SE Asia Tsunami Disaster

SpiraLethe · **Posted:** Wed Dec 29, 2004 11:28 pm

ChromeFox wrote:

What the hell went wrong? This is the 21st century, I thought we were above Mother Nature by now!

That area does not have tsunami warning systems because tsunamis are very rare.

Atamand · **Posted:** Wed Dec 29, 2004 11:44 pm

Interesting....
Reuters has a story saying that some U.S. scientists believe that the quake made the Earth wobble on its axis......

Yoshi · **Posted:** Thu Dec 30, 2004 2:43 am

Atamand wrote:

Interesting....
Reuters has a story saying that some U.S. scientists believe that the quake made the Earth wobble on its axis......

As does CNN. Some scientists even say that this sped up the Earth's rotation by 3 microseconds.

Current death toll is over 80,000. :\ Argh, it's such saddening news. 80,000 dead is unfathomable to me.

ChromeFox · **Posts:** 333 **Joined:** Wed Jun 16, 2004 2:31 pm

This makes 9-11 look almost petty. We lost no more than five thou back then. But 80,000, that is unfathomable.

I read an article about how they've been finding scores of dead people but very few dead animals. It seems as though before the tidal wave came in, a lot of the animals sensed it coming and moved to higher ground. We human beings really are at odds with nature. Disconcerting.

ahoteinrun · **Posted:** Thu Dec 30, 2004 4:01 am

I thought 911 didn't even hit four thou? Or am I wrong?

This is far worse then 911. Far... far worse.

plducala16 · **Posted:** Thu Dec 30, 2004 4:03 am

I thouth that it was like 2,750 for 9/11...

And yes, this is FAR, FAR, worse..

I wouldn't even think of comparing the two.

CrewWolf · **Posted:** Thu Dec 30, 2004 4:26 am

I just watched it on the news and it was all I could do to keep myself from crying. So many broken and destroyed families and people dead. I wish there was something I could do :cry:

ChromeFox · **Posts:** 333 **Joined:** Wed Jun 16, 2004 2:31 pm

ahoteinrun wrote:

I thought 911 didn't even hit four thou? Or am I wrong?

This is far worse then 911. Far... far worse.

Yeah, my bad. It was like not even three thou...and even that's a lot of people...

DiscordantNote · **Posted:** Thu Dec 30, 2004 4:40 am

Yoshi wrote:

Atamand wrote:

Interesting....
Reuters has a story saying that some U.S. scientists believe that the quake made the Earth wobble on its axis......

As does CNN. Some scientists even say that this sped up the Earth's rotation by 3 microseconds.

At first I had no idea how they'd measure that, but my mom told me it had to do with the positions of the stars. I'd never think that an earthquake could rock the world that much. Sad that I find something this morbid to be fascinating...I like studying earthquakes and volcanoes.

Are there any sites that you can go to to help with the disaster relief? I know Google has a link up on their main page now, but I'm curious if there are any others.

Hyperion · **Posted:** Thu Dec 30, 2004 5:08 am

plducala16 wrote:

I thouth that it was like 2,750 for 9/11...

And yes, this is FAR, FAR, worse..

I wouldn't even think of comparing the two.

Well, yeah. I mean, first of all, what's the estimated death toll at the time of my posting this? Somewhere around 66,000, I last heard. And this estimate -- as I believe at least one person who posted on this thread already suggested -- is expected to jump at least two fold. The cost of the disaster is substantially (I cannot stress that word enough) higher, I believe. And many, if not all, the nations hit are third-world nations by which are already having a very tough time with poverty and etcetera. If I'm correct, Sri Lanka (one of the nations hit) is in the middle of a civil war. Also, this wasn't a terrorist attack, but a natural disaster (arguably the worst in history, I heard, by the way), so these are two completely different scenarios.

Anyways, maybe some of us here can help out? There are funds out there. We likely wouldn't be able to do much, but one thing's for certain: every bit helps.

The following is taken from phpBB.com's forum:

Kanuck wrote:

Hey guys, hopefully you'll accept this little bit of quasi-spam for a good cause.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by the massive 9.0 earthquake that caused entire coastal towns to be swept away by enormous tidal waves. Most of the hardest-hit places such as Sri Lanka and the Philippines are already very poorly equipped to deal with their everyday humanitarian problems, so the devastation caused by a natural disaster of this proportion is inestimable.

UNICEF is one of many organizations accepting donations to benefit victims of the disaster. They accept credit cards online, donations are tax-deductible and can be made from any country in the world. You can specify that your donation go specifically to victims of the disaster, or wherever your funds are needed most.

Just thought I'd recommend this good cause. I've already sent off my donation, and surely if a university drop-out with enormous debts and no job prospects can afford a modest $35 contribution, others should be able to spare a couple bucks. Every dollar counts, so let's show them what makes us a community.

Donate at UNICEF.org

—Aaron

Edit & stuck by Draegonis:

Links to other charities to which you can donate. Links courtesy of sticky in somethingawful's GBS:

Thai Red Cross (thus eliminating the middle-man, apparently)
http://www.redcross.or.th/english/home/index.php4

British Red Cross
http://www.redcross.org.uk/homepage.asp

American Red Cross
https://www.redcross.org/donate/donation-form.asp

Oxfam
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_you_can_do ... ke1204.htm

Dutch Red Cross
http://www.rodekruis.nl/nieuws/nieuws_index.phtml

German Red Cross
http://www.rotkreuz.de/

French Red Cross
http://www.croix-rouge.fr/index/partner_aquake.html

Note: Anyone thinking of starting a food or clothing drive for people in the affected regions should think again. This is about the worst thing you can do in a disaster. It costs more for international relief agencies to ship your old cans of creamed corn overseas than it would to buy them in-country.

virginangelic · **Posts:** 71 **Joined:** Mon May 31, 2004 4:54 am

gosh...everyone is so concerned...
i'm doing my part by donating money to the red cross and later buying those relief packages and then donating it to REd Cross or the relevant authorities...

the death tolls are still rising...it's the 12th deadliest quake or something...
but it's the 3rd most strongest in this century...

it's too horrific...i mean there's tis family of ten which has been reduced to just two lone survivors, a grandpa and a grandson.

i didn't realise how close it hit until i got news that a fellow schoolmate is one of those reported dead. she's my junior but we're not very close...but still i feel terrible.

Igg · **Posts:** 6288 **Joined:** Fri Jun 04, 2004 5:47 pm

You can't fight nature. Even if they had been warned, it still would have caused massive devastation. We'll never be above nature.

I was watching the News about the UK and USA defending their pathetic donations towards the cause (UK £15 million, US is apparently $35 million?). If we spent as much money on this as we keep pumping into our troops in Iraq, we'd do a lot more good in Sri Lanka and suchlike.

I was angry, because George Bush was talking about it, defending himself, and he had this grin on his face when he was doing it that I wanted to slap him. Repeatedly. With a bit of concrete.

Harmony crystals · **Posted:** Thu Dec 30, 2004 12:56 pm

Nature is stronger than humans. The place wont recover back to it's sunny beutiful place for a long looong loooong time...

All we can do is actually donate, every penny and every pound counts. I am gonna donate £50 ...that's all I can do. The death of people just keep rising... and in 4 days it rised up to about 80,000 dead....

jellyoflight · **Posted:** Thu Dec 30, 2004 1:05 pm

Wow, when I first saw this thread I didn't even realise quite howbad it was until I saw it on the news. All those homeless people - and on this one island half of the population are missing.

ChromeFox wrote:

I read an article about how they've been finding scores of dead people but very few dead animals. It seems as though before the tidal wave came in, a lot of the animals sensed it coming and moved to higher ground. We human beings really are at odds with nature. Disconcerting.

Yeah, I think they can even feel tremors. *nods* There's a lot of pets waiting for their dead owners to come back.

About the earth moving - apparently it jumped up to an inch and there was about half a second of darkness or something because it moved from the sun or whatever. And apparently it was felt here in the UK - 5000 miles away.

The last I heard, the death toll was 77'000.

I'm sure that some of those people could be alive today if there was some kind of warning system. Even if tsunamis are rare, that doesn't mean they don't exsist.

Apart from the poeople on the islands - the tsunami hit them within 2 minutes.

*bows head*

Ken · **Posted:** Thu Dec 30, 2004 1:55 pm

The death toll now stands at 116,000.

Im glad my family is doing something to help. My grandpa works for the UN relief aid, and both of my parents are doctors, so they are going to : Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Thailand for 1 month and helping out, and at the same time im having concern for their health, as well as the many others that were injured.

I keep thinking to myself : What if it happens again when they are over there? But I guess I have to suck it up and think to myself that the people need them more over there, than I need them here.

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