Posted on 12/30/2004 7:26:40 AM PST by Brilliant
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - The death toll from last weekend's earthquake-tsunami catastrophe rose to more than 114,000 on Thursday as Indonesia uncovered more and more dead from ravaged Sumatra island, where pilots dropped food to remote villages still unreachable by rescue workers. A false alarm that new killer waves were about to hit sparked panic in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
The increase came after Indonesia reported nearly 28,000 newly confirmed dead in Sumatra, which was closest to the epicenter of last weekend's massive earthquake and was overwhelmed by the tsunami that followed. Some 60 percent of Banda Aceh, the main city in northern Sumatra was destroyed, the U.N. children's agency estimated, and 115 miles of the island's northwest coast — lined with villages — was inundated.
Indonesia, with around 80,000 dead, was the worst hit, followed by Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. The total across 12 nations in southern Asia and East Africa was likely to rise, with thousands still missing and fears that disease could bring a new wave of deaths.
Tens of thousands of residents fled coasts in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand after warnings that a new tsunami was about to strike after new aftershocks hit the Indian Ocean Thursday.
India issued a tsunami warning at midday, but then hours later its science minister, Kapil Sibal, went on television to announce the warning was incorrect and based on information received from a U.S. research firm.
Fears of a new tsunami were "unscientific, hogwash and should be discarded," Sibal said.
Still, the alert sparked panic among people traumatized by Sunday's devastation.
"We got into a truck and fled," said 40-year-old Gandhimathi of Nagappattinam in India's Tamil Nadu state, who said authorities told her to leave her home. "We took only a few clothes and left behind all of our belongings, everything we had."
Sri Lanka's military later told residents there to be vigilant but not to panic, while coastal villagers climbed onto rooftops or sought high ground. "There is total confusion here," said Rohan Bandara in the coastal town of Tangalle.
Tsunami sirens in southern Thailand sent people dashing from beaches, but only small waves followed the alarms.
An estimated 5.7 magnitude aftershock was recorded in seas northwest of Indonesia's Sumatra island by the Hong Kong observatory Thursday morning, along with earlier, overnight quakes at India's Andaman and Nicobar islands. But a 5.7 quake would be about 1,000 times less powerful than Sunday's, and probably would have "negligible impact," said geologist Jason Ali of University of Hong Kong.
The false alarm highlighted the lack of an organized tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean region — which experts have already said may have worsened the crisis after Sunday's 9.0 magnitude quake hit off Sumatra's coast, sending a massive wave racing at 500 mph across the Indian Ocean.
Sibal, the Indian science minister, said Thursday's warning was based on information from a U.S. research group that "claimed they have some sensors and equipment through which they suggest there was a possibility of an earthquake."
He did not elaborate on how the information was incorrect.
Meanwhile, military ships and planes rushed to get desperately needed aid to Sumatra's ravaged coast. Countless corpses strewn on the streets rotted under the tropical sun causing a nearly unbearable stench.
Food drops began along the coast, mostly of instant noodles and medicines, with some of the areas "hard to reach because they are surrounded by cliffs," said Budi Aditutro, head of the government's relief team.
Government institutions in Aceh province, the territory on Sumatra's northern tip, have ceased to function and basic supplies such as fuel have almost run out, forcing even ambulances to ration gasoline.
On the streets of Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, fights have broken out over packets of noodles dropped from military vehicles.
"I believe the frustration will be growing in the days and weeks ahead," U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland said.
The United States, India, Australia and Japan have formed an international coalition to coordinate worldwide relief and reconstruction efforts, President Bush (news - web sites) announced.
"We will prevail over this destruction," Bush said from his Texas ranch Wednesday.
The number of deaths in Indonesia stood at about 52,000. Authorities there said that did not include a full count from Sumatra's west coast, and UNICEF (news - web sites) estimated the toll for that country alone could be 80,000.
Sri Lanka reported 24,700 dead, India more than 7,300 and Thailand around 2,400 — though that country's prime minister said he feared the toll would go to 6,800. A total of more than 300 were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya.
The disaster struck a band of the tropics that not only is heavily populated but attracts tourists from all corners. Throughout the world, people sought word of missing relatives, from small-town Sri Lankan fishermen to Europeans on sand-and-sun holidays.
On hundreds of Web sites, the messages were brief but poignant: "Missing: Christina Blomee in Khao Lak," or simply, "Where are you?"
But even as hope for the missing dwindled, survivors continued to turn up.
A 2-year-old Swedish boy was reunited with his father days after the toddler was found alone on a roadside in Thailand's southern beach resort island of Phuket. In Sri Lanka, a lone fisherman named Sini Mohammed Sarfudeen was rescued Wednesday by an air force helicopter crew after clinging to his wave-tossed boat for three days.
Rescue workers on Thursday plied the dense forests of India's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands — an archipelago just to the northwest of the quake's epicenter — where authorities fear as many as 10,000 more people may be buried in mud and thick vegetation. Many hungry villagers were surviving on coconut milk, rescuers said.
Mohammad Yusef, 60, a fisherman who fled his village and was holed up at a Catholic church in the territory's capital Port Blair along with about 800 others, said all 15 villages on the coast of Car Nicobar island had been destroyed.
"There's not a single hut which is standing," he told The Associated Press. "Everything is gone. Most of the people have gone up to the hills and are afraid to come down," Yusef said.
Many villagers had not eaten for two days and said that crocodiles had washed ashore during the disaster, compounding the horror of more than 50 aftershocks since Sunday's quake.
Out of curiosity...
...this is a disaster that has affected parts of the world where - on a good day - it's extremely difficult to place an international phone call.
How is it then that the powers that be are coming up with an accurate, steadily rising death toll?
And who are the powers that be? Could they be the United Nations? The same United Nations that said the US was "stingy" and that we "needed higher taxes so we could contribute more?"
Perhaps this death toll is an estimate designed to spin this tragedy to serve the UN's goals. That's a charitable way of saying that maybe some UNocrat is pulling these numbers out of his or her butt.
Of course the MSM will never question these numbers, so long as the death toll continues to rise.
Agreed.
I saw an interesting bit on OReilly last night. His guest was a physics prof who was making the argument that a massive tidal wave could hit the US east coast, if a volcano off the coast of Africa should blow up, as they apparently fear.
It could devastate the entire east coast. The only saving grace is that it'd take 9 hours to get here, so there would at least be time to evacuate the people.
".....India issued a tsunami warning at midday, but then hours later its science minister, Kapil Sibal, went on television to announce the warning was incorrect and based on information received from a U.S. research firm.
Fears of a new tsunami were "unscientific, hogwash and should be discarded," Sibal said."
Oh...ok...you just experienced one of the most horrific events of recorded history. And now you are discarding what nature has already proven and attach the U.S. to this statement.
Who gave permission to let this mental midget speak? Ok...aftershocks in the same region with like land mass movements can not create the same results?
*shaking head in disbelief*
A.) The local governments have plenty of portable satellite telephones that allow phone calls to be made from anywhere.
B.) The death tolls are coming from local government reports, not the UN.
I agree. We have 2 things that are plusses here. Better built buildings with improvements developed from all the hurricanes that saves some property and better communication, which saves lives.
Every hurricane produces damage and loss of life, but not nearly like the losses from natural disasters in these countries. Our east coast has learned from hurricanes as the west coast has learned from earthquakes.
Actually that's pretty unlikely. I've never heard of an aftershock tsunami days after the main quake for a megathrust quake like this.
There's been one M 7+ aftershock, and that quake was still 100 times weaker than the main shock. Long-distance tsunami are very rare for quakes smaller than 8s, and it's extremely unlikely you'll have any aftershocks above 8. You certainly won't get any large tsunami out of these M 5-6 quakes.
While a lot has been learned on the West Coast, they've mostly been saved by dumb luck. We'll still have thousands killed in this country when we have a strong eartquake right under an urban center.
Agreed, but we are more prepared for that than the countries affected by the Tsunami. We are also more prepared for the aftermath.
Yes....there is a dormant volcano in the Canary Islands. There is a fault line that is growing at a rapid rate. There are US scientists there studying the fault. The landmass is large enough that if the one side of the island slides into the sea it will cause significant tidal waves here on the US East Coast.
There is a periodic special on one of the cable channels....Discovery or The Learning Channel where they discuss this and the effects of large land masses sliding into waterbodies. The title is something like Mega Waves or something to that effect. One of these Mega Waves occured in Alaska in a harbor that had a landslide that created a Super/Mega Wave that measured something like almost 100ft in height. The show the bay where this occured and how the treeline was moved up equal to the height of the wave. One eyewitness stated him and his son were on his boat when this occured and ended up riding inland over treetops then pulled back out to the harbor where the boat was not damaged.
Anyone caught up in it was at great risk to be crushed and drowned, but it appears that anyone in a building above ground floor had an excellent chance of survival.
They apparently don't have a warning system on the US coast. Seems like they should, even though tidal waves are not as common here.
Actually most top tsunami scientists in the world think it's a load of crap. The two British scientists behind the whole thing really seem like publicity hounds. There must have been a dozen scary documentaries featuring them by now.
Or in the words of the condescending O'Reilly, "...to evacuate the folks."
I'm not skeptical about the numbers at all. Having looked at the population figures for Banda Aceh, the damage pics, and knowing that unlike wind (hurricane/tornado) damage, you don't really survive water.
Actually, I really wonder how this country would behave if we experienced something like that tsunami. I think there would be total chaos here.
THE TSUNAMI SOCIETY
MEGA TSUNAMI HAZARDS
MEDIA COMMITEE EVALUATION
January 15, 2003
The mission of the Tsunami Society includes "the dissemination of knowledge about tsunamis to scientists, officials, and the public". We have established a committee of private, university, and government scientists to accomplish part of this goal by correcting misleading or invalid information released to public about this hazard. We can supply both valid, correct and important information and advice to the public, and the names of reputable scientists active in the field of tsunami, who can provide such information.
Most recently, the Discovery Channel has replayed a program on alleging potential destruction of coastal areas of the Atlantic by tsunami waves which might be generated in the near future by a volcanic collapse in the Canary Islands. Other reports have involved a smaller but similar catastrophe from Kilauea volcano on the island of Hawai`i. They like to call these occurences "mega tsunamis". We would like to halt the scaremongering from these unfounded reports. We wish to provide the media with factual information so that the public can be properly informed about actual hazards of tsunamis and their mitigation.
Here are a set of facts, agreed on by committee members, about the claims in these reports:
- While the active volcano of Cumbre Vieja on Las Palma is expected to erupt again, it will not send a large part of the island into the ocean, though small landslides may occur. The Discovery program does not bring out in the interviews that such volcanic collapses are extremely rare events, separated in geologic time by thousands or even millions of years.
- No such event - a mega tsunami - has occurred in either the Atlantic or Pacific oceans in recorded history. NONE.
- The colossal collapses of Krakatau or Santorin (the two most similar known happenings) generated catastrophic waves in the immediate area but hazardous waves did not propagate to distant shores. Carefully performed numerical and experimental model experiments on such events and of the postulated Las Palma event verify that the relatively short waves from these small, though intense, occurrences do not travel as do tsunami waves from a major earthquake.
- The U.S. volcano observatory, situated on Kilauea, near the current eruption, states that there is no likelihood of that part of the island breaking off into the ocean.
- These considerations have been published in journals and discussed at conferences sponsored by the Tsunami Society.
Some papers on this subject include:
"Evaluation of the threat of Mega Tsunami Generation From ....Volcanoes on La Palma ... and Hawaii", George Pararas-Carayannis, in Science of Tsunami Hazards, Vol 20, No.5, pages 251-277, 2002.
"Modeling the La Palma Landslide Tsunami", Charles L. Mader, in Science of Tsunami Hazards, Vol. 19, No. 3, pages 160-180, 2001.
"Volcano Growth and the Evolution of the Island of Hawaii", J.G. Moore and D.A.Clague, in the Geologic Society of America Bulletin, 104, 1992.
Committee members for this report include:
Mr. George Curtis, Hilo, HI (Committee Chairman) 808-963-6670
Dr. Tad Murty, Ottawa, Canada, 613-731-8900
Dr. Laura Kong, Honolulu, HI, 808-532-6422
Dr. George Pararas-Carayannis, Honolulu, HI, 808-943-1150
Dr. Charles L. Mader, Los Alamos, NM, 808-396-9855
and all can comment on this or other tsunami matters.
For information regarding the Tsunami Society and its publications, scientific papers on tsunamis, visit:
http://sthjournal.org/
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