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Asian Tsunamis Kill at Least 20,000 People
AP ^ | 12/26/04 | DILIP GANGULY

Posted on 12/26/2004 8:57:28 PM PST by TexKat

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.

The waves that followed the first massive jolt were far more lethal.

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.


TOPICS: Extended News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: deathtoll; sumatraquake; tsunami; tsunamis
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To: TexKat

Man-oh-man, the ocean's gonna get a bad rep for this. Just like with Jaws.


21 posted on 12/26/2004 10:10:39 PM PST by Justa (Politically Correct is morally wrong.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

From a CNN report

"A quake of this size has some pretty serious effects," Person said.

The quake represented the energy released from "a very large rupture in the earth's crust" more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) long. The rupture created shock waves that pushed the water at speeds of up to several hundred kilometers per hour.


22 posted on 12/26/2004 10:12:15 PM PST by stlnative
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To: TexKat

omygosh- 9.0, 13,000 dead...
:O


23 posted on 12/26/2004 10:14:22 PM PST by Gal.5:1
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To: noblejones
Videos

Asian Quakes' Tsunami Kill More Than 8,000

Tsunami Hits Southeast Asia

Tsunami Strikes Thai Resort

24 posted on 12/26/2004 10:18:25 PM PST by TexKat (Just because you did not see it or read it, that does not mean it did or did not happen.)
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To: brigette
They are reporting that the quake ripped a 1000 kilometer hole

Now how do they know that?

Reporters at work......

25 posted on 12/26/2004 10:22:22 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach (A Proud member of Free Republic ~~The New Face of the Fourth Estate since 1996.)
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To: TexKat

I am surprised that the Dummos have not blamed this on George W. Bush


26 posted on 12/26/2004 10:27:56 PM PST by 26lemoncharlie (Defending America)
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To: noblejones

Are you serious?


27 posted on 12/26/2004 10:27:59 PM PST by Republican Wildcat
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To: All

Ring of Fire

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/volcano/gifs/ringoffirecolor.GIF


28 posted on 12/26/2004 10:29:01 PM PST by stlnative
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To: Texas_Jarhead

Supposedly it happened very suddenly ... even to those alert to the signs you mention.


29 posted on 12/26/2004 10:30:04 PM PST by BunnySlippers (Happy Festivus ...)
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To: brigette

From the Bangkok Post:

Killer waves wreak havoc

271204_new02 (10K)
Huge death toll throughout region --- Major earthquake near Sumatra --- Thousands swept off beaches

Post Reporters

Almost 300 people are confirmed dead, and several thousand people were injured after at least three tidal waves lashed the South of Thailand and swept their way across Asia.

The death toll continued to mount last night as rescue workers uncovered more bodies hours after the first waves struck.

The waves, at least five metres high, struck the Andaman coastal provinces of Phuket, Phangnga, Krabi, Trang, Satun and Ranong.

The earthquake which triggered the tidal surge, centred on the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, was felt in Bangkok.

On the same day, another quake in Burma sent shock waves to the northern provinces of Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Lampang and Mae Hong Son.

A total of 289 people were dead and 3,675 injured, according to the figures presented to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra by the Narenthorn emergency centre at 10pm last night.

The death toll was mounting by the hour as bodies were washed ashore, plucked from the water or recovered from under piles of rubble. The waves flattened small buildings in a matter of minutes.

More than 1,000 people, many of them tourists, were hurt from falling debris. Foreign tourists pulled wounded friends and family members out of the wreckage.

The injured were being nursed on hotel poolside deckchairs metres from debris-strewn beaches.

Phuket was declared an emergency area. Governor Udomsak Assawarangkul said three huge waves struck the province around 8am, 10am and 1pm.

Beachfront vendor outlets were the first to be dragged into the sea.

The governor said the tremor preceding the tidal waves was felt across the province. People panicked as the waves rolled in, sucking tourists into the water, knocking down power poles, uprooting trees, crashing into houses and hotels and tossing about cars.

Mr Udomsak said about 50 boats sank off Phuket. The Sarasin bridge linking nearby provinces was cracked and closed to traffic.

Boats with broken masts swept onto beaches, and roads became impassable. The main road parallel to Patong beach was flooded. Floods as high as eight metres also inundated parts of tambon Rawai, Muang district.

Provincial authorities told people to keep away from Kata, Karon and Patong beaches, in case more waves struck. Phone lines were also down.

The province set up relief centres at the municipality hall and tambon auditoriums. Residents were called in to tend to the wounded.

Traffic in Phuket was paralysed after a power cut. Reports of theft and looting emerged after home and shop-owners fled to higher ground. People scurried with their personal belongings to hilltop lookout points after the Meteorological Department warned of high tides which could develop into advancing tidal waves.

On Koh Phi Phi, navy helicopters airlifted stranded tourists to safety. The waves razed bungalows to the ground.

The Third Fleet sent warships to evacuate people from Phi Phi and Samui islands and Khao Lak in Phangnga.

Seaside villages in Phangnga were full of people in distress. Distraught villagers yelled out the names of missing loved ones. A sleepy fishing village with 53 households near Pakarang cape in Takua Pa district was wiped out.

Felled power lines obstructed main roads to the southern seaboard. Beachside tourist attractions including Tab Tawan, Bang Sak and Bang Niang were damaged and authorities were trying to get to remote areas in which tourists could be trapped.

In Ranong, relief works were hampered by warnings of further tidal waves. Most casualties were reported in Suk Samrang sub-district and Kaper district.

Fisherman Vinai Sampao-ngern, of tambon Kampuan, said he was laying fish nets close to shore when the sea became murky. A gigantic wave curled up in front of him and sank his boat.

He swam to shore but one of his crewmen went missing. "It happened so fast, only three minutes," he said.

Bundit Rattanasombat, Ranong deputy governor, said many people had disappeared and basic necessities were being distributed to the needy.

About 40 shuttle boats capsized and scores of tourists were missing in Krabi, said Chakkrit Serinonchai, acting chief of Nopparat Thara national park.

Four boats ferrying almost 500 tourists from Krabi to Phi Phi Island lost contact with port.

The owner of two resorts on Phi Phi island said 200 of his bungalows were swept out to sea, along with some employees and customers.

"I am afraid that there will be a high figure of foreigners missing in the sea, and also my staff," said Chan Marongtaechar, who was in Bangkok at the time. He believed 700 people could have perished.

Mr Chan said his remaining employees told him by telephone they were scared and wanted to leave, but the waters were too rough for boats.



In Trang, military transport vehicles were used to move residents in Pak Meng beach in Si Khao district. Fishing trawlers and ferry boats plying offshore islands of Koh Kradan in Kantang district and Koh Libong in Palian district sank.

About 50 tourists were stuck in the famed Morakot cave on Muk Island. Choppy seas stopped evacuation crew from getting into the cave.

Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyurapan said more than 100 teams of medics sent from southern provinces were sent to offer help. Doctors were flown by helicopter to islands to treat the injured on the spot.


The ferry boats from Krabi to Phuket are large, there is one that sunk off by Phi Phi that I have dove several times. At that time of the day there were probably 20 or so scuba boats out in between Phuket and Krabi and out to the Similan Islands.


30 posted on 12/26/2004 10:31:53 PM PST by Central Scrutiniser (I'll never see myself in the mirror with my eyes closed)
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To: Central Scrutiniser

On the positive side, the Thai response from the military and medical communities has been quite good by all indications here in Thailand. On the negative, the news is reporting 1902 more deaths in Pang Nga changwhatand there is still only cursory reports from the Similian Islands. the photos are so sad. The family structure is so strong and children so valued in average families here. Hard to see the dead children particularly.


31 posted on 12/26/2004 10:36:15 PM PST by JimSEA ( "More Bush, Less Taxes.")
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Great explanation of how the event happens:

Verticle Slice Through A
Subduction Zone

Between Earthquakes
[ slow distortion ]
During An Earthquake
[ quake starts tsunami ]
Minutes Later
[ tsunami waves spread ]
One of the many
tectonic plates that make
up the Earth's outer shell descends, or "subducts,"
under an adjacent plate.
This kind of boundary
between plates is called a "subduction zone."
When the plates move
suddenly in an area where
they are usualy stuck, an earthquake happens.
Stuck to the subducting
plate, the overriding
plate gets squeezed.
Its leading edge is dragged down, while an area
behind it bulges upward.
This movement goes on for decades or centuries, slowly building up stress.
An earthquake along a subduction zone happens when the leading edge of
the overriding plate breaks free and springs seaward, raising the sea floor and
the water above it.
This uplift starts a tsunami. Meanwhile, the bulge behind the leading edge collapses, thinning the plate and lowering coastal areas
.
Part of the tsunami races toward nearby land,
growing taller as it comes close to shore.
Another part heads
accross the ocean
toward distant shores.
This explains how a
tsunami may occure many hundreds of miles from where it originates.
<

______________________________________________________________

Click her for above detail and much more

32 posted on 12/26/2004 10:36:57 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach (A Proud member of Free Republic ~~The New Face of the Fourth Estate since 1996.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Would this have been considered a warning.

December 23, 2004

Biggest Earthquake of Year Shakes Ocean Floor Off New Zealand

Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 8.1, the year's strongest, shook the ocean floor today about 1,000 miles southwest of New Zealand, with the potential to release tsunamis that were unlikely to reach Pacific coastlines.

The quake struck about 1:59 a.m. at the epicenter and was the first this year to exceed a magnitude of 8. An 8.1 quake in Mexico City in 1985 killed about 9,500 people and left extensive damage.

``This was a strike-slip earthquake, where two plates move sideways to each other, as opposed to colliding head on,'' research geophysicist Stuart Sipkin said of the Pacific quake by telephone from Golden, Colorado, at the U.S. Geological Survey. A sideways quake limits the extent of tsunamis, Sipkin said.

The U.S. government's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said on its Web site that ``widely destructive'' tsunamis from the quake were possible in the open ocean.

The nearest human outpost is MacQuarie Island, a small, rocky isle 305 miles to the south that Australian researchers share with seals. Today's quake was located at 50.24 degrees south latitude, 160.13 degrees east longitude.

The quake occurred about six miles below the seafloor, according to the U.S. quake center's analysis. The next largest quake in 2004 was a magnitude 7.5 temblor that struck eastern Indonesia on Nov. 11, killing 23 people and leaving almost 8,000 homeless, according to the national government.

33 posted on 12/26/2004 10:40:26 PM PST by TexKat (Just because you did not see it or read it, that does not mean it did or did not happen.)
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To: JimSEA

I haven't seen any photos from Krabi and Ao Nang and Ralay beach, not much news from there.

As far as the Thai military and medical, I agree, vastly superior to any country that was hit. I notice very little info from Burma, understandable as it is such a corrupt dictatorship.

Where do you live in Thailand? I've been considering moving there for a few months between jobs, I've been there 5 time in the last few years, and it is heaven.


34 posted on 12/26/2004 10:40:40 PM PST by Central Scrutiniser (I'll never see myself in the mirror with my eyes closed)
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To: brigette; TexKat

See post #32.


35 posted on 12/26/2004 10:41:23 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach (A Proud member of Free Republic ~~The New Face of the Fourth Estate since 1996.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

That green is blinding for us that have poor eyesight.


36 posted on 12/26/2004 10:41:30 PM PST by TexKat (Just because you did not see it or read it, that does not mean it did or did not happen.)
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To: TexKat
I am not trained in the earth Science professions,....but I don't think there is a way to tie the two events together....

Plate tectonics seem to move independently....sort of....

37 posted on 12/26/2004 10:46:43 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach (A Proud member of Free Republic ~~The New Face of the Fourth Estate since 1996.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27886-2004Dec26.html

This latest earthquake apparently broke along a 600-mile section of the Sumatran "subduction zone," starting just north of where Sieh does his research. A subduction zone is a plate boundary where a slab of the Earth's crust surges downward beneath another slab.

"I worry about my segment of the subduction zone," he said. "My section of the subduction zone is still locked, as far as I know."

Along the curving western coast of the Indonesian archipelago, the piece of crust known as the India plate is sinking beneath another expanse of crust called the Burma plate. This process of subduction isn't smooth. It happens violently, joltingly, sometimes here and sometimes there, occasionally prefigured by a less powerful quake (a 7.7 magnitude event occurred in the same area near Sumatra two years ago), but usually without any obvious hint that a disaster is in the offing.


38 posted on 12/26/2004 10:47:35 PM PST by stlnative
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To: TexKat

I have seen alot of terrible things, and this is not any worse than others except for the numbers involved. Nonetheless, I am physically weakened by these scenes. I want to rush into my computer's eyeworld and perform CPR on the spot. I know it would do no good. It shouldn't be that so many, so young, have perished.

Peace little children. Go in peace.


39 posted on 12/26/2004 10:48:44 PM PST by Greenpees (Coulda Shoulda Woulda)
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To: TexKat

Take the link it is more readable there.


40 posted on 12/26/2004 10:49:47 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach (A Proud member of Free Republic ~~The New Face of the Fourth Estate since 1996.)
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