Hopeful images and stories from the tsunami

I think it is fascinating about the five ancient tribes that moved to high ground after reading the winds, etc.

This undated photo released by the Anthropological Survey of India shows a three Jarawa tribe boys, one of the five tribes in India's Andaman and Nicobar archipelago. Government officials and anthropologists believe that ancient knowledge of the movement of wind, sea and birds may have saved the five indigenous tribes on the Indian archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar islands from the tsunami that hit the Asian coastline Dec. 26. According to varying estimates, there are only about 400 to 1,000 members alive today from the Great Andamanese, Onges, Jarawas, Sentinelese and Shompens. Some anthropological DNA studies indicate the generations may have spanned back 70,000 years. (AP Photo/Anthropological Survey of India, HO)

One of my favorite stories of survivors is the one of the Swedish family, about which there were pictures on a thread a couple of days after the tsunami. There was a group of three pictures of people running away from the tsunami at Patang Beach in Thailand; all but one woman. She is running toward the water in the first two pictures, and you just had to wonder why. In the third, you can see that she was running towards a group that is desperately trying to outrun the water, and you can tell by her slump that she knows they'll never make it.

It was discovered a few days later that all of them survived! The group trying to outrun the water was the woman's brother, her brother in law and her three sons. The woman's husband and sister were on the beach watching the situation. The wave swept them all up and tossed them around, but they were all able to re-gain their footing and were helped off the beach before the next wave hit.

I was so thrilled to read they had all survived. You could just feel the woman's desperation at trying to reach her family, and then horror, realizing that she'd never make it, by looking at the pictures.

I never get sick of pictures like this. The USA doing what we do best, saving lives.

A Chief Petty Officer assigned to USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) smiles as he and Indonesian armed forces transfer supplies to an awaiting U.S. Navy (news - web sites) helicopter at Aceh, Sumatra in Indonesia, on January 3, 2005. Hungry and filthy, thousands of Indonesians lined up for water on Tuesday as aid deliveries to tsunami-ravaged Aceh province hit new snags and cases of disease and infection among survivors emerged. In total, more than 94,000 people were killed by the tsunami in Aceh -- a province of about four million at the northern tip of the island of Sumatra, making up two thirds of the total known toll from the Indian Ocean disaster of about 145,000. Picture taken January 3, 2005.

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