NEWS: 9.0 Quake, Tsunamis Strike SE Asia - 275,000+ Dead

Tsunami almost levels island

RESCUERS began reaching India's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands today, two days after a devastating tsunami, to find barely a third of residents on one were still alive.

On another, only piles of rubble and debris remained of the housing blocks of an air force base, a hundred officers and their families swept out to sea by waves higher than the two storey buildings in which they had sought shelter.

There has still been no contact at all with several of the islands, including one of the biggest, Grand Nicobar, which was closest to the epicentre of Sunday's earthquake which caused a tsunami that killed at least 36,000 across Asia.

Link

Thailand's authorities have said more than 700 people have been retrieved from the Khao Lak resort in northern Phuket following Sunday's sea surges.

Many of the bodies have been pulled out from rooms of the Sofitel hotel, popular with French tourists.

BBC Link

HAHA! I just had the most wonderful thought. What if there was this big meeting of all the NWO's top guys, down on this little island somewhere, a few thousand of the most influential, most dangerous men and women in the world. I mean, a real who's who of global dominators. Business and military, brokers and bankers.
They're all like, "lets get together and have a little suaree before the big ball." And so a huge number of the shadow puppeteers got together to celebrate our stupidity, and had a gay old time for a day, in a very exclusive(military controlled) paradise, before..WHAM! They were washed out to sea before they could put down their martinis.

Then I started wondering, who pulled that one off?

Food for thought -- If we believe it enough, won't that make it so?

Sorry for the dual post below, I don't know how it happened, but I edited to remove text identical to that in this post.

[edit on 28-12-2004 by WyrdeOne]

oh my gawd oh my gawd oh my gawd

from the bbc article sanctum linked to...

news.bbc.co.uk...

Bejkhajorn Saithong, 39, told Reuters news agency he was searching for the body of his wife at the Ban Khao Lak Hotel, where body parts are jutting from the wreckage.

"My son is crying for his mother. I think this is her. I recognise her hand, but I'm not sure," he said.

oh my gawd

UPDATE: Death toll and other information.

Indonesia: 27,000 dead and 1 million homeless
Sri Lanka: 19,000 dead and 1.5 million homeless
India: 16,000 dead and 30,000 missing and 1 million homeless
Thailand: 2000 dead
Somali: 100+ and thousands homeless
Malasiya: 65 dead
Maldives: 59 dead, many islands under water and 200 without communications
Burma: 90 dead, 17 villages hit and 200 homeless
Tanazia: 10 dead
Seychelles: 3 dead
Bangladesh: 2 dead
Kenya: 1 dead

Other countries hit: Mauritius, reunion

Total reported death toll: 62, 489 and rising
Total countries affected: 14

This has the to be the worst tragedy the world has ever seen. A global disaster indeed.

[edit on 28-12-2004 by Indigo_Child]

Latest,

Death toll
Sri Lanka: 12,909
India: 8523
Indonesia: 21,000
Thailand: 1439
Malaysia: 65
Burma: 90
Maldives: 55
Bangladesh: 2
Somalia 100
Tanzania 10


Total: 44,193

Link

Wyder, yes I think Maldives death toll is being undereported:

THE Maldives is made up of close to 2000 small coral islands whose total area is 298 sq. kilometres, making it the smallest independent country in Asia.

It has a population of about 2,50,000. Most of the people are either of Sinhalese or Indian or Arab descent and nearly all are Muslims. Divehi, a Sinhalese dialect, is the main language.

There are not many ways of earning a living in a country situated in the middle of an ocean. Most of the people are engaged in farming or employed in the tourism industry. Some grow coconuts or make garments for export. The Maldives is a founder-member of SAARC (South Asian Association Regional Co-operation) of which India is a member state.

There was a spot of trouble in the Maldives in 1988 when mercenaries from Sri Lanka tried to overthrow the Government. The government asked India for help and Indian paratroopers soon restored order in the country. Now the only invasion that the Maldives fears is an invasion by the sea. Flooding occurs periodically in some islands and if the sea level rises due to global warming, some of the islands may go underwater permanently.

The capital of Maldives is Male.

I cannot quite fathom how such low lying islands, where so many have been devestated by the tsunamis, would have such a low death toll. I personally think the real toll is probably running into the thousands.

[edit on 28-12-2004 by Indigo_Child]

Tsunami death toll over 55,000

THE confirmed death toll from the massive earthquake and tidal waves that devastated much of Asia's coastline passed 55,000 today, with officials warning the figure was likely to rise steeply.

In Indonesia, the government's disaster relief centre said at least 27,174 were killed after the country took the full force of the huge earthquake and tidal waves that swallowed entire coastal villages.

Indonesia's health ministry said at least 27,174 had been killed in the quake as the true scale of the catastrophe becomes clear.

Link

Indonesia, Sri Lanka hardest hit by tsunamis

The confirmed death toll from the massive earthquake and tidal waves that devastated much of Asia's coastline passed 55,000 Tuesday, with officials warning the figure was likely to rise steeply.

Link

According to my news outlet (NOS Teletext), governments in Indonesia and Sri Lanka both expect to have each 25,000 deaths due to the Tsunamis (and not the after effect). A Dutch newsreporter in Banda Aceh said that the smell of corpses is everywhere.

30,000 people are missing on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and they already have 7,000 deaths.

This disaster may reach above 100,000 deaths, especially if we take the after effects in consideration. The numbers are getting worse each day.

Blobber








[edit on 28-12-2004 by Blobber]

[edit on 28-12-2004 by Blobber]

Yes, unfortunately, it may far exceed 100,000 making it nearly the 2nd biggest human disaster of the last century.

Indonesia: 40,000
Sri Lanka: 40,000
India: 30,000
Thailand: 2000-10,000

I cannot comment on the others

Projected Death toll: 120,000

Let's hope I am wrong.

Indigo_Child, any chance of a link?

Sanc'.

Originally posted by sanctum
Indigo_Child, any chance of a link?

Sanc'.

The "projected death toll" is my own estimation.

Just found this two sites in a hebrew newspaper.

Patient Names - All Phuket Hospitals


Phuket Inter Hospital - Looking for her family







[edit on 28-12-2004 by Riwka]

Originally posted by Riwka
Just found this two sites in a hebrew newspaper.

Patient Names - All Phuket Hospitals


Phuket Inter Hospital - Looking for her family


[edit on 28-12-2004 by Riwka]

Regarding the little boy,
The good news is that he has been reunited with his Swedish grandma. The bad news is that his father lies wounded in a different hospital, and his mother is still missing (CNN).

Blobber


[edit on 28-12-2004 by Blobber]

Here's some real food for thought. It is a list of earthquakes for the las several hundred years. Note all the quakes in the US. Like the usual CA. AK and HI, as well asMissouri, South Carolina, Quebec, Nava Scotia and Nevada :

Magnitudes of Significant Earthquakes

The USGS Earthquake Magnitude Working Group compiled a list of significant, past earthquakes for which reliable magnitude estimates are available. This list is not static and will be reviewed annually by the National Earthquake Information Center and revised as new research and results become available. (May take some time to load.)

earthquake.usgs.gov...

Word from an island near Thailand (unsure of the island name). We have been waiting to hear from a woman who works for my brother-in-law here in Oklahoma. I didn't want to say anything until we found out whether she was alive or not. She got married last week and they honeymooned down there. She called in this morning and spoke with my brother-in-law. They are alive, but they are being told to stay in the hotel room until they are called with confirmation that they have a flight. She was told they needed to do this because "there is so much disease in the air". She has also been told that what she can see from her window is (and excuse the uncertainty here but she is of Asian descent and has a strong accent so my brother-in-law is uncertain he heard her right) - 14,000 bodies floating in the water right at the shoreline. Now, my sister thinks she said 4,000 - my sister didn't talk to her - I think my sister is trying to make the number make sense.

Anyway, that's the word from (and I quote the lady) "an island that didn't get hit as bad".

INDONESIA'S death toll leapt to more than 27,000 today as desperate SOS calls came from an obliterated coastline which is emerging as ground zero for a seismic cataclysm unleashed on Asia.

Great tracts of land remained under surging tides on the northwest tip of Sumatra island, 150km from the epicentre of the natural disaster which has claimed more than 55,000 lives, half of them in Indonesia.

As night fell three full days after the quake there was still no contact with many parts of the worst-affected area.Officials predicted the death toll could even triple as the full picture becomes clear

Link

As I read your link, I noticed something interesting. The rebels and the army have stopped fighting. They've declared a ceasefire. So..one can say that some good may come out of all the death. I wonder, do you think it's a good trade? Posters, would you trade what might amount to temporary peace and cooperation, for all that death? Keep in mind the peace could be lasting..

A live broadcast from the UN on sky news with each affected countries ambassador speaking out to the press. The Maldives ambassador said that out of the 200 islands, 120+ were flooded and more than a dozen severely flooded, possibly completely under water.

He said the population was 300,000+

So I think our suspicion of Maldives under reporting it's death toll maybe well founded after all. Maldives may well be the most worst affected of them all.

[edit on 28-12-2004 by Indigo_Child]

Maldives are really badly hurted. Officials from Maldives are reconsidering to pull out inhabitants from some of low laing islands after tsunami damage:

Waves a meter or more high swept completely across many islands. They extended over as much as half of Male, a relatively large island of 1.75 square kilometers,(0.7 square mile) pouring down the narrow, sandy streets and dashing against buildings including the president's office.

Kandolhudhoo, an island of 3,500 people in the northern atoll of Raa which had spent US$ million dollars on land reclamation over the past five years, was "uninhabitable" after being completely covered by water, Assistant Island Chief Mohammed Ali Fulhu told the Haveeru newspaper.

Residents were evacuated. Rather than trying to rebuild their island, the people would probably have to start new lives elsewhere, Fulhu said.

full article