Crisis in Asia!!!

I am sure you all have heard about the huge, huge crisis in Asia. Do you know if any members of Davesgarden are in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Thailand or near by these countries?
I hope there aren't any of your families or relatives.
http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/streaming/tv_fonster/0,5208,m0ny041228srilanka_I_qt380,00.html?avdelningslage=

http://www.teamawakening.com/tsunamiphuket.wmv

http://www.passagen.se/bildspecial/asien/index02.shtml

Mitjo, I took a look in the Member list. Here's country by # members/subscribers:
Sri Lanka: 6
Indonesia: 32/2 (both in Jakarta)
India: 180/2 (including Dinu)
Thailand: 19
Malasia: 63/1 (in Sandukan)
Bangladesh: 4

Mitjo, I didn't address the devastation and incredible loss of life because my mind just cannot comprehend it.

I think a person would have to be there and then you still wouldn't be able to wrap your brain around this unbelievable trajedy. I've been glued to the news channels and internet. Just heard the lastest figures mentioned, just under 60,000 lives lost and that is still believed to go up. And then the survivors will struggle against diseases.... How very, very sad. Here's 2 threads from the Prayers Request Forum you might want to read.

http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/475573/
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/475461/

Someone should have seen the possibility. Just a day or three before, I read that the strongest earthquake ever was reported about 100 miles off New Zealand/Australia but did not produce a tsunami.

This one was just further north in the same seas.

They did. One professor said the area was told over 3 months ago that they were ripe for an earthquake. Tsunamis can't be predicted. 'NOAA' sent out possible tsunami warnings 20 minutes after the quake to 20+ countries in the Asian area. Some countries chose not to act on them because of the possible loss of tourist dollars. There are no early warning systems in place in the Bay of Bengal or Indian Ocean because it is believed to be not an area that produces tsunamis.

After the 1964 quake and wave in the Pacific Ocean, all the Pacific Rim nations joined in the development of an early warning system because of the 'Rim of Fire', a volatile region in the Pacific. Most of these countries affected in this disaster are considered third world countries and do no have funding for an extensive warning system. Also, there are so many islands with small, primitive villages, that have limited contact with the mainland. The logistics are immense! One official was bemoaning the lack of detection equipment that could have saved lives, while another man was pointing out that even with that equipment, there wasn't enough time to evacuate people. He said Hawaii's coastlines could be evacuated in 6.5 hours and that's a small area, compared to the thousands of miles afftected in Asia.

........statements I've been hearing over the past 2 days. My comment - it's a moot point - the disaster has happened and pointing fingers doesn't help the survivors. Help the survivors first, then let the governments work out the best way to try prevent a repeat. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6759190/

Laura, I really was not pointing fingers, and I had heard some of the same information about lack of funding for such warning systems as you posted above.

I agree, there is a BIG need for help to cleanup, identify, burn and curb as best possible all the disease that will follow.

Oh, no, I didn't take it that way. And I meant the two guys I saw on one program - one was pointing fingers at the other because he said the Indian gov't. didn't get the warning and the other said they did, but paid no heed. And if they did or didn't, there's little they could have done. There simply wasn't enough time.

A lot of the people in the Southern tip of India live by the sea. The fishermen wade waist deep into the waters to haul in nets cast from a small row boat. It is a very picturesque sight and one of my enduring memories from a holiday in Kerela. Their wives and daughters gather round the catch and each takes a share, either to sell, they provide the local hotels and restaurants and beach shacks, or to eat themselves and then they start again on another trawl.
They would have no comprehension of the nature and force of a Tsunami. They would have been totally swamped. It is to horrible to imagine the devastation.

I saw several photos of large fishing boats way up on the beach, possibly damaged. That will make it hard to feed themselves.

Darius, I think the first earthquake off Australia was closer to Antartica and it was felt in Tasmania and this devastating tsunami happened in the Indian Ocean... Not close and no correlation obvious. Earlier the monsoons switched and all of the yachties who were protected on the other side from Phuket went over to the Phuket side where there is a big marina. Apparently they were all ;destroyed...and they are a large international group. Mother Nature hath rought her rath, eh?

Hell hath no fury, like woman scorned!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

'It's not nice to fool Mother Nature"?

When the media called this the largest earthquake in 40 years, I'm sure they were referencing the Good Friday Alaska earthquake of 1964. As this link explains, more people died from the ensuing tsunamis than the actual quake: http://www.wcatwc.gov/64quake.htm

In 1976,an 8.2 magnitude earthquake happened in Tangshan China,which caused 242,000 deaths.One of my current colleagues comes from the city.He told us that when the earthquake happened he was staying in the rural area,and luckily escaped the devastation.He told us that because the severe earth shaking happened at midnight all of a sudden,many people were buried in the ruins dead before they realized what had happened.people who experience the
nightmare still remember the dreadful scenery.
Facing natural disasters our human beings seem helpless and brittle even though they have landed on the moon and explored the outer space.

Jianhua, I guess I dont remember that earthquake in China, wow..that's an awful lot of people to perish....
They are saying now that the death toll will reach well over 100,000.
It just bogles the mind....But I heard that the red cross has received donations in the millions ($) on the first day that they started taking donations on line. That is amazing, and of course they were all Americans....makes me proud.

Actually Pebble, sadly enough the death toll is now hovering around 150,000and expected to rise still. There are more than 80,000 in Indonesia alone. And as one relief official said, the real number will never be known as so many local fishermen and families were all wiped out with no one left to step up and say they are missing.

One sad and scary thing I just read today is that India is refusing international aid due to worries about security around an airbase. I'm sorry, but if that is true I think it's completely irresponsible of them to put all those surivors lives as risk just because they don't want the red cross or any other relief organization to possibly see their air base. I know it's probably more complicated than that, but to those people who desperately need water, food and medical attention, I'm sure it's that simple. Someone with more knowledge about this, please explain why India is refusing international relief....

-Julie

Jianhua, I am ashamed to say that I, too, do not recall that terrible earthquake in China. My only excuse is that I was a young mother in those days, raising a family in Alaska... not very attuned to current events, I'm afraid. Perhaps news coverage of anything happening in China was more closely monitored in those days... whatever the case, I am sorry to know so many people were lost and I was not even aware of it.

Our Alaska quake was of slightly larger magnitude than the one in the Indian Ocean, but it is seldom mentioned. I believe this is because we seem to measure the importance of an earthquake and subsequent title waves by the number of fatalities. In the case of a quake here in Alaska, we were so thinly populated at the time that the death toll was not astounding. As with the quake in the Indian Ocean, coastal towns such as Seward lost large pieces of real estate into the sea, and Valdez was so damaged, they just leveled the area and built in a safer spot.

I've lived in Seward for 30 years, and we get small tremors from time to time. Most of the time, we just stop whatever we are doing to try to assess the situation. If the movement continues, I start looking for some sensible shoes and step out from under the beams where all my huge house plants reside. It is quite possible that one day the earth will not stop shaking and we'll be standing around dazed at the destruction. I believe the quake of 64 lasted 5 minutes... a lifetime in a disaster, I imagine. In those days, I was a Junior in High School back in Indiana. I really wasn't aware of the Alaskan earthquake until we moved up here in 1974.

The info about the '76Tangshan Earthquake comes from Cambridge Encyclopedia by David Crystal.at that time I was only an infant and the quake area was far, so I can only recall some blurred segments about the devastation.But the death figure did reach top ever recorded.At that time,the Chinese authority refused to accept any international relief aids.(I don't know why) One thing I want to tell you is that after the earthquake a new Tanshan was built right upon the ruins.Now people there are living a peaceful life,but the hurt left within the people's hearts would never be erased out.

Jianhua, I've done a lot of reading on the Tangshan earthquake since you first posted about it. It's absolutely mind boggling. But I wanted to make a "correction" to your figures. In the initial period after the earthquake, the figures were reported at 240-250,000 deaths. But research in the decades since the quake have led experts to believe the real figure was closer to half a million. Here's a link to an abstract for anyone interested: http://caltecheerl.library.caltech.edu/353/

I think one of the reasons a lot of people hadn't heard of this earhtquake is precisely because of the (at least then) Chinese governments tendency to keep any information about what went on in China from leaking out to the "west". In any case it's horrific to think of what happened to all of those poor souls who perished. I think it's actually a blessing that it happened at night when it did ... as, like you said, may of the articles said that a great majority of the victims died without having a chance to know what happened to them. At least they went without a long period of suffering and terror.

-Julie

Julie,thanks for your info about the great earthquake.
Many years later the after-wave still vibrated in the people's hearts.Not long ago I made a tour by train,on which I met a survior in the devastation.During our conversation,she repeated using the words 'terrible!','horrible!'disastrous!',unbelievable!' and the like.She told me when the quake happened she was on the night shift in the factory.As soon as she realized the earth was shaking,she stampered hurriedly out to the open air and thus saved her life.But her husband and 2-year-old daughter,she sobbed,were buried in the ruins and never awoke again.A year later she had no other choice but reform a new family with another broken one.
Then she told me another story.A fisherman,as people called him 'Big Fool',being unable to fall asleep,got up from bed and carried his fishing-net on back to the river nearby to cast fish.Of course he did not catch even a minnow,but the weired action did help him pass over the disaster.
After the earthquake the then local government called upon us to donate money and clothes and quilts to the affliated area.I remembered Mama (mother)donated ten yuan and a cotton-padded coat (it was made for me to replace the old one).
Soon after the earthquake,our local officials warned us there might be a shake happening in our region.How to foretell a shake
at night?My big brother (ranking first among our four brothers) thought of a good idea.He put on the table a wine bottle upside down.He said that if there were a quake the bottle would be sure to fall down and the dong dong would wake us up.The thing turned out to be practical.one night a naughty rat happened to knock down the bottle,as you can imagine it we then...
Well,that is all what I can tell you about the great disaster.
A natural disaster is not a fiction.

Dear Pebble. Yes, Red Cross has got a lot of donations, millions and millions United States dollars, but all that money didn't come only from Americans.
For example, Finland has donated millions, so has Sweden and other European countries.

True, many countries have donated much monies, the US included. $350 mil is a considerable amount of money, I think. That gov. donation does not include the millions given by the private sector.

This is a 24/7 news headline here, being the largest loss of Finnish people in an accident during the time of peace.

Red Cross Finland has so far got about 7 million € ( ≈ 9,500,000 $) from the donations I think? And the Church and many cities are sending money over to Asia.
I think if you compare the amount of inhabitans and the GDP/capita, smaller countries aren't ranking any worse.

I'm so sorry to hear that so many of your fellow countrymen were lost in South Asia. It is truly a disaster for people all over the world.

I'm glad, Mitjo, that you pointed out the error - the money did NOT all come from the US. However...I've noticed a disconcerting tendency in the CBC and other broadcasters to print a "ranking" of countries in donation dollars....as if it were the Olympics or something. They're all missing the point, IMHO! :-)

Here is a link to an interesting interview with a mental health crisis worker, who is headed to Asia with MSF, to help people. There's valuable info there, that might help anyone around the world, who is feeling overwhelmed by this.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/asia_earthquake/msf_carter.html

Take care everyone,
Shannon

Dear Mitjo, I apologize the information I had gotten may have been inacurate, I wasnt pointing fingers to anyone, and not trying to discount what other countries are donating. This isnt a race to see who can give the most. I was just happy to see that the american PEOPLE were were being generous in the face of disaster, it seems they always rally round when there is a crisis.
I imagine being away from my own country, I feel proud when I hear of the good deeds my people are involved in, it seems the only thing I hear about americans here is very negative, and I am personally held responsible for what my government does. So, again, I apologize if I was in any way incensitive.
It is sad that the death toll is going to reach 200,000, it is sad for ALL THE PEOPLE who lost their lives, homes, livelihood, family, loved ones.
it is sadder yet, that it takes a disaster of this magnitude to join the people of the world in one cause, how hard could it be for the people of the world to join in on other causes? starvation is rampant, disease is rampant, hatred is rampant, intolerance is rampant, if the people of the world could channell this energy year round instead of just when a disaster strikes, wouldnt it be a better world we would be living in?

Thank you Pebble.
And I am verry sorry if I sounded like I was trying to make some kind of race, how much money different countries donate. That was not my attention.

....Almost 200 000 people have died, and so, so many people are injured. That is is not even the worst care yet. Soon, all those bad epidemics will strike.

I think that $350 million dollars is a very generous sum of money and the U.S. has already pledged to increase this much more.

I've done my best to clean up the thread, and I will simply ask that going forward, everyone keep in mind this is neither the time or the place for political or religious debate.

I think I emailed everyone who had a post(s) affected; if you have any questions, please let me know.

Well done, Terry. Much obliged. ô¿ô

For any that may would like to view some of the awful devastation that has been encountered ...

http://www.globexplorer.com/disasterimages/

- Magpye

I think the news reports are saying they are afraid that as many people will perish from diseases (especially cholera, I presume) as those killed by the impact of the Tsunamis.
The worst problems the relief agencies are running across is getting back into the more remote areas to help people. I feel so helpless sitting here watching the news and doing nothing...

What I don't understand is why they aren't emplying more helicoptors to just air lift and drop food and supplies to the harder to reach areas. I know I read one article that siad they wre going to use "some" helicoptors. I just wish I understood better why this isn't a major method of delivering things quickly to those who can't be reached in other ways.

-Julie

This message was edited Jan 6, 2005 5:12 PM

I am so glad that people have donated so much money, and almost all nations have worked together to help the victims of this crisis.
Today, we had a charity concert here in Finland. Many famous, Finnish artists song and played there for free of charge. On the same time, people could call there and donate money. The income was 3.2 millions euros (4.2 million dollars).

That is so wonderful good news!

I am confused-I thought these kind of post were not allowed.

Honibee,

They're allowed, as long as people keep their senses, and leave the political aspects out of it.

OK = "What a tragedy. What can we/I do to help."

Not OK = What a tragedy. We're doing more than you to help"

Chris