Biggest earthquake in 40 years hits Southeast Asia

[Urban Ranger]

Maybe that will counter all the global warming we are having lately.

[chequita guevara]

Definately a possibility.

[Drake Tungsten]

Glad your gf is ok. Hope your other friends are ok.

Thanks.

Japan's buildings are built to withstand earthquakes, aren't they? What would've happened if this had hit Japan?

A 7.2 leveled Kobe in 1995 and killed 6,000 people. What do you think an 8.9 would do? I'm not sure any building can resist that...

[Jaguar]

This is bad. This is really bad.

[germanos]

Originally posted by Sprayber
For those (like me) that needed a map to visualize exactly where everything was in relation.

note: please address all map issues to CNN.

Slightly different map from the BBC

[Az]

minimum 15,500 people dead.... probably will rise a whole lot more, I guess.

About local news sources pointing out to whatever nationals, I think it's natural, since some people would like to know as much as possible about the situation of their relatives travelling there. ( Some 500 Israelis are missing now, btw )

germanos: so the epicenter was inland?

[germanos]

Originally posted by Azazel


germanos: so the epicenter was inland?

The BBC report says 100 km west of Bandar Aceh, but the map indeed is a bit off.
Not that far of as the CNN map, who had it of the coast of Jakarta

IIRC, there is still hardly any news from Aceh province itself, as it has been blocked off from reporters since the civil war there went full throttle (again) about a year ago. So maybe it was inland? I'm not sure how accurate one can point to the source from a distance.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by VJ
--- Really, who cares? Do you think you really even remember this accident after a year? ---

You still remember 9/11 don't you? And this Tsunami event was at least five times worse.

[Chemical Ollie]

800 Swedish tourists unaccounted for, in Thailand alone. Most of them probably just lost their phone in the water or something, but at least 20 are confirmed dead.

>20 000 and counting. 11 000 on Sri Lanka alone.

[Chemical Ollie]

If you see this, RUN !!!!

[Giancarlo]

The death toll is now 19,930.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041227/ap_on_re_as/indonesia_earthquake

Edit: It could be far past 22,000 now... because one police chief for one region reported losses in his area:

"On the remote Car Nicobar island south of India, Police Chief S.B. Deol told New Delhi Television he had reports "that maybe 3,000 people are dead." If confirmed, that would raise the death toll past 22,900."

[Sikander]

Originally posted by dejon


Am I the only one who finds it a little strange that the (western?) media always cover these stories with headlines that include how many nationals died? (e.g. "Earthquake kills 11,000, including X Americans/Canadians" ) I think it is disrespectful.

Actually we tend to do this less than a lot of countries around the world. Japan is one of the worst for it.

Three Japanese citizens had their beers spilled in an earthquake centered in Western China. Over 17 billion yen worth of damage was done to Japanese investors. It is estimated that 10,000 Chinese citizens were killed in the quake as well. Live on location we have one of the Japanese whose beer spilled during the quake...

[Pekka]

Ohh I knew this was bad bad bad but it's getting worse all the time... oh man... Phuket was also very popular tourist attraction for us, especially on Christmas but Finns have been pretty fortunate always with these ****ty deals so.. there are unaccounted people but most have survived so far...... but always someone goes with these things, plus it doesn't really matter the nationality, this is a huge tragedy and could be growing..

and they aren't even counting the ones dying because of injuries yet I bet.

Do they know how many people overall are unaccounted for? Do they have any figures?

[The Mad Monk]

They probably won't know that for weeks. When a disaster is this big, the people who would normally report a person missing are often dead or missing themselves.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by germanos
Doomsayers are predicting eastern Africa is next

Tsunamis have hit Somalia -- nine dead so far.