Biggest earthquake in 40 years hits Southeast Asia

[Pekka]

Gangerolf, glad to hear your buddies are safe

They report now over 45 000 dead and rising..

[Gangerolf]

Video of the second wave, Phuket, Thailand: http://www.dagbladet.no/download/tsunamiphuket.wmv

****

[The Mad Monk]

The survivors' stories


Texted home ... girl diver Amy

FULL NEWS INDEX

AMY HARDING

By ANDY RUSSELL

A BRITISH survivor was hit by the killer tsunami while diving 50ft below water.

The force of the monster wave threw Amy Harding and fellow scuba divers halfway up a hillside on the Thai island of Ko Phi Phi.

Amy, 24, raised the alarm with her family in the UK by sending them TEXT messages on her mobile phone.

But for more than a day she was frantic with worry about boyfriend Evya, who had disappeared.

Yesterday she was finally rescued from the hillside — and discovered that Israeli Evya was safe and well.

Diving instructor Amy, from Neston on the Wirral, Cheshire, was taking a group on a regular dive when they were churned up in the massive current and washed up the hillside.

They managed to scramble on to a hotel roof where they waited for help, surrounded by water.

Brother Mike, 27, received her first text, sent at 2.10pm local time on Sunday. The trainee accountant was spending Christmas at home with their parents Frank, 78, and Elisabeth, 62.

The text read: “Island hit by tidal wave. Am OK. Was diving. Caught in major current, part of island destroyed. Not seen Evya. Sat on a hotel roof with ocean either side. Am OK though. x”

Mike said: “I phoned her back straight away. She was very shaken.”

In a second message sent at 5.17pm local time Amy said: “Think we’ll stay up here overnight and get bitten to death instead. So worried about Evya.

"At least I’m safe here. Love you all.”

In a third message, at 10.50pm, Amy said: “I’m so worried, so scared. Here till daylight and then risk going down. I’m so worried about Evya.”

Yesterday Amy was rescued by Thai emergency teams and taken to a hotel.

Mike said: “She was crying and desperately searching for Evya. Then she spotted him helping survivors — she was absolutely ecstatic.”

Mum Elisabeth said: “Amy just told me she was safe, well and very tired. I burst into tears.”

Andrew Oliver, 38, and partner Louise, 37, from Bournemouth, were due to go diving off Thailand but had to cancel because the boat was full.

Many who took the trip are missing feared dead.

British nurse Karen Goh almost drowned in Thailand — then immediately began helping other victims.

Karen, 38, from Wolverhampton, and Malaysian hubby Cheh were swamped on the beach in Patong, Phuket. She said: “It was like being in a washing machine.

“People had stomachs broken open, limbs smashed. I’d injured my foot but tried to staunch their wounds.

“Eventually I moved to a higher building — and found my husband.”

Brenda Castle, 61, from North London, was trapped in a hotel basement near the Sri Lankan capital Colombo when the huge wave struck.

Brenda, on holiday at the Tangerine Beach Hotel with husband Jeff, 61, said: “I saw a massive amount of swirling muddy water heading for me. I thought I was going to die.”

Thirty terrified Brits were marooned on a tiny hillock near Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka yesterday — where 10,200 died — and surrounded by CROCODILES.

The holidaymakers, on a diving trip, fled to the high ground when the first wave hit. But they were left stranded.

Michelle Mills, 36, a marketing manager from Bromsgrove, Worcs, is there with partner Stewart Porter, 32.

She used the group’s only mobile to call home saying 28 were badly hurt and three were in life-threatening condition.

Her brother, policeman Edward Mills, 37, said: “They are trapped on a tiny patch of ground while the floods rage past, carrying bodies and debris. And now the crocs are there too.

"My sister sounded absolutely terrified — and so am I, for her safety.”

T. Velumyli, 59, a Sri Lankan from Richmond, Surrey, said: “My cousin clung to a floating tree while his wife was swept to her death at Batticaloa.

“He buried her with his hands then found the body of his nine-month-old baby who had been swept 50 miles away.

"This is what hell must be like.”

Wall of water hit
me on beach




John ... knocked through building


BRITON John Regan lies wounded in a hospital bed in Phuket last night — after telling how he was standing on a beach when the killer wave hit land.

John, who was in Thailand with girlfriend Rita Medve, said: “The sea started to go out at high speed. I saw on the horizon a huge wave. I said to Rita, ‘It’s not going to stop’. We dashed into a tiny shed at the top of the beach and seconds later the wall crashed in.

“I was knocked through the building on to the ground outside.”

John, of Chelmsford, Essex, climbed a tree to safety.

Teacher Ian Cooper, 32, of Kidderminster, opened his bedroom door to a wall of water. He said: “I was swept off my feet.”

A blond boy of two was in hospital alone after being found on a road.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2004600994,00.html

[The Mad Monk]

N.Y. supermodel held on for dear life for 8 hours in raging surf

BY ADAM LISBERG
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Supermodel Petra Nemcova
Sister Olga Nemcova prays yesterday in New York.
Jet-setting supermodel Petra Nemcova survived the terrifying Asian tsunami by clinging to the top of a palm tree for eight hours - wincing through the pain of a broken pelvis and haunted by the sight of her boyfriend being swept out to sea.

"This huge wave just pulled us out of the house," Nemcova, 25, told the Daily News last night from her hospital bed in Thailand. "It was so powerful I couldn't get up. I couldn't get out of it."

"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 anymore."

Nemcova and her fashion photographer boyfriend Simon Atlee, 33, were spending the holidays in a beachfront bungalow at the Thai resort of Khao Lak when Sunday's catastrophe struck.

"I heard people screaming and I looked out the window and people were jumping out of the way, jumping into the pool," said Nemcova, who lives in New York and London and was on the cover of Sports Illustrated's 2003 swimsuit issue.

"I was screaming, 'On the roof! On the roof!' I tried to go on the roof but I got sucked away," Nemcova said.

Before she and Atlee could react, a wall of water shredded their wooden bungalow and sent them sprawling into a churning sea of debris that swallowed Atlee without a trace.

She kept her head above the floodwaters and was able to grasp a palm tree before she could be swept out to sea - but had to clutch it for eight hours, watching bodies float past in a scene of unimaginable devastation.

"I just tried to survive and tried to think positive," Nemcova said.

She gripped the tree in excruciating pain under the burning tropical sun until rescuers found her at sunset and carried her to an overwhelmed local hospital on a makeshift stretcher.

"I was so broken, I couldn't walk," Nemcova said. "There were so many people with horrible injuries, with blood everywhere. It was like a war movie."

Nemcova was airlifted to an inland hospital, where doctors found she had a broken pelvis and serious internal injuries.

"There might be pieces of bone stuck to my organs," said Nemcova, who was medicated with morphine but still agonized at her boyfriend's disappearance.

"I can't find Simon," she said. "It was horrible. I'm very lucky, but I can't find Simon."

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/266012p-227820c.html

[GePap]

This death toll will I think sadly continue to rise- I have heard very little from the maldives- i mean, if they are saying hundreds died in somalia, what happened to the maldives?

[Pekka]

I've been following SkyNews, they seem to have a good reporting from there (better than CNN or BBC), and they seem to be having number up in the 55 000 and rising.. they say indonesia alone has 27 000...

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by GePap
This death toll will I think sadly continue to rise- I have heard very little from the maldives- i mean, if they are saying hundreds died in somalia, what happened to the maldives?

Parts of it are gone from the map.

[Chilean President™]

I just heard that the island of Sumatra moved 36 cms. after the quake. That's a lot!!

Among the Chilean tourists that are missing there's a young woman, Francisca Cooper that was in Thailand enjoying her first day of honey moon. Her's husband went back to the hotel to search something while she was waiting for him in the beach. According to the guy when he was going out he saw a huge wave that crush against the hotel... now he's in the hospital waiting for any news of his wife.

AFAIK hotels didn't adiviced the tourists about this. Thailand TV was giving some info, but tourists hardly watch tv on vacation and if they do, they watch international networks.

[Heresson]

A freind of my sis (I know her too) seems to be missing in India. But she was supposed to go to Goa, which is on the other coast (she lives on the eastern one, though). I hope it has nothing to do with this mess and that she's OK.

[Giancarlo]

Attention: New numbers are out, as the Indonesians assess their toll. The Indonesians as I suspected were the ones hardest hit. The entire island of Sumatra moved 100-200 feet because of this.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/041228/1/3pin6.html

The biggest humanitarian relief operation ever mounted was underway along Asia's devastated shores as the death toll from a massive earthquake and the tidal waves it unleashed was predicted to hit 45,000.

With the scale of the catastrophe still unfolding the confirmed death toll passed 27,000 in nine countries -- but Indonesia warned that it alone could have suffered up to 20,000 more fatalities on top of its official figure of 4,725 deaths.

Indonesia's Vice President Yusuf Kalla, who is in charge of coordinating relief efforts, said he estimated that "21,000 to 25,000 people" had been killed in Sunday's disaster.

[The Mad Monk]

Tsunami Threatens Survival of Low-Lying Maldives Islands

"PA"

The tidal waves that swept across the Indian Ocean did more than take a heavy toll of lives and property in the Maldives – it confronted the tiny island nation with a threat to its survival.

The archipelago of 1,190 low-lying coral islands, dotted across hundreds of miles of ocean, has for years begged bigger, more powerful nations for action against global warming, fearing higher sea levels could literally make much of its territory disappear.

The speeding walls of water that slammed into 11 nations in Asia and Africa on Sunday, killing tens of thousands of people, marked a brutal demonstration of vulnerability.

“We are the world’s lowest-lying country,” said Mohammed Zahir, one of the country’s leading environmentalists. ”The average height of our islands is three feet.”

At a schoolyard converted into a disaster area on the main island of Male, sobbing people waited today for news of relatives from outlying islands.

At least 52 people were confirmed dead, among them two British tourists, and 66 were listed as missing.

Ahmed Shaheed, the chief government spokesman, expected the figures to rise after authorities make contact with distant atolls.

Although the number of casualties is small compared to huge tallies in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand, they are comparable in proportion to Maldives’ tiny population of 280,000.

“Our nation is in peril here,” Shaheed said. “Life as we know it in this country is in some parts gone. Thailand, Sri Lanka, India – these are big countries with a lot of land area. They can bounce back from disasters like this. For us, it’s not so easy.”

Parliamentary elections scheduled for Friday may have to be postponed, although the government has made no announcement yet.

Shaheed estimated the economic cost of the disaster at hundreds of millions of pounds. The Maldives’s annual gross domestic product is £350 million.

“It won’t be surprising if the cost exceeds our GDP,” Shaheed said. “In the last few years, we made great progress in our standard of living – the United Nations recognised this. Now we see this can disappear in a few days, a few minutes.”

Waves three feet or more high swept completely across many islands. They extended over as much as half of Male, a relatively large island of 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 millions of pounds on land reclamation over the past five years, was “uninhabitable” after being completely covered by water, Assistant Island Chief Mohammed Ali Fulhu said.

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

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3935155

[The Emperor Fabulous]

There will be thousands more who die from the viruses and bacterii that will no doubt effect most of the Southeast.

My heart goes out to all affected...

[The Mad Monk]

Tuesday December 28, 1:14 PM
Quake rattled Earth orbit, changed map of Asia: US geophysicist

AFP Photo

An earthquake that unleashed deadly tidal waves on Asia was so powerful it made the Earth wobble on its axis and permanently altered the regional map, US geophysicists said.

The 9.0-magnitude temblor that struck 250 kilometers (155 miles) southeast of Sumatra island Sunday may have moved small islands as much as 20 meters (66 feet), according to one expert.

"That earthquake has changed the map," US Geological Survey expert Ken Hudnut told AFP.

"Based on seismic modeling, some of the smaller islands off the southwest coast of Sumatra may have moved to the southwest by about 20 meters. That is a lot of slip."

The northwestern tip of the Indonesian territory of Sumatra may also have shifted to the southwest by around 36 meters (120 feet), Hudnut said.

In addition, the energy released as the two sides of the undersea fault slipped against each other made the Earth wobble on its axis, Hudnut said.

"We can detect very slight motions of the Earth and I would expect that the Earth wobbled in its orbit when the earthquake occurred due the massive amount of energy exerted and the sudden shift in mass," Hudnut said.

Another USGS research geophysicist agreed that the Earth would have got a "little jog," and that the islands off Sumatra would have been moved by the quake.

However, Stuart Sipkin, of the USGS National Earthquake Information Center in Golden Colorado, said it was more likely that the islands off Sumatra had risen higher out of the sea than they had moved laterally.

"In in this case, the Indian plate dived below the Burma plate, causing uplift, so most of the motion to the islands would have been vertical, not horizontal."

The tsunamis unleashed by the fourth-biggest earthquake in a century have left at least 23,675 people dead in eight countries across Asia and as far as Somalia in East Africa.

The tsunamis wiped out entire coastal villages and pulled beach-goers out to sea.

The International Red Cross estimated that up to one million people have been displaced by the natural calamity.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/041228/1/3pim1.html

[Giancarlo]

The death toll may reach 60,000.

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash7.htm

The death toll from the Indian Ocean tsunami catastrophe was predicted to climb pass 60,000 last night as the worst-hit nations struggled to deal with their dead and survivors, including at least a million people left homeless.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Chilean President
I just heard that the island of Sumatra moved 36 cms. after the quake. That's a lot!!

---

That would be meters, I think.