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Death toll now over 50,000 from Tsunami

The news today said it is expected to rise to over 100,000.
I believe that this number does not include the potential deaths caused from diseases. The World Health Organization stated that it is possible that 50,000 could die from diseases in the weeks to come.
 
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Here's today's AP roundup... from bizarre to terrifying.



Tsunami Death Toll Rockets to 114,000
25 minutes ago World - AP Asia


By CHRIS BRUMMITT, Associated Press Writer

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - The death toll from last weekend's earthquake-tsunami catastrophe rose to more than 114,000 on Thursday as Indonesia uncovered more and more dead from ravaged Sumatra island, where pilots dropped food to remote villages still unreachable by rescue workers. A false alarm that new killer waves were about to hit sparked panic in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.




The increase came after Indonesia reported nearly 28,000 newly confirmed dead in Sumatra, which was closest to the epicenter of last weekend's massive earthquake and was overwhelmed by the tsunami that followed. Some 60 percent of Banda Aceh, the main city in northern Sumatra was destroyed, the U.N. children's agency estimated, and 115 miles of the island's northwest coast — lined with villages — was inundated.


Indonesia, with around 80,000 dead, was the worst hit, followed by Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. The total across 12 nations in southern Asia and East Africa was likely to rise, with thousands still missing and fears that disease could bring a new wave of deaths.


Tens of thousands of residents fled coasts in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand after warnings that a new tsunami was about to strike after new aftershocks hit the Indian Ocean Thursday.


India issued a tsunami warning at midday, but then hours later its science minister, Kapil Sibal, went on television to announce the warning was incorrect and based on information received from a U.S. research firm.


Fears of a new tsunami were "unscientific, hogwash and should be discarded," Sibal said.


Still, the alert sparked panic among people traumatized by Sunday's devastation.


"We got into a truck and fled," said 40-year-old Gandhimathi of Nagappattinam in India's Tamil Nadu state, who said authorities told her to leave her home. "We took only a few clothes and left behind all of our belongings, everything we had."


Sri Lanka's military later told residents there to be vigilant but not to panic, while coastal villagers climbed onto rooftops or sought high ground. "There is total confusion here," said Rohan Bandara in the coastal town of Tangalle.


Tsunami sirens in southern Thailand sent people dashing from beaches, but only small waves followed the alarms.


An estimated 5.7 magnitude aftershock was recorded in seas northwest of Indonesia's Sumatra island by the Hong Kong observatory Thursday morning, along with earlier, overnight quakes at India's Andaman and Nicobar islands. But a 5.7 quake would be about 1,000 times less powerful than Sunday's, and probably would have "negligible impact," said geologist Jason Ali of University of Hong Kong.


The false alarm highlighted the lack of an organized tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean region — which experts have already said may have worsened the crisis after Sunday's 9.0 magnitude quake hit off Sumatra's coast, sending a massive wave racing at 500 mph across the Indian Ocean.


Sibal, the Indian science minister, said Thursday's warning was based on information from a U.S. research group that "claimed they have some sensors and equipment through which they suggest there was a possibility of an earthquake."


He did not elaborate on how the information was incorrect.


Meanwhile, military ships and planes rushed to get desperately needed aid to Sumatra's ravaged coast. Countless corpses strewn on the streets rotted under the tropical sun causing a nearly unbearable stench.


Food drops began along the coast, mostly of instant noodles and medicines, with some of the areas "hard to reach because they are surrounded by cliffs," said Budi Aditutro, head of the government's relief team.


Government institutions in Aceh province, the territory on Sumatra's northern tip, have ceased to function and basic supplies such as fuel have almost run out, forcing even ambulances to ration gasoline.





On the streets of Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, fights have broken out over packets of noodles dropped from military vehicles.

"I believe the frustration will be growing in the days and weeks ahead," U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland said.

The United States, India, Australia and Japan have formed an international coalition to coordinate worldwide relief and reconstruction efforts, President Bush (news - web sites) announced.

"We will prevail over this destruction," Bush said from his Texas ranch Wednesday.

The number of deaths in Indonesia stood at about 52,000. Authorities there said that did not include a full count from Sumatra's west coast, and UNICEF (news - web sites) estimated the toll for that country alone could be 80,000.

Sri Lanka reported 24,700 dead, India more than 7,300 and Thailand around 2,400 — though that country's prime minister said he feared the toll would go to 6,800. A total of more than 300 were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya.

The disaster struck a band of the tropics that not only is heavily populated but attracts tourists from all corners. Throughout the world, people sought word of missing relatives, from small-town Sri Lankan fishermen to Europeans on sand-and-sun holidays.

On hundreds of Web sites, the messages were brief but poignant: "Missing: Christina Blomee in Khao Lak," or simply, "Where are you?"

But even as hope for the missing dwindled, survivors continued to turn up.

A 2-year-old Swedish boy was reunited with his father days after the toddler was found alone on a roadside in Thailand's southern beach resort island of Phuket. In Sri Lanka, a lone fisherman named Sini Mohammed Sarfudeen was rescued Wednesday by an air force helicopter crew after clinging to his wave-tossed boat for three days.

Rescue workers on Thursday plied the dense forests of India's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands — an archipelago just to the northwest of the quake's epicenter — where authorities fear as many as 10,000 more people may be buried in mud and thick vegetation. Many hungry villagers were surviving on coconut milk, rescuers said.

Mohammad Yusef, 60, a fisherman who fled his village and was holed up at a Catholic church in the territory's capital Port Blair along with about 800 others, said all 15 villages on the coast of Car Nicobar island had been destroyed.

"There's not a single hut which is standing," he told The Associated Press. "Everything is gone. Most of the people have gone up to the hills and are afraid to come down," Yusef said.

Many villagers had not eaten for two days and said that crocodiles had washed ashore during the disaster, compounding the horror of more than 50 aftershocks since Sunday's quake.
 
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Crocodiels and probably Komodo Dragons...

Anyway.... I hate to say it... but I have this bad feeling that once you factoer in resulting disease, malnutrition etc... you could be looking at twice as many dead as the number below...

Tsunami Toll Jumps to Over 125,000, Fear Lingers
7 minutes ago Top Stories - Reuters


By Tomi Soetjipto and Dean Yates

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters) - The death toll in the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster soared above 125,000 on Thursday as millions scrambled for food and clean water and rumors of new waves sent many fleeing inland in panic.


Reuters Photo


Aid agencies warned many more, from Indonesia to Sri Lanka, could die in epidemics if shattered communications and transport hampered what may prove history's biggest relief operation.


Rescue workers pressed on into isolated villages devastated by a disaster that could yet eclipse a cyclone that struck Bangladesh in 1991, killing 138,000 people.


Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi called for an emergency meeting of the Group of Eight so that the rich nations' club could discuss aid and possible debt reduction after "the worst cataclysm of the modern era."


The death toll had shot up more than 50 percent in a day with still no clear picture of conditions in some remote islands around India and Indonesia.


While villagers and fishermen suffered devastation, losses among foreign tourists, essential to local economies, mounted.


Prime Minister Goran Persson, his government under fire over its tardy response, said more than 1,000 Swedes may have died. Some 5,000 tourists, mostly Europeans, are still missing four days after walls of water devastated beach resorts.


The Indonesian Health Ministry said just under 80,000 people had died in the northern Aceh province that was close to the undersea quake, some 28,000 more than previously announced.


THE FASTEST GET THE FOOD


The airport of the main city, Banda Aceh, was busy with aid flights, but residents said little was getting through to them. Hungry crowds jostling for aid biscuits besieged people delivering them in the city. Some drivers dared not stop.


"Some cars come by and throw food like that. The fastest get the food, the strong one wins. The elderly and the injured don't get anything. We feel like dogs," said Usman, 43.


Residents of the city fled their homes when two aftershocks revived fresh memories of the worst earthquake in 40 years.


"I was sleeping, but fled outside in panic. If I am going to die, I will die here. Just let it be," said Kaspian, 26.


Rumors, unfounded, of another tsunami swept to the seaboard of Sri Lanka and India, highlighting the continued tension across the stricken region four days after the quake.


The Indian government issued a precautionary alert for all areas hit by Sunday's killer wave.


Police sirens blared on beaches in Tamil Nadu, one of the worst hit states in a country that has lost 13,000, as thousands streamed inland on foot or crammed any vehicle they could find. "Waves are coming, waves are coming," some shouted.


This time, however, the waves did not come.





There were similar scenes in Sri Lanka, where more than 27,000 have been killed. Thousands fled inland from the coast.

"This isn't just a situation of giving out food and water. Entire towns and villages need to be rebuilt from the ground up," said Rod Volway of CARE Canada, whose emergency team was one of the first into Aceh.

The World Bank (news - web sites) offered $250 million in relief, bringing total international aid to nearly $500 million. Representatives of 18 U.N. agencies consulted and Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) held a video conference with members of a four-country coalition announced by President Bush (news - web sites) on Wednesday.

David Nabarro, head of a World Health Organization (news - web sites) (WHO) crisis team, said as many as 5 million people were now unable to obtain the minimum they needed to live.

Many villages and resorts from Thailand to Indonesia are now mud-covered rubble, blanketed with the stench of corpses after the 9.0 magnitude quake.

THOUSANDS OF ROTTING BODIES

In Indonesia, thousands of bodies rotting in the tropical heat were tumbled into mass graves. Health officials said polluted water posed a much greater threat than corpses.

Authorities warned of many deaths from dysentery, cholera and typhoid fever caused by contaminated food and water, and malaria and dengue fever carried by mosquitoes.

Indonesian aircraft dropped food to isolated areas in Aceh on northern Sumatra, an island the size of Florida.

In Sri Lanka's worst-hit area Ampara, residents ran things themselves, going round with loudhailers, asking people to donate pots and pans, buckets of fresh water and sarongs.

"Frustration will be growing in the days and the weeks ahead," said U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland.

The United States said a pledge of $35 million was just a start, and sent an aircraft carrier group toward Sumatra and other ships including a helicopter carrier to the Bay of Bengal.

A New York Times editorial, however, denounced the U.S. pledge as a "miserly drop in the bucket."

"This is in line with the pitiful amount of the United States' budget that we allocate for non-military foreign aid."

Financial costs, estimated at up to $14 billion, are tiny relative to the human suffering. By comparison, Hurricane Andrew killed 50 people in 1992 but, with much of the damage in the United States, cost around $30 billion.

In the Thai resort turned graveyard of Khao Lak, the grim task of retrieving bodies was interrupted briefly when a tremor cleared the beach of people in a flash. In Thailand alone at least 2,230 foreigners are known to have been killed.

Dutch, German and Swiss forensic teams flew to Thailand to help identify now hard-to-recognize bodies by collecting dental evidence, DNA samples, fingerprints, photographs and X-rays. Switzerland said 850 Swiss tourists were unaccounted for.

Preserving bodies was an urgent need and Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra promised to provide refrigerated containers.
 
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Add this to the weird file


US scuba divers survive Asian tsunami unscathed, but return to "hell"

22 minutes ago U.S. National - AFP



LOS ANGELES (AFP) - A US couple who were scuba diving off the sun-kissed coast of Thailand when Asia's killer tsunami hit emerged from the water unscathed, only to find themselves in "hell," they said.




Psychology professor Faye Linda Wachs and her husband Gene Kim were underwater off Koh Phi Phi island when the tidal wave roared through the ocean around them and struck the Thai coast, killing at least 2,400 people there.


When the buffeted couple surfaced and got back to the beach, the palm-fringed paradise they had left was an unrecognizable scene of death and destruction.


"As we came in, we realized how lucky we are because you could see bodies floating in the water," Wachs said after returning to her home in Los Angeles.


"It was terrible. The devastation was unbelievable. The island is essentially gone. We left paradise -- it was a beautiful island -- and we came back to just hell," the holiday-maker said.


At least 119,000 people in eight Asian countries are so far confirmed killed by the tsunami, which was spawned by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra.


The deadly tidal wave was the first in recorded history to have hit several countries at the same time.


Wachs, 34, and Kim said they were diving around a wrecked ship on Sunday morning when the water suddenly churned up around them, creating a "white wash" that sucked them downwards towards the seabed.


"I was being tossed around like I was inside a washing machine," said Wachs' husband, Kim, adding that he had thought he was headed for the surface, but his depth gauge indicated he was going downwards.


"So I was being sucked under, not knowing what was happening," he said. Kim eventually saw sunlight and made his way towards the surface.


Shocked but unharmed, Wachs was meanwhile surfacing slowly with the help of a divemaster, not realizing that she and Kim had just survived one of the worst natural disasters in modern history.


Still unaware that disaster had struck, the pair made one last dive before heading to shore.


As they headed back to shore, the horror of what had just happened began to reveal itself as the couple started encountering debris and human corpses in the water.


"There were numerous bodies that were floating out from the shoreline, and we brought in a few ourselves," Kim said.


When they got to the beach, little was left of the popular resort and the couple's cabana had been destroyed.


"It was indescribable to see several people dead in the wreckage," Wachs said. "It was unbelievable."


The couple spent the rest of the day helping to carry injured survivors to the island's helicopter pad before making arrangements to return home
 
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Something I don't get. They talk about all of these people now homeless and without water, why don't they bring in a bunch of fully stocked cruise ships and allow some of the citizens to come on board in shifts to bathe and eat. It would also be a source of fresh drinking water.


You could also use the ships as a quarantine so diseases don't spread.
 
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with the way cruise ships are these days they might be better staying where they are :wink:

here's a good story....

From the NY Post...

Little Girl Saves Hundreds

January 1, 2005 -- PHUKET, Thailand - Quick-thinking 10-year-old Tilly Smith is being hailed as a hero after saving her parents and dozens of fellow vacationers from the deadly tsunami - thanks to a school geography lesson.

Tilly warned the doubting adults at a resort that a massive tidal wave was about to strike - just minutes before the deadly tide rushed in and turned the resort into rubble. Tilly's family, from Surrey, England, was enjoying a day at Maikhao Beach last Sunday when the sea rushed out and began to bubble.

The adults were curious, but Tilly froze in horror.

"Mummy, we must get off the beach now!" she told her mother. "I think there's going to be a tsunami."

The adults didn't understand until Tilly added the magic words: "A tidal wave."

Her warning spread like wildfire. Within seconds, the beach was deserted — and it turned out to be one of the only places along the shores of Phuket where no one was killed or seriously injured.

Last night, Tilly was being hailed as a savior.

"I think it's phenomenal that Tilly's parents and the others on the beach are alive because she studied hard at school," said Craig Smith, the American manager of the JW Marriott Hotel where Tilly's family was staying.

He said a tsunami is not like you see in the movies, where a huge wave wells up on the horizon and can be seen for miles off shore.

"It is more like a sudden surge of water," he said. "There's very little warning. She's a hero."

Tilly shrugged off the attention and modestly said, "Last term, my geography teacher, Mr. Kearney, taught us about earthquakes and how they can cause tsunamis.

"I was on the beach, and the water started to go funny.

"I recognized what was happening and had a feeling there was going to be a tsunami."

Her mother, Penny Smith, 43, recalled how their family, including Tilly's father Colin, 46, and 7-year-old younger sister, Holly, were enjoying a Christmas vacation before tragedy struck.

"When the water went back, I was like most people on the beach. I wanted to walk down and look at what was going on," she recalled. "It was only when Tilly explained what she thought was going to happen that I had second thoughts.

"We ran off the beach as fast as we could and went to the first floor of the hotel where it would be safe. Minutes later the water surged right over the beach and demolished everything in its path.

"It was terrifying to watch but I'm very proud of her."
 
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