No, not you, Kiyo.

Looks like there was a pretty big tidal wave out there today. It must've been a pretty strong quake if it's managed to kill people in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, Maldives and Indonesia.

Here's an article
http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArticle ... ID=7178735

Here's something about me I haven't revealed before.
I am fascinated by tsunamis.
*gazes at all the water*
Thanks for just reminding me of what I wanted to study... I can't believe I forgot... I wonder if a Geography major can get me that.

oooohhhhhh yeah

Absolutely tragic. As many as 9,000 people are dead. 8.9 is a fucking huge earthquake.

Thousands Dead After Earthquake in Southeast Asia
Sunday, December 26, 2004

JAKARTA, Indonesia ? Rescue and recovery operations are underway after a massive earthquake off the coast of Indonesia's island of Sumatra (search) triggered tsunamis that slammed into resort towns and seaside villages throughout southern and southeast Asia.

As many as 9,000 are dead in seven countries, and the number of casualties continues to rise.

The 8.9-magnitude earthquake, the largest recorded in the world in 40 years, occurred at sea shortly after 8 a.m. local Sumatra time on Sunday, or around 8:00 p.m. EST Saturday evening. Experts can't say whether it was the initial temblor or the nine aftershocks, including one on Sumatra's northernmost tip that measured 7.3 on the Richter scale, that sparked the tsunamis, or ocean surface waves, which reached as high as 30 feet.

The tsunamis hit Sri Lanka (search), India, Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh (search), Malaysia (search) and the Maldives.

Eyewitnesses said the massive waves dragged people out to sea along with cars, buildings and bridges.

"Initially we just heard a bang, a really loud bang," Gerrard Donnelly of Britain, a guest at Phuket island's Holiday Inn, told Britain's Sky News. "We initially thought it was a terrorist attack, then the wave came and we just kept running upstairs to get on as high ground as we could."


"People that were snorkeling were dragged along the coral and washed up on the beach, and people that were sunbathing got washed into the sea," said Simon Clark, 29, a photographer from London vacationing on Ngai Island.

Indonesia's National Earthquake Center said reports are difficult to get because communications in many of the areas are down. Indonesia's Vice President Jusuf Kawa said emergency operations are being put in place.

"We're sending our two top ministers to Aceh right now to access the latest situation. After that, we'll see what to do next. We're also preparing food supplies, medicines and makeshift shelters as emergency backup," he said.

In Sri Lanka, 1,000 miles west of the epicenter, many hotels and seaside restaurants were washed away along the flooded southern tourism belt. Around 1 million people were displaced from their homes, said Lalith Weerathunga, secretary to the Sri Lankan prime minister, and that does not include counts of areas in the northeast controlled by Tamil Tiger rebels.

The Sri Lankan Air Force has launched a rescue operation to airlift victims out of the area when they can't be reached by boat. International aid organizations are also mobilizing to bring, food, supplies and rescue workers to the devastated areas.

Freelance journalist Andrew Chant told FOX News that further tremors or tsunamis have not occurred since the original breakfast time catastrophe, but Thai authorities are telling people to stay away from the coasts, and many have moved up into the mountains for fear of another tsunami (search).

"A lot of the tourists we've spoken to are utterly traumatized and don't want to stay near the coast anyway. I have spoken to some who have gone up a hill and they're basically going to stay under trees the whole night," Chant said.

President Bush was briefed about the disaster while traveling from Camp David, Md., where his family spent Christmas, to his ranch in Crawford, Texas. White House Deputy Press Secretary Trent Duffy said the United States "stands ready to offer all appropriate assistance" to the nations most affected, inlcuding Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Thailand and Indonesia.

"On behalf of the American people, the president expresses his sincere condolences for the terrible loss of life and suffering caused by the earthquake and subsequent tsunamis in the region of the Bay of Bengal," Duffy said in a written statement.

"Certainly, our thoughts and prayers are with those families and loved ones who have experienced a loss of life," Duffy told reporters traveling aboard Air Force One.

The State Department told FOX News that it is way too early to know if any Americans were hurt and killed in the disaster, but the diplomatic agency is checking with its embassies, which are locating expatriates and tourists who registered with consular offices.

Since this is peak tourist season in Southeast Asia, and a frequent time for holidays by Americans and Europeans, many countries can expect casualties to be reported.

"I am afraid that there will be a high figure of foreigners missing in the sea and also my staff," said Chan Marongtaechar, owner of the PP Princess Resort and PP Charlie Beach Resort, on Thailand's Phi Phi island, where "The Beach" starring Leonardo DiCaprio was filmed.

Early reporting showed 3,538 dead in Sri Lanka, 1,870 in Indonesia, and 1,900 along the southern coasts of India. At least 198 were confirmed dead in Thailand, 42 in Malaysia and two in Bangladesh.

Hundreds of bodies were found on various beaches along India's southern state of Tamil Nadu, and more were expected to be washed in by the sea, officials said. A group of 32 Indians ? including 15 children ? were killed while taking a ritual Hindu bath to mark the full moon day.

"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, who lives in Andra Pradesh's Kakinada town in India. "I had never imagined anything like this could happen."

Health ministry official Els Mangundap said 1,876 people had died across the region, including some 1,400 in the Aceh provincial capital, Banda Aceh in Indonesia.

Relatives went through lines of bodies wrapped in blankets and sheets, searching for dead loved ones. Aceh province has long been the center of a violent insurgency against the government.

In the Maldives, authorities shut down the only international airport, stranding tourists. One report from the islands said a British tourist died from a heart attack, possibly caused by seeing the huge wave heading toward him.

"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 U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Julie Martinez said the earthquake was the world's fifth-largest since 1900 and the largest since a 9.2 temblor hit Prince William Sound Alaska in 1964. Another official from USGS said that a warning center could have saved most of the thousands killed. He said none of the countries hit had a tsunami warning system to alert people. Tsunamis in the Indian Ocean are rare.

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 struck the ocean floor between Australia and Antarctica, causing buildings to shake hundreds of miles away but 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 stuck off the coast of Peru on June 23, 2001, killed 74.

sign of the times.


There will be more-- maybe the next one will be here in the US

For all that man does, Mother Nature can still make us her bitches anytime she wants. I can't imagine just being at the beach one second, then washed away the next. Crazy. You know what else is weird is that they said that the earthquake was so powerful that it fucked with the Earth's rotation.

God killed more than 10 times the amount that Iraq has today......we can't put up with those kinds of loses...

11000+ now.

4000 in Sri Lanka, 4000 in Indonesia, 2000 in India. 1 million people, or 5% of the total population, made homeless in Sri Lanka.

And Fox News is still talking about Whatshisface Peterson or something.

In all fairness, foxnews.com has the floods on the front page right now.

Awful.

8.9 is enormous.

And a 7.3 aftershock?

Thoughts and prayers go out to all those who have perished and suffered in this natural disaster.

Fucked up.

This is terrible news.

It really has ruined my holiday to hear about this.

It's 9.0 now. 4th biggest since 1900.

Since there's no Indian Ocean warning centre, no one saw it coming. The Pacific Centre in Hawaii picked the up, but had no way to warn anyone.

The news from around the epicentre in the Indonesian province of Aceh has been really slow because the communications system there has been completely obliterated. It was pretty antiquated in the first place due to the region's volatility with Jakarta, which has for a long time sought to marginalise the separatist movement there in cutting them off from the rest of the world.

Which means that the place was pretty fucked even before this tragedy hit.

very sad

This is unbelievable. Poor people...

i got to know about this quake a day late because i was ( and still am)at some remote gas station in china.

Called my family, because they were vacationing at the beach in Malaysia where part of the tsunami hit.

My mom told me, they were lucky at that time everyone was in the hotel, but they could see the waves coming to the beach, when everyone else on the beach was oblivious. they felt so helpless because they couldnt do anything about it and it happened so fast. she said they waves must have been 12-15 feet high....she is traumatised by the site.

they also felt the aftershocks too after the tsunami hit.

it sucks to be thousands of miles away from your family when this shit happens.

my condonlences to all who lost their loved ones.

Too right. Hope everyone you know has come out of this safe and sound.

It appears the death toll has now gone past 20000. And reports are coming in about deaths and people missing in Somalia, even after the local authorities (I'll leave the idea of Somali authorities for another time) sent out warnings to those on the coast.

This is fucking huge. Compared to the recent quake in Bam, Iran, this one is just so... everywhere. The Thai economy relies a lot on the tourist dollars from places like Phuket, and that's been pretty much erased. In Sri Lanka, the Tamil locals there have only recently gained a semblance of stability, and the regional centre of Galle has been flooded. The Acehnese... just when they think they couldn't be more fucked, along comes this.

If the 1st world countries don't commit to some serious foreign aid spending, then I'll be bloody pissed off.

Hinny

the irony is that, if not for Indonesia being our neighbours, the damage would have been much more worse on our side ( even though we're just outside the earthquake zone).

I hope people in India, Indonesia and Thailand ( worse hit) get all the help they can.

I'm going to stop updating this at 23500 and rising, simply because it's too bloody depressing, and I need to sleep well.

did i hear that the waves were traveling 500mph? is that possible?