Biggest earthquake in 40 years hits Southeast Asia - Part 2

[Mr. President]

Originally posted by lightblue
The reason it wasn't a circular wave was that the faultline wasn't a point, but rather a long (I've heard 1000km, but can't find anything now) faultline that suddenly all moved. This is what caused those two lines of water heading away from the fault.

You might also recall from playing SimEarth that the direction a massive wave moves can be affected by the prevalent air and water currents.

[Chemical Ollie]

A colleague of my wife is from Mauritius (island nation east of Madagaskar). She is currently there to celebrate Christmas with her parents, but don't want her colleagues to call her mobile phone due to the high cost of roaming. So they sent her an SMS and got the reply that the damage was ignorable, the sun was shining and the sea was calm. Seems like Mauritius was not hit that hard.

[pchang]

US Carrier groups must have arrived. THere are news reports of Carrier based helicopters delivering men and supplies to Indonesia. There appears to be a fuel shortage in the area that is hampering relief efforts. Carrier groups have their own fuel resupply, but they will run short soon if local supplies do not increase.

[Dis]

Originally posted by pchang
US Carrier groups must have arrived. THere are news reports of Carrier based helicopters delivering men and supplies to Indonesia. There appears to be a fuel shortage in the area that is hampering relief efforts. Carrier groups have their own fuel resupply, but they will run short soon if local supplies do not increase.

depends on the carrier. A couple of pacific carriers are still marine fuel oil powered.

And then you need Jp-5 for the aircraft...

[Boris Godunov]

[Dis]

is he american? he writes pretty good english.

that's the really bad part of this tragedy in my opinion

is that families were split apart and died alone without knowing the fate of their loved ones. To watch someone you know swept away and unable to do anything about it...

[Boris Godunov]

He is Swedish. His entire family is gone--he was found by a doctor and now has no one.

[Chemical Ollie]

I believe someone helped him write that.

There have been orphans travelling alone on every evacuation flight to Sweden so far. In some cases, there aren't even any relatives to meet them at the airport, so the police has to decide what to do with them.

There will be many empty chairs when the school starts in a week from now. Every town will have an average of 10 people missing, of which many are children. Above that, there are orphans who need to find a new life, and injured who need to be cured before they can return to work or school. The injured also have ugly bacterial infections from the dirty water and hot climate. Add the mental scars on top of that.

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov

Yes, it was the only photo of this tragedy that really made me sad. To die is horrible, but to live through this tragedy and loss of parents and being lost in a completely foreign country - in the middle of happy holidays probably - it's something really dramatic

[Dis]

not that we really need any more proof of the destruction. But a picture tells a thousand words as they say.

[Rasbelin]

The three children of my mom's friend are still missing in Thailand. I presume any hope is soon gone. Oh well.

Out of all the pictures I've seen online, this is the one that really speaks best for itself. People were unaware of the present danger and were having a usual day, until the wave came. Notice how the people in the front are apparently sitting on a bench.

The most cruel pics so far were a set of pics on a Norwegian website, which were quite Rotten.com material.

[Rasbelin]

The newest per country death tolls by BBC News (updated some 30 min ago):

1. Indonesia: 80,246
2. Sri Lanka: 28,627
3. India (inc Andaman and Nicobar Is): 8,955
4. Thailand: 4,812
5. Somalia: 142
6. Burma: 53
7. Maldives: 73
8. Malaysia: 66
9. Tanzania: 10
10. Seychelles: 1
11. Bangladesh: 2
12. Kenya: 1

However do remember that death tolls may rise, as not all bodies have been accounted for yet. Or then we may hopefully see a drop like after WTC (any remember how the estimates were far too high for quite some time).

[Jack_www]

I am just glad that most people of world are coming to help the victoms of the Tsunami. I was reading here that total world wide aid has already reached 2 billion and is going to rise in the next coming days.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050102/ap_on_re_as/tsunami&cid=514&ncid=514

I also think I understand why so many people were killed. I was watching on the history channel about the Tsunami that happened after the 8.3 earthquake in Alaska in the 1960s. THat one hit on April 1, and lot of people though it was a joke when people were trying to tell them a Tsunami was coming. They also went over the story of a school that was right at the waters edge in Hawaii. The children saw the water rush back and expose the sea bed. Some the children ran out into the exposed sea bed and even the teachers encourage them to do so, not knowing that the Tsunami was coming. Some experts said that Tsunami are rare, thus most people dont know too much about these killer waves, and that it is not just one massive wave that hits, it can be up to 6 to 12 huge waves that hit the costal areas.

[Jack_www]

Here is a story about a gril that was able to save hundreds of lives:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/asiaquakebritainangeloffbeat

She just learned about Tsunamis geography class, and when she saw the water rushing back she told her mom that she thought a Tsunami was coming and they evacuated the beach and a near by hotel before the first waves hit.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Rasbelin
The three children of my mom's friend are still missing in Thailand. I presume any hope is soon gone. Oh well.

Out of all the pictures I've seen online, this is the one that really speaks best for itself. People were unaware of the present danger and were having a usual day, until the wave came. Notice how the people in the front are apparently sitting on a bench.

The most cruel pics so far were a set of pics on a Norwegian website, which were quite Rotten.com material.

I wonder about pics like that. could be photoshop.

how could someone take a pic like that, and live to bring the picture in, and manage to save the camera film from getting totally soaked. Or if a digital camera, ruining the camera.

And strangely we have not seen a pic of the World Trade Center guy by the tsunami. Or have I missed it. We need to post that here. I love that guy.