Seaquake in Asia

JBoskma

TwentyfourThousand (24000) people have already been killed by the seaquake, an underwater earthquake under water. Horrible stuff on christmas eve. bah
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/12/27/asia.quake/index.html

Ruz

I read the other day that the scientists could n't warn anybody , even through they knew it was coming.
WTF - Have they never heard of telephones?
Some other daft scienists said that because the undersea shockwaves spread sideways and not upwards , there would be no tidal waves .
yeah right, nice one idiots

TomDunne

So the scientists are a bunch of morons, but you've got it all figured out?

Aside from the fact that predicting the future (even earthquakes and giant waves) is kind of hard to do, exactly whom should these scientists have phoned? It's been a topic of discussion that a lot of the hard hit areas are poor and relatively primative settlements that don't have the benefit of phone lines or radio broadcasts. Even if these dafts scientists dialed every phone in India with the news, millions and millions would still have been caught unaware.

Scott Ruggels

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26784-2004Dec26.html
Eyewitness account from Sri Lanka

Scott

aesir

I've got a friend from college in bangladesh right now visiting his family...

Scott Ruggels

I've been pinging friends in Singapore and malaysia. One fo the Singaporeans has checked in, and he's fine, Singapore was behind bands of large islands and was spared the tsunamis. The others have not checked in yet... :-/

Scott

Vermeulen

Everytime i read about this it gets worse. First last night on wikipedia, 5000, on cnn this mourning, 10000, now 24000,

and the arguement for how this death toll could have been prevented is not that scientists couldn't reach the people, its that a proper monitering device for tsunami's is not installed in that region

oXYnary

Gossip: Jet Li is on the missing list

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-12/28/content_2387462.htm

Follow up, he hurt his little toe.. auwhhh

http://entertainment.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4459,11797749%255E10431%255E%255Enbv,00.html

Rick Stirling

Here you go, make a difference.


Cafod
Care International
International Federation of the Red Cross
Medecins Sans Frontieres
Oxfam
Save The Children
Unicef
World Vision

(Mind you, I recommend not using World Vision)

TNSLB

There's a more comprehensive listing here

The red cross site is amazingly slow today, go figure. Been trying to get through to the donation page for the past 4.5 hours and just *now finally made it.

adam

The death toll from the Indian Ocean tsunamis continues to rise, with more than 80,000 people reported dead. The toll rose again today when Indonesia's Ministry of Health said more than 45,000 people died in the country.

Ruz

hmm, I am confused. if they had proper monitoring devices, but the communication systems in these area are very poor, how would that then make a difference?
They still wouldn't be able to inform the population of the impending disaster.
I am sure the hotels on those beaches have telephones installed.
How about a call saying 'hey there is a huge mother of a tidal wave heading your way'

sinistergfx

Ruz: the earthquake came as a surprise, the tidal wave travelled at 500mph, there really isn't much in the way of tidal wave monitoring in the Indian ocean as most of the earthquake/tidal wave activity takes place in the Pacific.

They pretty much didn't know what was happening, much less be able to warn anybody about it.

Ruz

Thats odd, because I was reading in the news or somewhere a few days previous about the undersea quake, but they mentioned that it would be of no consequence in terms of tidal waves because the shocks would travel 'flat' and not upwards.

All I am saying is that if there was a possibilty of it happening , they could have made some of the authorities in these places at least aware that it 'could' happen.

jeez ,seems like the death toll is going to reach 100,000 now

frosty

I sent off 20.00 today. Not much but at least I tried. : (

milla

There's an alert system in our area of the Pacific, which covers, I think, the whole area north of us. I don't think it covers the ocean around the quake at all, which is a shame. Then again, Tsunami are known to travel long distances in deep water before they become visible. The only way to protect against it is to assume any submarine quake is going to cause one and have seismic alerts in place I guess.

This is the worst disaster, natural or otherwise in my lifetime, and I still can't believe it's happened. It's so heartbreaking

Scott Ruggels

The Pacific is covered with a system of monitoring bouys for tsunamis. The Indian Ocean, does not have such a system in place.

Donated here:
http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/my-pay-page/PX3BEL97U9A4I/103-0050417-1091045

Not a lot, but every littlebit helps. may top 3 Million by close of business today.

Scott

sundance

the tsunami from this quake hit the east coast of africa and killed 100 people in somalia, so, yeah, tsunami can go a long way.

there are several warning systems in the pacific cause the BBC did a think aobut it, and were reporting from the control centre in hawai'i and they said, there's no system in the IO and that the leaders of several asian nations had basically thought 'fuck it, it only happens about every 50 years, why bother, save the cash.'

Rick Stirling

Frosty - $20 is more than most people sent, after spending $1000 on presents at Xmas. $20 is, what? One DVD?

Your $20 *WILL* save lives. I'm proud of you.

Prs-Phil

just unbeliveable

Just another to add to the list

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/12/27/asia.quake/index.html
http://www.itdg.org/html/itdg_sudan/dafur_situation.htm
http://www.carman.k12.mi.us/Highschweb/hsstaff/mstewart/middleeastconflict.htm
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1067126/posts
http://www.medicamondiale.org/html/presse/pressemitteilungen/pm2004/mm-pm04-03-04_e.html

and many many many more ...

Redlemons

Hey good onya Frosty, trust me you're not cheap by any means giving $20. I volunteer at the Oxfam office here and the most I've taken were a few $1,000 donations, someone else took a $10,000 donation, but the average is $20-$50. So many people donate that amount that it adds up really, really quickly.

adam

Truly is heartbreaking to see such helplessness.

Dukester

It's nice to know that dropping a little cash can help alot, whatever you can afford. I'd like to think the charities involved are all on the up and up so I just sent mine to the Red Cross Internation Disaster Fund.

Kinda makes me rethink those sponser this child "Christian Children Fund" commercials I see on late night tv, I spend so much money just because it in my pocket

I feel better for it

JBoskma

This year really sucked.
I donated 60$ instead of buying fireworks for it.

oh people: www.helpasia.org Various art sites are helping

sonic

ive been collecting donation money at school, but im thinkin about startin a fundraiser...

any ideas?

Moz

About the lack of warning.

tsunamis arn't as common in the indian ocean as in the pacific, while most people on the pacific coasts would have known instantly that a tsunami was coming just from the rapid receeding of water, most people actually when to the beaches to investage.

Ironically from what I've heard the best place to be in a tsunami is out on the water, because out in the ocean, its just a big swell in the ocean, it only becomes a wall of death when it hits land.