OT: Bad Christmas for many in South Asia...
chai...@yahoo.com
Sun Dec 26, 2004 02:12 PM GMT
By Suresh Seshadri
MADRAS, India (Reuters) - Wailing relatives gathered around dozens of
bodies on beaches in southern India after a tsunami triggered by an
earthquake in distant Indonesia killed about 2,000 people.
Television footage showed bodies, including young girls, being tossed
into lorries in Madras, capital of Tamil Nadu state.
Vast swathes of land were submerged in one of India's worst natural
disasters in living memory as heavy waves and winds slammed Tamil Nadu
and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh on Sunday, leaving thousands homeless
and hundreds of fishermen missing.
A government official said at least 1,625 people had been killed in
Tamil Nadu alone.
"It was early in the morning and I was sorting my catch from the
fishing net when I saw the waves climbing alarmingly," said
Ravichandran, 32, a fisherman from Elliot's Beach in Madras.
"I rushed back and pulled my wife and two children out of our home,
Water had rushed into our hut by then."
The tsunami that crashed into India and Sri Lanka and swamped tourist
islands in Thailand and the Maldives was triggered by the world's
fifth-largest quake in a century, measuring 8.9 magnitude.
Shanties on the coast of Madras, where 100 died, were submerged.
Hundreds fled to higher ground with pots, pans and other meagre
possessions as water flooded the huts.
"I was taking a bath and before I realised what was happening, water
had seeped into the bathroom." said another fisherman, Pazhani. "I got
so scared that I ran out."
"I was having breakfast with my three children when water started
coming into my home," wailed his wife, Lakshmi. "We had to leave
everything and run to safety. We don't know what has happened to our
TV, radio, utensils."
Hours after the tsunami hit, bodies ringed by wailing relatives lay on
beaches surrounded by half-submerged cars and wrecked boats.
In the ruins of a fishermen's colony once 1,500 huts strong, household
debris lay in the mud. Cooking utensils, fishing nets, broken
televisions and slippers littered the ground.
"My mother had gone to the seaside to buy fish when the wave came and
lifted her," said a dazed Muthulakshmi, a fisherman's wife, standing on
a pavement with hundreds of refugees.
"It took us an hour to recover her body. Thank God my husband had not
gone to sea as he was unwell."
BODIES IN SACKS
People carried bodies in hessian sacks to nearby hospitals where dozens
of dead already lined the corridors.
"I felt like I was on a train. I turned around and I saw that a small
glass table with a flower vase was shaking," said Madras resident
Rajani Unni, who felt the tremors in her apartment about 100 metres
(yards) from Elliot's Beach.
"We saw people rushing away from fishermen's colonies lining the beach.
Women were wailing and crying."
In Andhra Pradesh, about 400 fishermen were feared missing and 200
Hindu devotees who had gone to the beach for a holy dip in the morning
were feared dead.
"Where are my mummy and daddy?" cried nine-year-old Bhuvaneswari, whose
parents were swallowed by the sea at Manginapudi beach near
Machilipatnam, about 350 km (220 miles) from the state capital,
Hyderabad.
A state official in Kerala, on the opposite side of the country to
Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, said at least 92 people had been killed
in the southwestern state.
National Interior Minister Shivraj Patil told Aaj Tak television at
least 200 people had died in Andhra Pradesh.
India's armed forces have been called in to help in rescue operations
at home and in Sri Lanka.
Almost 500 tourists were stranded on a rock in the sea off India's
southernmost tip, witnesses said.
Tourists take a ferry to the Vivekananda Rock memorial to see the
sunrise, but services were halted soon after the tourists landed
because of choppy seas, an official said.
A police officer in Port Blair, capital of the Andaman and Nicobar
islands just north of Indonesia's Aceh province, said at least 33
people had died there and ships had been damaged.
Water also entered India's main space centre at Sriharikota, an island
off the south coast, but there were no reports of any damage, Prabhakar
Reddy, a bureaucrat in Andhra Pradesh, said.
Television reports said a nuclear power station in Tamil Nadu had been
shut as a precaution but there were no details.
Two oil refineries on the eastern coast were safe and operating
normally, according to initial reports, a national government official
said.
Chennai Petroleum Corp Ltd, a subsidiary of state-run Indian Oil Corp,
operates a refinery in Madras, and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd has a
refinery in the coastal town of Vishakapatnam.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
chai...@yahoo.com
Sun Dec 26, 2004 09:20 AM ET
By Simon Gardner
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - The world's biggest earthquake in 40
years hit south Asia Sunday, unleashing a tsunami that crashed into Sri
Lanka and India and swamped tourist isles in Thailand and the Maldives,
killing more than 6,300 people.
A wall of water up to 10 meters (30 feet) high triggered by the 8.9
magnitude underwater earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra
caused death, chaos and devastation.
"Nothing like this has ever happened in our country before," Thai Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said.
Sri Lanka, where officials put the death toll at 2,200, appealed for
emergency international aid. One million people, or 5 percent of the
population, were affected, officials said. The death toll in India was
about 2,000 and in Indonesia over 1,800.
Pope John Paul said the enormous tragedy saddened Christmas.
Two-thirds of the Maldives capital, Male, was flooded and officials
voiced anxiety for the fate of dozens of low-lying, palm-ringed coral
atolls crowded with tourists from around the world for the Christmas
holiday season.
India feared a devastating toll along its southeastern coast. In the
state of Tamil Nadu alone, a government official said at least 1,625
had been killed. Rescuers were searching for hundreds of missing
fishermen. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh put the armed forces on alert.
The earthquake of magnitude 8.9 as measured by the U.S. Geological
Survey struck at 7:59 a.m. off Sumatra and swung north with multiple
tremors into the Andaman islands.
In Thailand, at least 257 people had been killed and more than 1,000
injured, officials said.
In popular holiday islands off southern Thailand, emergency workers
rescued about 70 Thai and foreign divers from the famed Emeral Cave and
several dozen were found and evacuated from around other islands,
officials said.
Two Thais were killed at Emeral cave, a major attraction for divers who
have to swim underwater to its tiny beach and water illuminated by
sunshine pouring through a hole in the roof.
Officials said more than 600 tourists and locals were being evacuated
by air and sea from Ko Phi Phi, the tiny island made famous by the 2000
film "The Beach" starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
The Thai government ordered the evacuation of stricken coastal areas,
which included popular beach resorts on the islands of Phuket and
Krabi.
BIGGEST QUAKE IN 40 YEARS
The earthquake was the world's biggest since 1964, said Julie Martinez,
geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado.
"It is multiple earthquakes along the same faultline."
It was the fifth-largest earthquake since 1900, she said.
"These big earthquakes, when they occur in shallow water, ... basically
slosh the ocean floor ... and it's as if you're rocking water in the
bathtub and that wave can travel basically throughout the ocean," USGS
geophysicist Bruce Presgrave said.
In Sri Lanka, thousands fled the worst tsunami in living memory,
scrambling to higher ground for fear of another wave.
"The army and the navy have sent rescue teams; we have deployed over
four choppers and half the navy's eastern fleet to look for survivors,"
military spokesman Brigadier Daya Ratnayake said.
The worst-hit area appeared to be the tourist region of the south and
east where beach hotels were inundated or swept away.
"Our naval base in Trincomalee is underwater and right now we are
trying to manage the situation there while rescuing people," said navy
spokesman Jayantha Perera.
In the low-lying Maldives, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was to
declare a national disaster in the archipelago whose coral atolls are a
magnet for tourists from around the world, said chief government
spokesman Ahmed Shaheed.
"The damage is considerable," Shaheed said. "The island is only about
three feet (one meter) above sea level and a wave of water four feet
high swept over us."
Ramapriya
news. A group of people in the east coast town of Vishakhapatnam,
apparently shaken by the sudden violent destruction, decided to charter
an aircraft but as the plane was taxiing, a Jeep that had gone to
inspect the runway reported a crack that had become so wide that it was
deemed unsafe for the plane to attempt a takeoff. The folks inside were
taxiied back to the airport apron and disembarked.
Too bad my India is still a poor third-world nation. Can you imagine
such poor construction elsewhere? :(
No cheer,
Ramapriya
hu...@vsnl.com
john smith
The multi-billion dollar replacement airport had numerous quality
defects. This in a "first-world" country.
Graft and corruption don't discriminate.
C J Campbell
C J Campbell
"C J Campbell" <christopherc...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:jaWdnaHJ7ph...@wavecable.com...
> Death toll said to be up over 8,000 now.
Er, make that 10,000.
Blanche
>Read about the problems at Denver International Airport.
>The multi-billion dollar replacement airport had numerous quality
>defects. This in a "first-world" country.
>Graft and corruption don't discriminate.
I live in Colorado. We're not at the level of graft and corruption
as Chicago -- still amateurs -- but it's amazing what the local
population will tolerate.
I drive to Colorado Springs if I need to fly commercial. Nicer people
(including the TSA folks!), easier & cheaper parking.
Jay Honeck
>
> Er, make that 10,000.
Now 23,700.
Appalling.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"
chai...@yahoo.com
Wow! Sort of make you think, don't it?
Bryan
chai...@yahoo.com
By ANDI DJATMIKO
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (AP) - The death toll from the epic tsunami that
rocked 11 countries rose to 40,000 people Tuesday, and food and
supplies poured into the region, part of what the U.N. said would be
the biggest relief effort the world has ever seen. Millions remained
homeless.
Rescuers struggled to reach remote locations where thousands more were
likely killed by the deadliest tsunami in 120 years. Bodies, many of
them children, filled beaches and choked hospital morgues, raising
fears of disease across the region.
Sri Lanka raised its death toll past 18,700. Hundreds died when a train
carrying 1,000 passengers from Colombo to Galle was thrown off its
tracks by Sunday's waves, police chief B.T.B. Ariyapala said Tuesday.
The waves wrenched most of the train's cars into twisted metal, he
said. The passengers were dead or missing; about 150 bodies had been
recovered.
In Indonesia, the country closest to Sunday's 9.0 magnitude quake that
sent walls of water crashing into coastlines thousands of miles away,
the count rose to 15,000, a number the vice president said could rise.
Purnomo Sidik, the national disaster director, told The Associated
Press the toll rose by almost 10,000 people after the government
received reports from the previously unreachable western coast of
Sumatra.
Some 4,400 died in India; 1,500 perished in Thailand. The Red Cross
said malaria and cholera could add to the toll.
Desperate residents on Indonesia's Sumatra Island - 100 miles from the
quake's epicenter - looted stores Tuesday. ``There is no help, it is
each person for themselves here,'' district official Tengku Zulkarnain
told el-Shinta radio station.
The disaster could be the costliest in history, with ``many billions of
dollars'' of damage, said U.N. Undersecretary Jan Egeland, who is in
charge of emergency relief coordination. Hundreds of thousands lost all
they owned, he said.
In Galle, Sri Lanka, officials used a loudspeaker atop a fire engine to
tell residents to place bodies on the road for collection. Muslim
families used cooking utensils and even their bare hands to dig graves.
Hindus in India, abandoning their tradition of burning bodies, held
mass burials.
Soldiers and volunteers in Indonesia combed through destroyed houses to
try to find survivors - or bodies. The toll in Thailand included at
least 700 foreign tourists.
Stories of survival emerged amid the devastation.
A blond-haired 2-year-old found sitting alone on a road in Thailand and
taken to a hospital was reunited with his uncle, who saw the boy's
picture on the hospital's Web site.
``When I saw Hannes on the Internet, I booked an air ticket to come
here in less than five hours,'' said a man who identified himself only
as Jim. Hannes Bergstroem's mother died in the tsunami; his father was
in another hospital, the Swedish paper Aftonbladet reported.
In Malaysia, a 20-day-old baby was found floating on a mattress soon
after the waves hit Sunday. She and her family were reunited.
But the geographic scope of the disaster was unparalleled. Relief
organizations used to dealing with a centralized crisis had to
distribute resources over 11 countries on two continents.
Helicopters in India rushed medicine to stricken areas. In Sri Lanka,
the Health Ministry dispatched 300 physicians to the disaster zone by
helicopter.
Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar said the United States
was sending helicopters. An airborne surgical hospital from Finland
arrived, and a German aircraft was en route with a water purification
plant.
UNICEF officials said about 175 tons of rice arrived in Banda Aceh,
Indonesia, and six tons of medical supplies were to arrive by Thursday.
But most basic supplies were scarce.
A new danger emerged Tuesday: UNICEF said uprooted land mines in Sri
Lanka threatened to kill or maim aid workers and survivors. ``Mines
were ... washed out of known mine fields, so now we don't know where
they are,'' said Ted Chaiban, the Sri Lanka chief of UNICEF.
Scores of people were also killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and
Maldives. Deaths were even reported in Africa - in Somalia, Tanzania
and Seychelles, close to 3,000 miles away.
On the remote Indian islands of Andaman and Nicobar, off the northern
tip of Sumatra, officials still hadn't established communications. An
estimated 3,000 deaths there were not counted in the official toll.
It was the deadliest known tsunami since the one caused by the 1883
volcanic eruption at Krakatoa - located off Sumatra's southern tip -
which killed an estimated 36,000 people.
Many of the dead and missing were children - as many as half the
victims in Sri Lanka.
``Where are my children?'' asked 41-year-old Absah, as she searched for
her 11 youngsters in Banda Aceh, the city closest to Sunday's
epicenter. ``Where are they? Why did this happen to me? I've lost
everything.''
The streets in Banda Aceh were filled with overturned cars and rotting
corpses. Shopping malls and office buildings lay in rubble, and
thousands of homeless families huddled in mosques and schools.
Relatives wandered hallways lined with bodies at the hospital in Sri
Lanka's southern town of Galle, a stunned hush broken only by wails of
mourning.
Momentum grew to create a tsunami warning system like the one that
guards Pacific coasts. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Australia
would push for its creation.
``I know it looks like a bit like closing the door after the horse has
bolted,'' Downer said Tuesday. But he said he hoped such a system would
save lives in the future.
The United States dispatched disaster teams and prepared a $15 million
aid package. Japan pledged $30 million and Australia $8 million.
Indonesia's Aceh province exemplified the challenge to aid workers. The
government until Monday barred foreigners because of a separatist
conflict. Communications lines were still down and remote villages had
yet to be reached.
``There is not anyone to bury the bodies,'' said Steve Aswin, a UNICEF
official in Jakarta. ``They should be buried in mass graves but there
is no one to dig graves.''
Sri Lankan police waived the law calling for mandatory autopsies,
allowing rotting corpses to be buried immediately. ``We accept that the
deaths were caused by drowning,'' police spokesman Rienzie Perera said.
India on Tuesday said a nuclear power plant damaged by tidal waves was
safe and that there was no threat of radiation.
Jay Honeck
> Wow! Sort of make you think, don't it?
Makes me think that I'm glad to be living in the middle of a continental
land mass.
C J Campbell
"Jay Honeck" <jjho...@NOSPAMmchsi.com> wrote in message
news:ovdAd.32978$k25.14955@attbi_s53...
> > 40,000 as of Tuesday morning.
> > Wow! Sort of make you think, don't it?
>
> Makes me think that I'm glad to be living in the middle of a continental
> land mass.
All it means is that something else will get you.
jga...@hotmail.com
Jay Honeck wrote:
> > 40,000 as of Tuesday morning.
> > Wow! Sort of make you think, don't it?
>
> Makes me think that I'm glad to be living in the middle of a
continental
> land mass.
Sure, as long as it's not tornado season.
John Galban=====>N4BQ (PA28-180)
chai...@yahoo.com
bitch. It is only two hours drive for us.
Bryan
chai...@yahoo.com
some a daughter, some abrother, some a sister, some a husband, some a
wife, some a mother, some a father, some lost them all. A whole town
with all the inhabitants was reported washed out to sea.
WOW!
Blueskies
<chai...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1104270449.6...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
David CL Francis
<0_idnfZEJad...@wavecable.com>, C J Campbell
--
David CL Francis
C J Campbell
"David CL Francis" <USENE...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:B4gPwMHi...@62.30.70.76...
Whoo. Let us hope that we don't get any supervolcanoes like that for awhile.