, 2004 at 14:30:00 EST]
FT Europe -
Thousands killed by quake in South Asia - Latest
RING OF FIRE
Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands, lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire where plate boundaries intersect and volcanoes regularly erupt.
The worst affected area was Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province, where 1,400 had been killed. More than 200 prisoners escaped from a jail when the tsunami knocked down its walls.
According to a geophysicist at U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado: “The earthquake was the world's biggest since 1964 of multiple earthquakes along the same faultline. It was the fifth-largest earthquake since 1900.”
"These big earthquakes, when they occur in shallow water, ... basically slosh the ocean floor ... and it's as if you're rocking water in the bathtub and that wave can travel basically throughout the ocean."
The world's worst tsunami in recent history struck on July 17, 1998, when three waves ripped through Papua New Guinea's northwest coast, killing 2,500 persons.
USGS first strong quake Dec. 23, 2004
USGS
Magnitude 8.1 -
NORTH OF MACQUARIE ISLAND
2004 December 23 14:59:04 UTC
Born a Liberal, voting Liberal, dying as a Liberal: á la Vie á la Mort