NEWS: 9.0 Quake, Tsunamis Strike SE Asia - 275,000+ Dead

Does anyone know how to volunteer?
How/where?
Organizations?

I am unemployed and have nothing to do.

I have mechanical/industrial skills as well as computer, admin, map reading, real estate research, and I have recently been 'waiting out the recession' by studying environmental science.

Thoughts?

NN

Originally posted by worldwatcher
we can all talk about this for days and weeks to come, but let's open our purses and wallets and do something about it today.

It doesn't matter if you think you can't give alot, even 1 lousy dollar will do alot for those poor people and if we all only gave $1, we can make a difference. I have my own charity of preference but you can choose any of your choice. Let's not just talk, let's do something instead:

Charities that will Help

You are definately right. I don't have much at this moment, but I will donate some.

Even when the immediate help is done, they still need our help in rebuilding their lifes- they need all what we can spare.

Blobber


[edit on 28-12-2004 by Blobber]

Quake May Have Made Earth Wobble--US Scientists

reuters

Not sure if these have been posted yet, but heres some videos of the tsunami gathered by some blogger..


jlgolson.blogspot.com...

3 videos

As a person living in the states, I never once imagined a Tsunami to be like that. I was ignorant to thinking it was just a huge wave that smash a bunch of buildings in seconds. I never realized the horror of not seconds, but endless minutes of watching thousands die and not having a damn thing to do about.

God Bless these people that experienced this.. and God bless them for showing the world what they went through.. (notice not one of the videos ended.. all seemed to have been cut off.. wonder how bad it really was for them?)

[edit on 12/28/2004 by QuietSoul]

Originally posted by Niki
Does anyone know how to volunteer?
How/where?
Organizations?

I am unemployed and have nothing to do.

I have mechanical/industrial skills as well as computer, admin, map reading, real estate research, and I have recently been 'waiting out the recession' by studying environmental science.

Thoughts?

NN

Perhaps you can look at the following link:
www.redcross.org...

Red Cross
Welcome to the American Red Cross. Each year over one million Americans serve as Red Cross volunteers serving local community needs � helping people in emergencies, providing half the nation's blood supply, teaching first aid and CPR courses, delivering emergency messages to members of the military, organizing programs for the elderly, for the youth�

Red Cross volunteers work directly with people, serve on boards of directors, serve as managers, advisors, and provide behind the scenes support.

Be a Red Cross volunteer! Helping others feels good, and helps you feel good about yourself. Your local Red Cross can work with you to provide rewarding experiences, opportunities to utilize your talents, or provide training to help you serve your community.

If you are ready to volunteer�

Blobber

The real death toll may never be known. Many survivors report seeing people being sucked out to sea as the waves retreated. Will their bodies ever be found? Are the logistics in these areas good enough to account for a majority of missing persons?

Here is another link regarding donations:

www.cnn.com...

The saddest part is that we could be heading for more major earthquake activity. On the 27th, a day after the earthquakes and Tsunamis hit SE Asia, 47 tremors, some as high as 5.0 in the Ritchter scale hit SW China.

A total of 47 tremors, some of them as powerful as 5.0 on the Richter scale, struck Yunnan over a 17-hour period on Sunday, the Beijing Times said. Incomplete statistics from rural Shuangbai county showed that one person had died, a Shuangbai official said.

Excerpted from.
www.heraldsun.news.com.au...

Also, according to Stan Deyo, who monitors such activities by studying the daily sea surface anomaly maps, states there could be more earthquakes to come in the following 3-5 days.

Large map image

The original sea surface anomaly map can be found at.
www.fnmoc.navy.mil...

i do hope he is wrong this time, there have been too many deaths already by the disaster in SE Asia.




[edit on 28-12-2004 by Banshee]

I do a lot of genealogy work. The answer is NO. A resounding NO. There are probably entire families gone - which means there is no one to record the losses.

Even in 1915 - 1920 during the Spanish Flu epidemic (which took 20 million recorded lives), it is extremely hard to find out exactly how many died, or who died, or where they died.

NO...we won't ever know. And for instance those islands with those tribal people...nope, we won't ever know. Those people are gone with no name recorded...a permanent lost to the rest of us. We will never know about how they lived their lives, how they loved their family, or what they thought when they turned their eyes to the heavens. It's gone.

Muaddib,

Unfortunately, some of the most promising "predictive means" I have seen discussed have been ocean anomolies. But maybe, eventually, some one will listen and this will be used to save lives.

OIMD...wouldn't it be awesome to find out these "primitive" people actually were able to sense something was amiss and take cover! I'm praying for that anyway.

I believe the "primitive" people did seek high ground and shelter Val. I'm not anywhere near primitive, but did go without electricity in seclusion for 8 years. It's strange how you use your senses, other than sight. I believe that your body actually gives you warning signs, in order to heed danger. We were out in the middle of the desert trying to find a place where the cell phone would work. I stood on the truck and finally got a signal. Than the hair on my arms stood up and I got a really eerie feeling.
A few minutes later a cougar screamed, like a terrorfied women! Needless, to say we got the heck out of there!

A Swedish Paper is reporting the Tsunami warning was halted for the tourist industry.

Just minutes after the earthquake in the Indian Ocean on Sunday morning, Thailand�s foremost meteorological experts were sitting together in a crisis meeting. But they decided not to warn about the tsunami �out of courtesy to the tourist industry,� writes the Thailand daily newspaper The Nation.

The experts got the news around 8:00 am on Sunday morning local time. An hour later, the first massive wave struck. But the experts started to discuss the economic impacts when they discussed if a tsunami warning should be issued.

The primary argument against such a warning was that there had not been any floods in 300 years. Also, the experts believed the Indonesian island Sumatra would be a �cushion� for the southern coast of Thailand. The experts also had bad information; they thought the tremor was 8.1. A similar earthquake occurred in the same area in 2002 with no flooding at all.

One expert The Nation spoke with also noted that the department had only four earthquake experts among their
900-strong meteorological department. A second told The Nation that a tsunami warning was discussed but that because of the risk, they opted not to issue a warning.

�We finally decided not to do anything because the tourist season was in full swing,� the source said. �The hotels were 100 percent booked. What if we issued a warning, which would have led to an evacuation, and nothing had happened. What would be the outcome? The tourist industry would be immediately hurt. Our department would not be able to endure a lawsuit.�

www.bluelemur.com...

Original Swedish: www.expressen.se...

[edit on (12/28/0404 by PistolPete]

Lawsuit?

What lawsuit can you get from issuing a warning?

You wanna see lawsuit? Get ready...I see some coming your way buddy.

Originally posted by Muaddib
The saddest part is that we could be heading for more major earthquake activity. On the 27th, a day after the earthquakes and Tsunamis hit SE Asia, 47 tremors, some as high as 5.0 in the Ritchter scale hit SW China.

Yeah I was about to bring that up.. what if this huge thrust of land upward.. well.. falls back down? Wouldnt that itself setoff another huge tsunami? perhaps in the other direction?

or..

if another aftershock hits and is big enough, will another tsunami slam the rescuers and survivors?



[edit on 12/28/2004 by QuietSoul]

quote]
�We finally decided not to do anything because the tourist season was in full swing,� the source said. �The hotels were 100 percent booked. What if we issued a warning, which would have led to an evacuation, and nothing had happened. What would be the outcome? The tourist industry would be immediately hurt. Our department would not be able to endure a lawsuit.�


I think 'their' department has more to worry about now than enduring a lawsuit. It's all about money. What a bunch of capitalist pigs! I guess better safe, than sorry doesn't pertain to them!

[edit on 12/28/2004 by MountainStar]

Originally posted by Valhall
Lawsuit?

What lawsuit can you get from issuing a warning?

You wanna see lawsuit? Get ready...I see some coming your way buddy.

Yeah, thats pretty rough, they let 63000 people die because they were scared the tourist companies would sue them if they lost visitors for a few hours?

I'm not sure whose worst to be honest, is it the people that give the warning, or the tourists company's for even considering doing that if the chance arrived.. makes you wonder how much these tourists companies have a strangle hold on their economy/gov't...

Originally posted by Valhall


OIMD...wouldn't it be awesome to find out these "primitive" people actually were able to sense something was amiss and take cover!

I'm praying for that anyway.

Val,
Unfortunately, the wording of the link Jazzgul provided seems to indicate that the casualty rate on the Andaman islands was very high. If I remember correctly, the article mentioned that up to 8000 or so deaths may have occured and that the local magistrate was saying that the outside world should be prepared for 'very bad' news (or something like that).

The sense I'm getting, right now, is that most local officials believe that the death totals (and I'm talking about deaths that were the direct result of the tsunami itself) are much, much higher than has been reported in the international press and that the numbers have stayed as low as they have over the last few days because they're dealing with a situation where they can only release official death counts (meaning bodies that have been recovered and accounted for) and cannot speculate on the tens of thousands who are missing or who come from regions with which there has been no radio or phone contact.

Today we learned that entire sections of Sumatra were still under communication blackout a few days after the initial event... and that there may be entire villages/towns that have been destroyed in those blackout zones. When one factors in the numerous... and I mean numerous... inhabited islands that are spread out around Indonesia and SE Asia... the death toll is sure to jump beyond anything we expected to see at first. Just think about it: Indonesia, for example, is a multi-ethnic nation that spans dozens of islands. We saw, today, that the central government was JUST in the process of regaining contact with locales that were on the MAIN islands. We can only guess at the number of small/medium inhabited islands the regional governments might still consider 'blackout' areas.

Now, IF there really are 8000+ dead on the Andaman islands alone -- which are governed by India -- we can get a hint as to what the total casualty numbers might be for all the other small islands that are nestled around the epicenter.

And, yes, I imagine that people who live lives that are closer to nature and that utilize technology less might have a better sense of impending disasters (anyone who knows an old sailor/hunter realizes that people pick up keen instincts as they get older). The problem, though, is that even if these people knew what was going to happen they would still have been on an island with low elevation. Their escape options would be limited.

[edit on 28-12-2004 by onlyinmydreams]

[edit on 28-12-2004 by onlyinmydreams]

For some reason, the thought of the loss of these ancient people hurts me more than anything else I have heard surrounding this.

I don't why...but it really does. It's like a species going extinct. It's a treasure lost forever - and lost before we really knew the value.

[edit on 12-28-2004 by Valhall]

Lets face it even if the warnings were issued this still would have had a major death toll. With such a wide are affected with so many islands there probably wouldn't have been enough time to reach everybody. Even if every island was reached you would have still had curiosity seekers, with digital cam in hand, waiting for a show. It was a sunny, beautiful day and I really don't believe that anybody realized the devestation heading there way. We are not talking about the west coast of the US, where good warning systems and evacuation routes are planned and authoritys would ensure most evacuation compliance. What we have here is essentially a third world country, with a large population, that had virtually no protection at all. It's sad that in a part of the world such as this, with a tragic tsunami past, there were still virtually no warning systems in place. In the end I would project the total death toll, known and unknown, to be in the hundreds of thousands. What a tragedy.

Heres summore tsunami aftermath..



Thats ONE city with a projected loss of 40,000.. imagine the hundreds of cities hit by this wave.. This death toll is going to climb into the several hundred thousands... possibly more.. imo..

And to grasp how many more WILL die over the next few weeks.. imagine every single bit of food, drink and luxury swept away.. you now have nothing.. A SOS email was sent from Ameh.. it's pretty scary..



And.. well.. to make matters even worse, our air relief is having problems deploying food/medicine/aide...