It seemed quite obvious that the death toll would go up, but the news reports I saw at first weren't really hinting at that. But 88,000 seems *ahem* much higher than I would expect. I hope it's too high, anyway.
That’s the big difference, I think, between the building standards of first-world versus third-world countries. Japan was rebuilt almost entirely in the post-war period and they used sound modern engineering techniques and materials. But a place like Iran has a major quake and the simple stone and mud buildings are wiped out, killing people by the tens of thousands.
I saw that picture on Drudge - not the one he has up now, but one he had up this morning - of a wave going over houses, and couldn’t imagine then how anyone could survive something like that, much less the entire scope of the tsunami that wasn’t even captured in that image. There would just be no hope of survival if you were outdoors at the time (or even indoors, I’d think). I don’t want to believe a number like 88,000, there’s probably a lot of confusion and people just not accounted for right now, but it’s going to be a terrible number either way. Just a horrible, horrible event.