Biggest earthquake in 40 years hits Southeast Asia

[lord of the mark]

CNN:


The chief of U.S. Agency for International Development, which distributes foreign aid, was quick to point out Tuesday that foreign assistance for development and emergency relief rose from $10 billion in President Clinton's last year to $24 billion under President Bush in 2003.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said assistance for this week's earthquake and tsunamis alone will eventually exceed $1 billion.

"The notion that the United States is not generous is simply not true, factually," USAID chief Andrew Natsios told The Associated Press in an interview. "We've had one of the largest increases of any country in the world."

But even Natsios acknowledged Tuesday that the initial $35 million aid package the administration has crafted for earthquake and tsunami victims has completely drained his agency's emergency relief fund, which already provides assistance from Darfur to Iraq.

That means his agency will need to ask Congress or the White House for more money.

"We just spent it," Natsios said. "We'll be talking to the (White House) budget office ... what to do at this point."

Natsios said the Pentagon also is spending tens of millions to mobilize an additional relief operation, with C-130 transport planes winging their way from Dubai to Indonesia with pre-stocked supplies of tents, blankets, food and water bags.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Pekka
UK

Of course the problem is, they will be needing money in long run as well. So it's not like this is the last of the money people will send. However, it should not matter, lot of lives can be saved or lost.

"The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), however, urged citizens, organizations and countries to hold back and wait for a needs assessment to be conducted before anything is sent.

While there is a need for shelter, food and water in the affected countries, "it will take a few days to get everything under control," said Dr. Dana Van Alphen, an emergency preparedness advisor in PAHO's office of Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Relief."

[Pekka]

That's right. It's a long term thing and US as well as others will be contributing a heck of a lot more. But we should not be cheap at this critical moment. What do you guys think, any catastrophe experts, how much these things could cost, to say have optimal funds? 1 billion? 2 billions? 5 billions? I'm talking about the immidiate need, nto the long term, which will obviously rise to astronomical figures.

[Pekka]

LOTM, right, that's the talks.. they need to assist correctly instead going bezerk so they can do it right, to have the best possible result.

[Tripledoc]

Did Sri Lanka Animals
Know Tsunami Was Coming?
12-29-4

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lankan wildlife officials are stunned -- the worst tsunami in memory has killed around 22,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast, but they can't find any dead animals.

Giant waves washed floodwaters up to 3 km (2 miles) inland at Yala National Park in the ravaged southeast, Sri Lanka's biggest wildlife reserve and home to hundreds of wild elephants and several leopards.

"The strange thing is we haven't recorded any dead animals," H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of the national Wildlife Department, told Reuters on Wednesday.

"No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit," he added. "I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening."

At least 40 tourists, including nine Japanese, were drowned.

The tsunami was triggered by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean on Sunday, which sent waves up to 5-metres (15-feet) high crashing onto Sri Lanka's southern, eastern and northern seaboard, flooding whole towns and villages, destroying hotels and causing widespread destruction.

© Copyright Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved. The information contained In this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of Reuters Ltd.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Pekka
Chemical Ollie, what's the update on Swedes? They were the largest tourist group in there out of all............

The number of organised travelers missing is still about 1500. If you include the freelancers, the total number is unknown, but it is known that about half of the tourists are freelancers. So the number of missing Swedes is in practice 2-3000. Some of these were probably not even close to the West coast thought, backpacking in Bangkok and Northern Thailand. But the Phuket area was the most popular area for families with small children, and this happened on the peak season.

It looks like this will be the worst disaster for Sweden since Ivan captured Finland in 1809. I don't know how many died in the Spanish Flue though, 1918-1919, but that must have been pretty bad too.

People are dying in the airport while waiting for ambulance airplanes to bring them home. Not to mention all the locals who has no home. The situation for them is even worse. Many survivors are messed up really bad, they were smashed by all the debris floating around in the water. Cars, boats furniture, wood with nails sticking out, broken glass. Now its hot, over 30 degrees and they are getting infections.

[Pekka]

Yes I read about the Swedish situation from our papers, but it's naturally now outdated.. but it said, that the situation with Swedes is very bad because of the current local conditions, meaning there will be .... more casualties if they don't get an airlift pretty ****ing ASAP, and that few Swedish doctors have appealed to Nordic countries to pull a joint operation, what ever it is but that someone could go down there and airlift the most bad cases that would be totally saveable if airlifted. Do you have any news on this? Are we doing anything or not? Is Sweden sending planes, what's happening in that regard?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Tripledoc
"No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit," he added. "I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening."

Animals are supposedly be able to hear, or at least sense, the subsonic waves that preceed certain natural occurances, such as tsunamis.

[lightblue]

In Luxembourg they were saying that 44 nationals are still unaccounted for (out of a population of 400,000), just about all from Phuket and Phi Phi.

UK has 26 confirmed, identified dead and hundreds still unaccounted for.

Total death toll looks like it will go well above 100k

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Pekka
Yes I read about the Swedish situation from our papers, but it's naturally now outdated.. but it said, that the situation with Swedes is very bad because of the current local conditions, meaning there will be .... more casualties if they don't get an airlift pretty ****ing ASAP, and that few Swedish doctors have appealed to Nordic countries to pull a joint operation, what ever it is but that someone could go down there and airlift the most bad cases that would be totally saveable if airlifted. Do you have any news on this? Are we doing anything or not? Is Sweden sending planes, what's happening in that regard?

We are sending planes: regular passenger planes with medics and doctors as extra crew, ambulance planes, military transport planes with rescue workers, and military transport planes with fridges to keep bodies from decomposing in the heat and later bring home the bodies after identification. The target is that everyone who wants to should be home by Saturday. But there are some who refuse to go home before they have found out what happened to their family, naturally. The government has gotten harch criticism that it started to late.

But this is only the beginning. The local populations' need of help is much worse, and after our own people are evacuated, the focus must turn to them. Not so much in Thailand perhaps, but more in Sri Lanka and Indinesia. But the efforts to bring home our own citizens will be larger than anything we have done before, and will take our resources for a while.

I think we should call in the army to assist.

[Shi Huangdi]

We spend alot of money on Iraq because we have a direct responsibility for that country. We caused much of the havoc, so it is our job to spend whatever money it takes to fix it. While this is a disaster, it's not something we caused.

We are still giving $15 million, which is still a whole lot of money, even though we don't have to give it. And also, from what I understood the $15 million was an initial donation, and that we might be giving more later once we knew more. We are also sending US military forces in the area to assist with disaster relief.

[Shi Huangdi]

I just read online, the US is giving another $20 mil in cash aid.

[Shi Huangdi]

Also I just saw apparently USAID has said they expect hat US aid will eventually rise to over $1 bil.

[GePap]

Thi quake will be a long term catastrophe- It will probably take many years for the tourist trade to these areas to recover- many europeans will have bad memories, and Americansm who don;t go there much anyways, might be scared off.

So not only is the damage immense, but it will have very long term eocnomic effects.

On a side note, anyone found anything about, or said by Arthur C. Clarcke? He lives in Colombo IIRC.

[Arrian]

Wow. Just wow.

Anyone have a suggestions for the best relief organization to donate to?

-Arrian