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

This article has an update on that out-of-communication town I mentioned in one of my posts yesterday:

NYTimes< br />
"Just what the situation is in Meulaboh remains uncertain, since the tsunami has apparently washed out all roads leading to the city, leaving it and its 53,000 residents accessible only by air. Video broadcast on local television showed a scene reminiscent of Hiroshima, a vast sea of splintered debris interspersed by only a few standing buildings."


[edit on 29-12-2004 by Banshee]

Is this what we have come to? Thousands of bodies are being dumped in unmarked graves, whole families, hell whole villages have been wiped out and we are bickering over who is giving the most aide. Come on guys try and stay focused on whats important here.

If I'm reading this correctly, the official toll is now over 100,000. Keep in mind that many of the coastal and small island areas have not only yet to be searched... they have yet to even be contacted:

www.thisislondon.com...

"Thailand: 1,700 confirmed dead, including 43 British tourists.
Indonesia: more than 42,000 confirmed dead.
India: nearly 7,000 dead, and many coastal areas including parts of Kerala still to be searched.
Sri Lanka: 22,500 are confirmed dead and there are fears for hundreds of independent British travellers on the east coast."

India has lowered it's death toll from 12,000 to 7,000.

Officials have now reached some of the towns in western sumatra that were knocked out of communication. Though the town of Meulaboh did not lose as many people as I had thought, yesterday, the facts are still grim:

www.cbsnews.com...

"Western Sumatra suffered a double blow in Sunday's disaster, shattered both by the most powerful earthquake in 40 years, and the waves it spawned. The devastated fishing town of Meulaboh was awash with thousands of bodies, bringing Indonesia's toll to 45,268, with 1,240 reported missing, according to the Health Ministry's official count.

"That toll was likely to rise � one official on Tuesday estimated that as many as 10,000 people were dead in Meulaboh alone."

When the initial offering was made no one had an idea what the real extent of the damage was. At this point talk about how stingy the US was on day one is just anti-American propaganda, pure and simple (or its an expression of leftover liberal bitterness from the election).

When Bush found out about the full extent of the damage he sent an entire flotilla to the region. Actions speak louder than words... and especially histrionics.

The Red Cross is now saying that the number is likely to be above 100,000:

Reuters

'"I would not be at all surprised that we will be on 100,000 (deaths) when we know what has happened on the Andaman and Nicobar islands," Peter Rees of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.
"The federation currently puts the death toll at 77,828."


[edit on 29-12-2004 by Banshee]

Isnt it possible that is was NOT an earthquake....

They coulda'v easily made sum bombs explode deep under water and create and earthquake effect and eventually these tsunamis....

Originally posted by Italiano
Isnt it possible that is was NOT an earthquake....

They coulda'v easily made sum bombs explode deep under water and create and earthquake effect and eventually these tsunamis....

No it was an earthquake. From an earlier news article:

Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute, likened the quake's power to detonating a million atomic bombs the size of those dropped on Japan during World War II, and said the shaking was so powerful it even disturbed the Earth's rotation.

Never underestimate the power of Mother Nature.

B.

CBSnews

More aftershocks:
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake IN THE NICOBAR ISLANDS, INDIA REGION has
occurred at:
6.49N 93.26E Depth 30km Mon Dec 27 08:37:38 2004 UTC

A magnitude 6.2 earthquake IN THE NICOBAR ISLANDS, INDIA REGION has
occurred at:
8.78N 93.22E Depth 30km Wed Dec 29 05:56:50 2004 UTC

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And, another earthquake near Japan:
A magnitude 5.6 earthquake IN THE RYUKYU ISLANDS, JAPAN has occurred at:
28.89N 130.44E Depth 8km Wed Dec 29 13:20:25 2004 UTC

(There was one other yesterday, and one near the Aleutians)

100,000 dead and still many missing? How can this be? I hope they hurry and get some aid to these people. So very sad for them! I hope they can get some help before diseases spread all over the world. My heart goes out to them, and I am praying for them. May God give them peace and comfort them. Will these new aftershocks also make a tidal wave/tsunami?

See here for quakes M>5:
earthquake.usgs.gov...

I dont know that anything shy of a major mantle shift would trigger another wave of that nature. So I dont think aftershocks in the 6.0 range are capable of doing that. Without the mantle shifting or opening up a hole the water simply wouldnt be disrupted enough to spawn a wave as large as this past weekends.

Certainly high surf near the epicenters, but not an actual tsunami.

[edit on 29-12-2004 by skippytjc]

There was a M8.1 quake a few days earlier:
earthquake.usgs.gov...

That didn't cause any tidal waves. I think the water needs to be quite shallow for tsunamis to occur from a quake.

These were sent to me by a friend. I do not know if they are genuine, but I have no reason to believe otherwise.









I'm saddened by the bickering about who gave how much aid to whom
Instead of being so trivial, take a moment to reflect on this massive tragedy. I'm not sure if any of the people in these pics would have made it.
It's sad.

And look at their faces! A lot of them are smiling thinking it was just a really neat huge wave. They had no idea.

And look at the little girl on her daddy's shoulders!

Thank you for sharing these images.

They're not genuine, but I think your friend is only simulating what it would have been like. I cannot imagine how terrifying it would be to see a giant tsunami heading for me.

EDIT: I really should be saying I don't think they're genuine, but I could be wrong.

[edit on 29-12-2004 by Indigo_Child]

Holy Crackerjacks!

This article is surreal!

People Still Arriving for Vacations in Phuket

"The Russians don't cancel," Phuket taxi driver Apichart observed dryly, recalling how he had ferried four of them to their beachside hotels on Wednesday. "They have so many problems where they come from, they don't care about tsunamis."

In the smoker's section of the departure lounge of Phuket's small airport, ashtrays overflowed with hundreds of cigarette butts as stressed-out tourists, each with a harrowing story to tell, waited in a cloud of smoke for their flight to board.

In the arrivals section, trolleys were piled high with orange stretchers, Red Cross parcels from Finland, bundles of blankets and rolls of white linen.

But it was business as usual in one surreal corner of the tourism industry: just before landing at Phuket, the pilot of Cunliffe's Thai Airways flight told his less than 30 passengers, "In Phuket, the weather is cloudy but otherwise fine."

Originally posted by AceOfBase

So that means you don't have a link and that you can't back up what you're saying. Fox News has warped your mind and your perception of the UN and probably the rest of the world.

Ace....We have had several threads, in these same forums dealing with the shady deals and the money that the UN was making from OFF.... from Anan, to his son and everyone in between, including Russia, France, China and a few others. If you do a search, I am sure you will find those threads.

Anyways, even as many people in these forums, and many nations in the world are now wasting their time bashing at each other, at their countries, and everything else you can think of, we are still having earthquakes which seem to point that what happened in SE Asia could just be the beginning.

Perhaps if these same countries would investigate the possibility of more earthquakes like the ones that caused the tsunamies they will lessen the deaths that we might have in the near future.

At this moment I am just hoping that nothing else happens.

[edit on 29-12-2004 by Muaddib]

Swedish Boy, Dad Reunited After Tsunami

PHUKET, Thailand - A Swedish toddler was reunited with his weeping father in a Thai hospital Wednesday, days after the 18-month-old was found sitting alone on a roadside in the aftermath of the tsunami disaster. The boy's mother is among some 5,000 people still missing in Thailand.

Hannes Bergstroem, his face scratched and pocked with mosquito bites and his hand bandaged, looked bemused as his father choked up with emotion. The father, also scratched and bruised, lay in a hospital bed, holding Hannes with ballons around them.

Hannes was found alone on a roadside near a Thai beach resort Sunday night and he was taken by helicopter to a hospital for treatment. The hospital staff posted his photo on the Internet Monday in an effort to locate his family.

His uncle, who spotted the photo, claimed the boy Tuesday and set up the reunion with the father, Marko Karkkainen, at a hospital on the southern Thai island of Phuket where both father and son were receiving treatment.
Hope