Earthquake kills thousands ... another Christmas tragedy

[RspctFrmCalgary]

Death toll rises to 7,000 from Asian earthquake

Lely T. Djuhari
Canadian Press


Sunday, December 26, 2004



CREDIT: Gemunu Amarasinghe
Tidal waves wash through houses at Maddampegama, about 60 kilometers south of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Sunday, Dec. 26, 2004.


CREDIT: M. Lakshman
A massive tidal wave triggered by an earthquake in Indonesia slammed into several parts of southern India.

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JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The world's most powerful earthquake in 40 years triggered massive waves that slammed into villages and seaside resorts across southern and southeast Asia on Sunday, killing more than 7,000 people in six countries.

Tourists, fishermen, homes and cars were swept away by walls of water up to six metres high unleashed by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake, centred off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake at a magnitude of 8.9. Geophysicist Julie Martinez said it was the world's fifth-largest since 1900 and the largest since a 9.2 temblor hit Prince William Sound Alaska in 1964.

The effects of Sunday's quake rippled across the region, as towns were crushed by floodwater from tsunamis -- seismic waves that are commonly known as tidal waves -- and helpless fishermen were swept out to sea.

In Sri Lanka, 1,600 miles west of the epicentre, more than 2,425 people were killed, the prime minister's office said. At least 1,870 died in Indonesia, and 1,130 along the southern coasts of India. At least 168 were confirmed dead in Thailand, 42 in Malaysia and two in Bangladesh.

But officials expected the death toll to rise dramatically, with hundreds reported missing and all communications cut off to Sumatran towns closest to the epicentre. Hundreds of bodies were found on various beaches along India's southern state of Tamil Nadu, and more were expected to be washed in by the sea, officials said.

An Associated Press photographer near Colombo, Sri Lanka, counted 24 bodies in a stretch of six kilometres. Rows of men and women stood on the road asking whether anyone had seen their family members.

Monster waves in southern India killed about 1,000 people, mostly in Tamil Nadu state, Home Minister Shivraj Patil said. Beaches were turned into virtual open-air mortuaries, with bodies of people caught in the waves being washed ashore.

"I was shocked to see innumerable fishing boats flying on the shoulder of the waves, going back and forth into the sea, as if made of paper," said P. Ramanamurthy, 40, who lives in Andra Pradesh's Kakinada town. "I had never imagined anything like this could happen."

Cabinet Secretary B. K. Chaturvedi told reporters that the Indian air force would drop food packets, medicines and diesel generating sets in the affected areas.

Near the quake's epicentre, in Indonesia, officials said the death toll was 400.

Communications were down in several coastal towns nearest to the undersea quake off the western coast of the island's Aceh Province, raising fears of widespread and as yet unreported damage.

"The ground was shaking for a long time," resident Yayan Zamzani told Jakarta's el-Shinta radio station.

Thousands of people abandoned their homes and headed for higher ground after the earthquake. At least one Indonesian village, Lancuk, was nearly destroyed, witnesses said. An Associated Press reporter in the village saw several bodies wedged in trees.

Some 158 people died in popular southern Thailand resorts, the Narenthorn Centre of the Public Health Ministry reported. The centre said people were swept away in Phuket by a tsunami with five-metre waves.

More than 1,900 were injured and many others were missing.

Huge waves crashed into beaches, where thousands of tourists were lazing on the country's renowned white sand beaches when the earthquake struck. Hundreds of bungalows, boats and cars were carried out to sea.

Police and rescue workers in Malaysia said 15 people were killed. Tens of thousands of people were temporarily evacuated from high-rise hotels and apartments in Penang, Kuala Lumpur and other cities after most of peninsular Malaysia felt tremors caused by the quake.

Foreign Affairs officials in Ottawa said they have not received any word of Canadian casualties, but added Canadian diplomats in the region were still trying to gather information on the disaster.

Indonesia, a country of 17,000 islands, is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on the margins of tectonic plates that make up the so-called the "Ring of Fire" around the Pacific Ocean basin.

The Indonesian quake struck just three days after an 8.1 quake struck the ocean floor between Australia and Antarctica, causing buildings to shake hundreds of kilometres away but no serious damage or injury.

Quakes reaching a magnitude 8 are very rare. A quake registering magnitude 8 rocked Japan's northern island of Hokkaido on Sept. 25, 2003, injuring nearly 600 people. An 8.4 magnitude tremor that stuck off the coast of Peru on June 23, 2001, killed 74.

Depending on which news site you look at, the death toll changes. Some sources are saying 7000, some 5800. Many many thousands of people will be missing. My thoughts and prayers are with the emergency workers dealing with this horrific disaster in so many different countries.

[RspctFrmCalgary]

Tsunamis kill at least 11,300 in south Asia

http://sympaticomsn.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1104066217280_57?hub=topstorie s

[DrParasite]

CHENNAI, India (CNN) -- The death toll from Sunday's tsunamis climbed to 21,000 by Monday as fears of disease from decaying bodies and contaminated water grew in Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

The giant waves -- triggered by the most powerful earthquake on Earth in 40 years -- also left thousands injured, thousands missing and hundreds of thousands homeless.

A Sri Lankan forecaster warned of a "remote possibility of small tidal waves" caused by aftershocks Monday.

Some of the tsunamis reached as far as 1,000 miles from the epicenter of the 9.0 magnitude quake, which was located about 100 miles (160 km) off the coast of Indonesia's Sumatra Island at a depth of about 6.2 miles (10 km).

The quake struck about 7 a.m. Sunday (7 p.m. ET Saturday), according to the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC). It is the fourth-largest earthquake since such measurements began in 1899, according to the NEIC, tying a 1952 quake in Kamchatka, Russia.

More than 10,000 people have been reported dead in Sri Lanka. Most of them, authorities said, were in the eastern district of Batticaloa. Thousands were missing, an estimated 1 million were displaced and an estimated 250,000 were homeless.

In southern Sri Lanka, 200 prisoners escaped when the waves swept away a high-security prison in Matara.

Witnesses in the eastern Sri Lankan port city of Trincomalee reported 40 foot (14 meter) waves hitting inland as far as a half mile (1 km).

The Sri Lankan government declared a state of emergency, and, along with the government of the Maldives, has requested international assistance, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported.

As the sun rose, 20,000 Sri Lankan soldiers and naval personnel launched relief and rescue efforts. India sent six warships carrying supplies, along with helicopters. Priorities included identifying the hardest-hit areas and airdropping supplies, along with shepherding stranded people to safer areas.

Sri Lankan authorities imposed a curfew overnight, and many residents remained concerned about the possibility of additional tsunamis. The country has been in the throes of a civil war, and land mines uprooted by the waves were hampering relief efforts.

Sri Lanka's director of meteorology Abey Singha Bandara told CNN his department's analysis suggested "a remote possibility of small tidal waves, but not of the magnitude experienced on Sunday."

Some tourists, meanwhile, were evacuated from the hard-hit eastern coasts to the capital Colombo, on the west coast and unaffected by the disaster.

At first light, many Sri Lankans ventured out to scour the debris for belongings or to search for information on missing family members.

In India, the official government news agency Press Trust of India said at least 6,200 Indians were killed, and more bodies were being recovered.

A resident of Chennai (formerly Madras) in Tamil Nadu district -- India's hardest-hit area -- said he saw several people being swept out to sea.

Along India's southeastern coast, several villages appeared to have been swept away. Thousands of fishermen -- including 2,000 from the Chennai area alone -- who were at sea when the waves thundered ashore have not returned.

Along the coast, brick foundations were all that remained of village homes. In Tamil Nadu, 2,500 people have been confirmed dead, and officials said 3,000 died on the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, where dozens of aftershocks were centered. Communication from the islands to the mainland was cut off.

In Thailand, authorities said at least 866 people are dead, and hundreds are missing. Among the missing were scuba divers who had been exploring the Emerald Cave off Phuket's coast.

Phuket's airport -- which closed when its runways flooded -- reopened, but most roads in the area remained closed as officials tried to assess the damage.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra arrived in Phuket and declared the situation "under control." He told CNN he planned to direct rescue and relief efforts overnight.

Witnesses reported guests drowned in their hotel rooms near the coast as 30-foot waves washed ashore.

Others reported narrow escapes, including a Spaniard who had been aboard a boat when a wave approached.

The captain began screaming and turned the boat directly into a nearby shore, where he beached it. As those aboard jumped from the craft and scrambled up the steep beach, they turned back to see the waves crush their boat, the Spaniard said.

More than 4,350 people are reported dead in Indonesia -- many of them in Aceh in northern Sumatra, about 100 miles from the quake's epicenter, officials said.

The quake also inflicted heavy damage on the area, which is a hotbed of rebel activity, before two tsunamis slammed the coastline. Access and communications were difficult if not impossible. The death toll remained a mystery on the west coast of Aceh, where communication had been wiped out.

In the Maldives, 46 people are dead and more than 70 missing, according to Hassan Sobir, the Maldives High Commissioner.

Among the dead are at least 16 non-nationals, including six Britons, six Americans and four Italians, officials from those countries said. Of the Americans, five were killed in Sri Lanka and one in Thailand, U.S. officials said.

No warning
The tsunamis struck with no warning to those in coastal areas, as no warning system exists for the Indian Ocean, said Eddie Bernard, director of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine and Environmental Labs in Seattle.

Staffers at warning centers that cover the Pacific Basin and the U.S. West Coast were aware of the quake and the possibility of tsunamis, said Laura Kong, director of the International Tsunami Information Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.

"They were able to make contact, but they did not have the proper government officials to notify," she said. "They'll be working on this in the future."

The earthquake is classified as "great" -- the strongest classification given by the National Earthquake Information Center.

NEIC geophysicist Don Blakeman said the tsunamis were triggered by the initial massive jolt.

"The damage is just phenomenal," said Jan Egelund, U.N. emergency relief coordinator. "I think we are seeing now one of the worst natural disasters ever."

There was disagreement over whether the threat was over. Waverly Person, Blakeman's colleague at NEIC, said the tsunamis are "long over" and residents and visitors should not worry about further tsunamis.

Bernard, however, said the aftershocks are strong enough to produce more tsunamis.

One such aftershock, measuring 7.3 in magnitude, struck about 200 miles (300 km) northwest of Banda Aceh -- on Sumatra's northernmost tip -- more than four hours after the initial quake, according to the NEIC. The center expects the quake to produce hundreds of smaller aftershocks under 4.6 magnitude, and thousands smaller than that.

"A quake of this size has some pretty serious effects," Person said.

The quake represented the energy released from "a very large rupture in the earth's crust" more than 600 miles (1,000 km) long. The rupture created shock waves that pushed the water at speeds of up to several hundred miles per hour.

It was the strongest earthquake to hit anywhere on Earth since March 1964, when a 9.2 quake struck near Alaska's Prince William Sound. The strongest recorded earthquake registered 9.5 on May 22, 1960, in Chile.

Sunday's quake hit a year after a 6.6-magnitude quake in Bam, Iran, killed more than 30,000 people, injured another 30,000 and destroyed 85 percent of the buildings in the southeastern Iran city.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/12/27/asia.quake/index.html

[RspctFrmCalgary]

Thanks for the update, Dan. Here's another article with soem different information. My sister's husband has an older brother and his Thai wife who live on Phuket, Thailand. I pray they made it through ok.

Tsunamis kill at least 20,000 in south Asia
CTV.ca News Staff

The death toll from the massive tsunami that slammed into south Asia has reached 20,000 and continues to rise as rescuers scour the sea for missing residents and tourists.

Sunday's early morning quake was centred off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra and measured a magnitude of 9.0.

It sparked waves measuring six to 10 metres high, depending on distance from the epicentre that began hitting shores about 2½ hours later.

As the damage is assessed and the dead counted, the numbers are astounding:

10,000 people killed in Sri Lanka
6,000 people dead in India
5,000 dead in Indonesia
Hundreds more dead in Thailand, Malaysia, the Maldives, and Bangladesh.
Even Somalia on Africa's eastern coast -- almost 5,000 km away from the epicentre -- was swamped. At least nine deaths were reported there.

Many beach hotels in Sri Lanka's tourist region of the south and east were simply swept away. Sri Lankan authorities say they believe at least 22 Japanese tourists are dead. One Canadian is confirmed dead there as well.

Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga has declared a national disaster. Government officials say more than one million people, or around five per cent of the island's population, have been affected.

The tiny Maldives -- a string of coral islands off the southwest coast of India that are barely above sea level, and about 2,500 km from the quake's epicentre -- is now two-thirds submerged by water.

In Thailand, hundreds are dead. Tourists on diving holidays are missing on islands in the southern part of that country -- although the total number missing is believed to be in the thousands. At least a dozen Canadians were reported injured there.

Throughout the region, beaches have become makeshift open-air morgues, with weeping survivors scrambling over piles of corpses, looking for missing loved ones.

As the death tolls throughout the region rises, some experts are saying the final numbers might never be fully known.

There are now worries of aftershocks that may cause further tidal waves. As well, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies says there will be health worries, including the risk of waterborne diseases, such as malaria and diarrhea, as well as respiratory tract infections.

Without a prompt response, thousands more could die from those ailments, the experts warn.

UNICEF says it's estimated at least one-third of the reported dead are children. The United Nations agency is urging aid to prevent countless further deaths. As well, help will be needed to rebuild schools and health facilities.

Canadians wishing to donate aid to quake relief can call the Red Cross at 1-800-418-1111 or UNICEF at 1-877-955-3111.

Earthquake and tsunami science

This is the fifth largest earthquake to strike the world since 1900, says the U.S. Geological Survey.

Indonesia, a country of 17,000 islands where the epicentre was located, is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on the margins of tectonic plates that make up the so-called the "Ring of Fire" around the Pacific Ocean basin.

Most of the destruction, however, came from the tsunamis, not the quake itself.

Witnesses said sea waters at first retreated far out into the ocean, only to return at a vicious pace.

"The water went back, back, back, so far away, and everyone wondered what it was -- a full moon or what? Then we saw the wave come, and we ran,'' said Katri Seppanen, who was on Thailand's Phuket island.

John Clague, a Simon Fraser University earth sciences professor, told CTV News that if you were on a boat on the open sea, you might not notice the tsunami as it passed underneath you -- even though it's moving at the same speed as a jet plane, or up to 900 kilometres per hour.

As it nears shore, "when that wave begins to feel the bottom (of the ocean), and that bottom begins to exert a force on it, it will begin to bolt up," he said.

"It will rise, and rise progressively until it begins to break and rush ashore. These turbulent masses of water as they break can roll inland as much as a kilometre or two, and they can exert a devastating impact on structures and on people anywhere within that run-up zone."

With a report from CTV's Matt McClure and files from The Associated Press