Posted on 12/26/2004 1:30:15 AM PST by Truth666
However, the government said two thirds of the capital was under about four feet (1.2 meters) of water in some areas. About a third of the country’s 330,000 population live in the highly congested capital island.
Maldives is a cluster of 1,192 tiny coral islands scattered some 800 kilometres (500 miles) across the equator and is vulnerable to any rise in sea levels.
The fate of tens of thousands of tourists in the Maldives was not immediately known.
"Do not change a title...If you wish to editorialize, put it in parentheses."
But...it's the end of the world, it doesn't matter.
Excellent comments.
don't expect eight hours.
I thought the East Coast "gets theirs" when a huge chunk of the continental shelf landslides into deeper water?
The sky is falling!
We're doomed, no matter what.
That continental landshelf slide deal...is that related to global warming? If so, it's GW's fault.
The seismographs agree
http://aslwww.cr.usgs.gov/Seismic_Data/heli2.shtml
To prevent duplication, do not alter the heading. Thanks.
Phi Phi Island, Thailand : ocean swallows all 200 bungalows at sea level, some of them including the tourists and employees.
If you are aware of the topography of Phi Phi, this gives an idea of what might have happened in the Maldives
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308548/posts
A number of tsunami experts have weighed in on that with papers showing that the size of the wave from that Canary Island collapse would be much smaller than originally claimed and not cause a tsunami on the East Coast of the US.
They're pretty upset that the Discovery and Science Channel types doing documentaries are completely ignoring their perspective; of course, they're perspective isn't very exciting or scary, so that's why its ignored.
Has anyone heard anything about the Seychelles? I have a colleague who moved there with his entire family. I have only seen sketchy news on this so far. :-(
Turning on Fox and CNN now.
This is a very remote area with over 340,000 people, only two paved airports (likely unuseable now because of damage) and with the only two ports in disarray, maybe unuseable. Electricity is no doubt gone, food will be very scarce, fresh water will soon be gone and probably civil instability will arrive quickly as shortages quickly become acute.
This is a disaster only starting to unfold. One would not want to be either a tourist or an inhabitant in the Maldives today.
Sorry, I just cannot believe that the European / American media would 'blackout' such casualties in this story. All national media tend to play up their own casualities, but news is coming in from where it's easiest to process, and a flooded Maldives would be way down on that list. With bodies washed away and survivors running for the high ground figures for deaths and the nationalities of those dead will be hard to come by for some time.
That said, let's hope your 'blackout' is because there's nothing to report.
Well said. This is what the media is censoring, to start with.
There's a difference between simple lack of info and deliberate censoring.
You really think, say, ABC or CNN has someone just sitting around in the Maldives waiting to report? The average CNN news producer would probably have to go the index of an Atlas to even find the place.
There was a single short report on BBC news about incidents of flooding & communication disruptions in the Seychelles.But nothing more than that.Damage there appears to be far more limited than in the Maldives.
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