Asian Tsunamis Kill at Least 20,000 People

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Legions of rescuers spread across Asia Monday after an earthquake of epic power struck deep beneath the Indian Ocean, unleashing 20-foot tidal waves that ravaged coasts across thousands of miles and killed more than 13,340 people and left millions homeless in the fourth-largest temblor in a century.

The death toll along the southern coast of Asia — and as far west as Somalia, on the African coast, where nine people were reported lost — steadily increased as authorities sorted out a far-flung disaster caused by Sunday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake, strongest in 40 years.

Signs of the carnage were everywhere: Dozens of bodies still clad in swimming trunks lined beaches in Thailand. Villagers in Indonesia picked through the debris of destroyed houses amid the smell of rotting corpses. Hundreds of prisoners escaped a coastal jail in Sri Lanka.

More than one million people were driven from their homes in Indonesia alone, and rescuers there on Monday combed seaside villages for survivors. The Indian air force used helicopters to rush food and medicine to stricken seashore areas.

Another million were driven from their homes in Sri Lanka where some 25,000 soldiers and 10 air force helicopters were deployed in relief and rescue efforts, authorities said.

At Thailand's beach resorts, packed with Europeans fleeing the winter cold at the peak of the holiday season, families and friends had tearful reunions Monday after a day of fear that their loved ones had been swept away.

Katri Seppanen, 27, of Helsinki, Finland, walked around barefoot, in her salt water-stained T-shirt and skirt, at the Patong Hospital waiting room where she spent the night with her mother and sister. She had a bandaged cut on her leg.

"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 a tearful Seppanen, who was on the popular Patong beach with her family. The wave washed over their heads and separated them.

Fifty-eight half-naked and swimming suit-clad corpses lay in rows outside the Patong Hospital emergency room. Three babies under the age of one were among the victims. A photo of one baby was posted on the wall of victims, the little corpse in a nearby refrigerator.

The earthquake hit at 6:58 a.m.; the tsunami came as much as 2 1/2 hours later, without warning, on a morning of crystal blue skies. Sunbathers and snorkelers, cars and cottages, fishing boats and even a lighthouse were swept away.

Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India each reported thousands dead. Deaths were also reported in Malaysia, Maldives and Bangladesh.

"It's an extraordinary calamity of such colossal proportions that the damage has been unprecedented," said Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa of India's Tamil Nadu, a southern state which reported 1,705 dead, many of them strewn along beaches, virtual open-air mortuaries.

"It all seems to have happened in the space of 20 minutes. A massive tidal wave of extreme ferocity ... smashed everything in sight to smithereens," she said.

At least three Americans were among the dead — two in Sri Lanka and one in Thailand, according to State Department spokesman Noel Clay. He said a number of other Americans were injured, but he had no details.

"We're working on ways to help. The United States will be very responsive," Clay said.

John Krueger, 34, of Winter Park, Colorado, described being inside his bungalow Sunday on Khao Luk Beach, north of Phuket, with his wife, Romina Canton, 26, of Rosario, Argentina, when the water filled it and blew it apart.

"The water rushed under the bungalow, brought our floor up and raised us to the ceiling. The water blew out our doors, our windows and the back concrete wall. My wife was swept away with the wall, and I had to bust my way through the roof," Krueger said while waiting to talk to a U.S. Embassy official at Phuket City Hall. "It was like being in a washing machine."

Canton was dragged into the ocean for more than an hour until a wave brought her back to land again, with a broken nose and foot scratches all over her body, Krueger said.

The quake was centered 155 miles south-southeast of Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia's Aceh province on Sumatra, and six miles under the Indian Ocean's seabed. The temblor leveled dozens of buildings on Sumatra — and was followed Sunday by at least a half-dozen powerful aftershocks, ranging in magnitude from almost 6 to 7.3, and one aftershock Monday that hit India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

An Associated Press reporter in Aceh province saw bodies wedged in trees as the waters receded. More bodies littered the beaches. Authorities said at least 4,448 were dead in Indonesia; the full impact of the disaster was not known, as communications were cut to the towns most affected.

The waves barreled across the Bay of Bengal, pummeling Sri Lanka, where more than 4,500 were reported killed — at least 3,000 in areas controlled by the government and about 1,500 in regions controlled by rebels, who listed the death toll on their Web site. There was an unconfirmed report of 500 more deaths on another Web site that provided no details. Some 170 children were feared lost in an orphanage. More than a million people were displaced from wrecked villages.

Devinda R. Subasinghe, the Sri Lanka ambassador to the United States, said the extensive damage will make the rescue effort more difficult. "It's going to take time to figure out access to these areas that have been impacted," Subasinghe said Monday in an interview on CNN. Up to 70 percent of the island's coastline was damaged, he said.

There was sporadic, small-scale looting in the towns of Galle and Matara, and authorities said about 200 inmates escaped from a prison, taking advantage of the chaos after guards panicked and fled when water entered the building.

About 2,300 were reported dead along the southern coasts of India. The private Aaj Tak television channel put the death toll there at up to 3,300, but the report could not be confirmed. At least 431 in Thailand, 48 in Malaysia and 32 in the Maldives, a string of coral islands off the southwestern coast of India. At least two died in Bangladesh — children who drowned as a boat with about 15 tourists capsized in high waves.

In India's Andhra Pradesh state, at least 32 Hindu devotees were drowned when they went into the sea for a religious ceremony to mark the full moon. Among them were 15 children. On Monday, bodies of women and children lay strewn on the sand.

"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, of that state.

In Cuddalore, in the worst-hit Tamil Nadu state, survivors huddled Monday in a marriage hall turned makeshift shelter, as fire engine sirens whined outside. Broken boats law on the shore near smashed huts with only frail bamboo frames jutting out of the ground.

The earthquake that caused the tsunami was the largest since a 9.2 temblor hit Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1964, according to geophysicist Julie Martinez of the U.S. Geological Survey.

"All the planet is vibrating" from the quake, said Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute. Speaking on SKY TG24 TV, Boschi said the quake even disturbed the Earth's rotation.

The quake occurred at a place where several huge geological plates push against each other with massive force. The survey said a 620-mile section along the boundary of the plates shifted, motion that triggered the sudden displacement of a huge volume of water.

Scientists said the death toll might have been reduced if India and Sri Lanka had been part of an international warning system designed to advise coastal communities that a potentially killer wave was approaching. Although Thailand is part of the system, the west coast of its southern peninsula does not have the system's wave sensors mounted on ocean buoys.

As it was, there was no warning. Gemunu Amarasinghe, an AP photographer in Sri Lanka, said he saw young boys rushing to catch fish that had been scattered on the beach by the first wave.

"But soon afterward, the devastating second series of waves came," he said. He climbed onto the roof of his car, but "In a few minutes my jeep was under water. The roof collapsed.

"I joined masses of people in escaping to high land. Some carried their dead and injured loved ones. Some of the dead were eventually placed at roadside, and covered with sarongs. Others walked past dazed, asking if anyone had seen their family members."

Michael Dobbs, a reporter for The Washington Post, was swimming around a tiny island off a Sri Lankan beach at about 9:15 a.m. when his brother called out that something strange was happening with the sea.

Then, within minutes, "the beach and the area behind it had become an inland sea, rushing over the road and pouring into the flimsy houses on the other side. The speed with which it all happened seemed like a scene from the Bible — a natural phenomenon unlike anything I had experienced before," he wrote on the Post's Web site.

Dobbs weathered the wave, but then found himself struggling to keep from being swept away when the floodwaters receded.

The international airport was closed in the Maldives after a tidal wave that left 51 people missing in addition to the 32 dead.

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 along the ocean floor between Australia and Antarctica caused buildings to shake hundreds of miles away. The earlier temblor caused 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 struck off Peru on June 23, 2001, killed 74.

Your first post on this matter on this thread is post #64:

note who Thailand has turned to for help...the USA...

Now, has Thailand withdrawn its troops from Iraq yet? Supposedly they were. If not, we should send over a similar amount of aid. If so, tell them sorry, all of our forces are picking up the slack...maybe next year?

note who Thailand has turned to for help...the USA...

Do you have a link for that? Where did you get your info?

I heard on cable news that the US had offered assistance first and at that time Thailand had not responded. I did find this: IMF, US pledge support for tsunami-torn South Asia

Meanwhile, US President George W. Bush expressed his condolences to the victims of the massive earthquake and tidal waves that hit southern and southeast Asia. The State Department said three Americans have been identified as being among those killed.

Deputy presidential press secretary Trent Duffy said in a statement, "The United States stands ready to offer all appropriate assistance to those nations most affected."

The statement said US relief efforts were already underway to help people in Sri Lanka and the Maldives, a string of 1,192 coral atolls off the southwestern coast of India. "We will work with the affected governments, the United Nations, non-governmental organisations, and other concerned states and organisations to support the relief and response to this terrible tragedy," said the statement.

According to the following article dated 12/26/04 Thailand troops are still in Iraq. Read the article in the following attached link and let me know what your opinion if any you have.

Crackdown by premier strains Thailand's friendship with U.S.

BTW do you recall if Iran ever accepted the aide that the US offered to them after the earthquake in Bam last year? Did the US offer North Korea aide after the explosion they had earlier this year?

Asia Struggles As Death Toll Hits 44,000

By ANDI DJATMIKO, Associated Press Writer

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Mourners in Sri Lanka used their bare hands to dig graves Tuesday while hungry islanders in Indonesia turned to looting in the aftermath of Asia's devastating tsunamis. Thousands more bodies were found in Indonesia, dramatically increasing the death toll across 11 nations to around 44,000.

Emergency workers who reached Aceh province at the northern tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island found that 10,000 people had been killed in a single town, Meulaboh, said Purnomo Sidik, national disaster director at the Social Affairs Ministry.

Another 9,000 were confirmed dead so far in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, and surrounding towns, he said. Soldiers and volunteers combed seaside districts and dug into rubble of destroyed houses to seek survivors and retrieve the dead amid unconfirmed reports that other towns along Aceh's west coast had been demolished.

With aid not arriving quick enough, desperate residents in Meulaboh and other towns in Aceh — a region that was unique in that it was struck both by Sunday's massive quake and the killer waves that followed — were turning to looting.

"It is every person for themselves here," district official Tengku Zulkarnain told el-Shinta radio station from the area.

"People are looting, but not because they are evil, but they are hungry," said Red Cross official Irman Rachmat in Banda Aceh.

In Sri Lanka, the toll also mounted significantly. Around 1,000 people were dead or missing and feared dead from a train that was flung off its tracks when the gigantic waves hit. Rescuers pulled 204 bodies from the train's eight carriages — reduced to twisted metal — and cremated or buried them Tuesday next to the railroad track that runs along the coastline.

More than 18,700 people died in Sri Lanka, more than 4,000 in India and more than 1,500 in Thailand, with numbers expected to rise. The Indonesian vice president's estimate that his country's coastlines held up to 25,000 victims would bring the potential toll up to 50,000.

Europeans desperately sought relatives missing from holidays in Southeast Asia — particularly Thailand, where bodies littered the once crowded beach resorts. Near the devastated Similan Beach and Spa Resort, where mostly German tourists were staying, a naked corpse hung suspended from a tree Tuesday as if crucified.

A blond two-year-old Swedish boy, Hannes Bergstroem, 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.

"This is a miracle, the biggest thing that could happen," said the uncle, who identified himself as Jim.

So far, more than 80 Westerners have been confirmed dead across the region — including 11 Americans. But a British consulate official in Thailand warned that hundreds more foreign tourists were likely killed in the country's resorts.

In Sri Lanka, more than 300 people crammed into the Infant Jesus Church at Orrs Hill, located on high ground from their ravaged fishing villages. Families and childres slept on pews and the cement floor.

"We had never seen the sea looking like that. It was like as if a calm sea had suddenly become a raging monster," said one woman, Haalima, recalling the giant wave that swept away her 5-year-old grandson, Adil.

Adil was making sandcastles with his younger sister, Reeze, while Haalima sat in her home Sunday morning. Haalima said the girl ran to her complaining that waves had crushed their castles, then came screams and water entered the home. "When we looked, there was no shore anymore and no Adil," she said.

In Sri Lanka's severely hit town of Galle, officials mounted a loudspeaker on a fire engine to advise residents to lay bodies of the dead on roads for collection and burial. Elsewhere in Sri Lanka, residents took on burial efforts with forks or even bare hands to scrape a final resting place for victims.

The tidal waves and flooding uprooted land mines in war-torn Sri Lanka, threatening to kill or maim aid workers and survivors who are attempting to return to what's left of their homes.

Amid the devastation, however, were some miraculous stories of survival.

In Malaysia, a 20-day-old baby was found alive on a floating mattress. She and her family were later reunited. A Hong Kong couple vacationing in Thailand clung to a mattress for six hours.

The disaster could be history's costliest, with "many billions of dollars" of damage, said U.N. Undersecretary Jan Egeland, who is in charge of emergency relief coordination.

Hundreds of thousands have lost everything, and millions face a hazardous future because of polluted drinking water, a lack of sanitation and no health services, he said.

Scores of people were also killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives. The tidal waves traveled as far as Somalia, where hundreds were reported dead, and Seychelles, where three were killed.

Children have emerged as the biggest victims of Sunday's quake-born tidal waves. The U.N. organization estimates at least one-third of the tens of thousands who died were children, said UNICEF spokesman Alfred Ironside in New York.

Officials in Thailand and Indonesia conceded that immediate public warnings of gigantic waves could have saved lives. The only known warning issued by Thai authorities reached resort operators when it was too late. The waves hit Sri Lanka and India more than two hours after the quake.

But governments insisted they couldn't have known the true danger because there is no international system in place to track tsunamis in the Indian Ocean, and they could not afford the sophisticated equipment to build one.

For most people around the shores across the region, the only warning Sunday of the disaster came when shallow coastal waters disappeared, sucked away by the approaching tsunami, before returning as a massive wall of water. The waves wiped out villages, lifted cars and boats, yanked children from the arms of parents and swept away beachgoers, scuba divers and fishermen.

The United States dispatched disaster teams and prepared a $15 million aid package to the Asian countries, and the 25-nation European Union) promised to deliver $4 million. Japan, Portugal, China and Russia were sending teams of experts.

Egeland said he expected hundreds of relief airplanes from two dozen countries within the next 48 hours.

An aerial view shows tunami-damaged Meulaboh town, West Aceh, Indonesia, Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2004. Indonesia has so far confirmed the deaths of around 5,000 people as a result of Sunday's quake and the tsunamis it triggered across Asia and Africa. Most of the deaths in Indonesia have been in Aceh province, on the northern tip of Sumatra Island. (AP Photo/ANTARA)

Asian disaster toll surges past 55,000 as relief operations stall

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (AFP) - Logistical problems hampered a massive humanitarian relief operation along Asia's devastated shores as the death toll from a huge earthquake and killer tidal waves surged past 55,000.

With the scale of the catastrophe rapidly unfolding, the confirmed number of dead in 10 countries shot up to 55,175, with Indonesia's Aceh province accounting for half of those killed, or 27,174.

In Sri Lanka, 17,640 are dead.

The fear that outbreaks of disease could unleash a second wave of tragedy on a region struggling to cope with the first also loomed large with decomposing bodies and sewerage contaminating water sources.

In some areas food and medicines were in desperately short supply.

In India's Andaman and Nicobar islands, where at least 4,000 people are confirmed dead, coastguard officials said the toll on Car Nicobar alone could top 10,000.

Police said they had received no word from dozens of islands in the Andaman and Nicobar chain which stretch over 800 kilometres (496 miles) and were close to the epicentre of the earthquake.

In Thailand, the toll rose to 1,516, with 8,432 injured and about 1,200 listed as missing, the interior ministry said.

More than 700 foreign tourists are believed to be among those killed, and relatives across Europe were desperately seeking news of missing loved ones.

The quake Sunday, the biggest in 40 years at 9.0 on the Richter scale, ruptured the Indian Ocean seabed off Indonesia's Sumatra island, sending huge waves thousands of kilometres (miles) to kill and destroy in countries around southern and southeast Asia and even in Africa.

In Indonesia, the death toll leapt suddenly as casualties were tallied from Aceh Jaya, an isolated region on the northwestern coast of badly-hit Sumatra island which lies less than 150 kilometres (120 miles) from the quake's epicentre.

Officials have said the figure is expected to keep climbing.

Bodies continued to be pulled from washed out trains, cars and smashed buildings in Sri Lanka, as the death toll jumped above 17,000.

Mass funerals were taking place across the region amid scenes of traumatic grief as bodies lay rotting along coastlines to a point where identification was no longer possible.

"The people should be buried and the animals should be destroyed and disposed of before they infect the drinking water. It's a massive operation," said UN disaster relief coordinator Jan Egeland.

Gruesome scenes met emergency teams in the worst hit countries of Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and Thailand, while the death tolls ticked up even in the less affected areas of Malaysia, the Maldives and Myanmar.

As survivors were evacuated from stricken areas tales of the full horror of carnage wrought by the tidal waves emerged: babies torn from their parents' hands, children and the elderly hurled out to sea from their homes, entire villages swept away.

Hundreds of rescue ships, helicopters and planes were mobilised to evacuate tourists from wrecked resorts and airlift stricken victims to hospitals already overflowing with the injured and corpses.

The UN's Egeland told a press conference at its headquarters in New York that relief operations would be the biggest ever as the destruction was not confined to one country or region.

"The cost of the devastation will be in the billions of dollars. It would probably be many billions of dollars," he said.

As events unfolded, aid agencies warned that the threat of disease was growing, but efforts to rush relief to the worst-hit areas met logistical problems, particularly in remote Aceh at the far northern tip of Sumatra island.

"It is going to be a huge problem getting relief even out of the airport," Michael Enquist, the head of the United Nations Organisation for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told AFP of Aceh.

Even though the region was crying out for body bags and sanitation, and aid as flooding in, there was no way of getting it to where it was most needed.

"There is no petrol, no food, no water and no vehicles available," he said.

In Sri Lanka, drinking water wells were already badly contaminated with sea water, government minister Susil Premajayantha said, but the biggest fear is of water contamination by decomposing bodies which could spark epidemics of cholera and typhoid, experts warned.

"The biggest health challenges we are facing are the spread of waterborne diseases," said International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies health official Hakan Sandbladh.

Compounding the problem is the huge number of people left homeless, and a lack of food.

In Aceh province, a lone SOS call from police in cut-off Meulaboh said looting had broken out and starvation loomed.

"If within three to four days relief does not arrive, there will be a starvation disaster that will cause mass deaths," chief police detective Rilo Pambudi said in the e-mail, released by officials in Jakarta.

In southern India, vultures gathered as survivors grimly buried or burnt their dead. The number of dead passed 8,500 Tuesday.

Tens of thousands spent the night huddling in emergency relief camps as the government stepped up relief efforts and the Indian Red Cross appealed for food, clothes and tarpaulins.

In the worst-hit Indian state of Tamil Nadu, fisherman A. Ravi wept as he recalled watching his family, including four children, swept away as his village was flattened.

"We went fishing in the early morning and a few hours later the water started swirling around us and suddenly the level went down so sharply we could see the seabed," said Ravi.

"Then I saw a huge sheet of water going towards the shore... when I got back I found my village under water and my family gone," he said.

Similar stories of personal tragedy were repeated throughout the region, with new horrors revealed each time rescuers reach previously cut off areas.

As countries mobilised their resources thelp the victims, dazed foreigners began flying home -- still struggling to come to grips with what had happened.

The waves triggered by the quake were so powerful that the destruction reached the shores of Africa about 7,000 kilometres (4,000 miles) away, killing more than 100 Somali fishermen.

The tragedy has sparked a growing chorus of calls for a tsunami alert system, as many victims were swept from coastlines hours after the quake which triggered the giant waves was recorded.

A boat passes by a damaged hotel, Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2004, at Ton Sai Bay on Phi Phi Island, in Thailand. Officials said around 44,000 people were killed in 11 countries in southern Asia and Africa after massive tsunami waves smashed coastlines Sunday morning. The Thai government said more than 1,500 people died, among them more than 700 tourists. (AP Photo/Suzanne Plunkett)

This undated publicity photo shows supermodel Petra Nemcova. Nemcova was injured and her boyfriend, British photographer Simon Atlee was missing after the pair were caught up in the Asian tsunami disaster, a spokeswoman for Atlee, said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Simon Atlee,File)

Cranes lift vehicles and scattered debris in between hotels along Patong Beach on Phuket Island, Thailand on Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2004 as rescue and clean-up efforts commence following the tsunami that killed thousands of people. (CP PHOTO/Deddeda Stemler)

An aerial view taken from a helicopter shows debris of houses destroyed by tsunamis in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Tuesday, Dec.28, 2004. Families of the dead used cooking utensils and even their bare hands to dig graves in the aftermath of a huge tidal wave in Sri Lanka, as rescuers searching through the debris uncovered thousands of bodies Tuesday. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)

Rescue and clean-up crew survey a flooded lobby at the Seapearl Beach Hotel along Patong Beach on Phuket Island, Thailand, on Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2004 after massive tsunami waves smashed coastlines Sunday morning. The government said 1,516 people died, among them more than 700 tourists. (AP Photo/ CP, Deddeda Stemler)

A mother, along with her two children, sits in the Indian Air Force AN32 plane as they are evacuated from Cambal Bay, in India's southeastern Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2004. About 40,000 people are reported dead around southern Asia and as far away as Somalia on Africa's eastern coast, most killed by massive tidal waves that smashed coastlines after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off Indonesia's coast on Sunday, followed by aftershocks in the region (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Swede Carl Michael Bergman of Stockholm holds his son Hannes, 1 year old, while talking about his missing wife, Cecilia Bergman, Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2004 in Phuket, Thailand. Cecilia Bergman was missing after a massive tidal wave struck the beachside resort the couple was staying in north of Phuket, Thailand. More than 1,500 people in Thailand have been killed in the tsunami, among them more than 700 tourists. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)

Search and rescue workers lift a body onto a pier, Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2004, in Phuket, Thailand. Soldiers used bulldozers Tuesday to push into a strip of Thai luxury resorts destroyed by tidal waves, and picked the bodies of European tourists from ruined gardens and suites. (AP Photo/Suzanne Plunkett)

Debris is scattered where bungalows and shops formerly stood, Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2004, at Ton Sai Bay on Phi Phi Island, in Thailand. Soldiers used bulldozers Tuesday to push into a strip of Thai luxury resorts destroyed by tidal waves, and picked the bodies of European tourists from ruined gardens and suites. (AP Photo/Suzanne Plunkett)

Bodies lay in front of a shop area near Takuapa, Thailand, Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2004, following a massive tsunami which hit the beach resort area of southern Thailand Sunday, Dec. 26, 2004. More than 1000 people, many of them western tourist, have been killed in the tidal wave and thousand are listed as injured. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)

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