The video footage of the wave reactions in Sri Lanka and the Maldives is just ridiculously amazing. There's nothing and then the wave slams into the coast line like nothing I've ever seen....And I'm sure the video isn't even of the tsunami wave that struck Thailand.

Mr. Mephisto was absolutely right. Donate money if you can. This terrible tragedy for those that died will be worse on those that didn't without substantial assistance. Fresh drinking water will have to be a big priority along with collection and proper disposal of the dead in order to prevent the spread of disease which is unfortunately very likely. Any amount of money that you can donate will definitely help...:(

Its when disasters like these happen that humanity should (and sometimes, but rarely, does) come together as one, and make everything possible to prevent the death of these innocents thousands. Divergences need to be put in the past, wars need to be forgotten.
The growing death toll is very scary, and will pursue its ascent if humanity does not come as one to help fellow humans.
I'm hoping and grieving for those affected by the tragedy.

Unfortunately, people will come together, but only for a short while, afterwards, everyone will forget about it and continue the hatred and such, remember 9/11? This will unfortunately be forgotten soon as well. I wish them a quick recovery either way.

Death count's up to 23,000 now :(

Just sat watching it on the news (I've been out of the loop for a few days). I was gobsmacked at the the loss of life and devastation. The power of the waves was scarily amazing. I hope the aid gets there soon.

Finally got word about our family friends sailing around the world. They were relativly unaffected as they were in Signapore.

I can't believe what an impact this has had. Terrible tragedy. Thanks for the links Mr. Mephisto.

This is when we realise we are little shits...nothing against the immense power of nature.
Men now feel safe with their PDAs and SUVs...all an illusion. We are nothing. And people dying everyday remind it to us. Makes you sad when you think about it.

What happened to my seperate Please Help thread?

It's bad form when an appeal to help disaster victims is deleted without explanation.


Mr Mephisto

My fathers close friend and his wife were staying at a resort in Phuket, Tialand when the tidal waves hit, and the first hand account was stunning. The man went down to the beach in the morning (his wife was still in their room) and he said it was a beautiful day and then all of the sudden the whole sealine like dissapeared, the ocean just receded. All the people on the beach just kind of thought well theres a full moon maybe its just a weird tide, and then someone realized what was going on and started yelling for them to get to higher grounds. It just so happens that their hotel was on a cliff overlooking the beach so he ran up to his room and watched as the 30 feet waves demolished eveyrthing on the shore.

This truely is a terrible tragedy :|

My brother's in Bangkok at the moment so he's unaffected, but he's working for various charities over there so he will probably be helping people soon. I volunteer at the Oxfam Community Aid Abroad offices here and just did eight hours non-stop at the call centre getting donations for the Earthquake/Tsunami disaster, I'm amazed at the generosity out there. The average donation is $100 or so, with a lot of $1,000 donations and one $10,000 donation from a single person. Others offered clothes and food, some said they were medical professionals prepared to go there to help, and one nice old lady offered the spare rooms in her Sydney house for anyone who needed somewhere to stay. I didn't want to tell her the expense to take three people from Sri Lanka to Sydney for a few nights would be overwhelming but in her case it was the thought that counted, but in most cases it's not the thought that counts, it really is the raw money.

just curious.... anyone have pictures of the actual wave? I have seen pictures of the flooding after but I am curious as to what a real tsunami looks like. I have no idea how big the thing really was...

Arroe, check out this animated gif at http://img159.exs.cx/img159/1683/tsunami0yw.gif I don't want to post the picture directly since it's not mine, I found it at the Something Awful forums in a post by a guy named rammark.

Ok...these "stingy" remarks are really starting to get on my nerves.....

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapc...aid/index.html

At least one place has had a ban on foriegn aid http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapc....ap/index.html
so...in the wake of a great disaster they want aid so they lift the ban, and we respond immediately... but yet the aid we (and other countries) are giving is called stingy

My heart goes out to ALL the people affected by this and this in no way is a comment about THEM but jesus christ people....some people quit whining about whats being done and be grateful that even though we havent been allowed to help with any kind of aid for a long time, other countries have stepped up to try to help with the situation.

To be honest Shani, I've read that the US gave $3 million. That's not a huge amount.

If tiny little Ireland can give 1 million Euro (about $1.3M), then surely the US could come up with more?

We shouldn't let politics enter into this terrible tragedy.


Mr Mephisto

with all due respect Mr M

another part of the article I linked to

Well, I stand corrected. I read the figure of US$3million, which to be perfectly honest I was surprised at.

I have since done a search and found the following:

What's with the UK donating less than a million?

Anyway, as I said in an earlier post, every single dollar counts. Individuals can make a difference too. See my post above for links to how YOU can help save lives...

Mr Mephisto

I am with you Mephisto, any amount seems too small given the circumstances. In defense I would hope those totals will increase as more news is heard, as specific needs become known and the extent of damage is made more clear. I would also suggest a lot of logistical support will come from Britian and the US, and that is likely not included in these dollar figures.

This tradgedy is one of the greatest of our times. Lets hope it recieves the attention that it deserves.

ack! =( hope the number doesn't get any bigger

well no one has posted the number in a while...its supposedly over 55,000 now

Here is another look at how huge this was:

Earthquake Animation

What worries me (well, at least another thing that worries me) is reading about people handling bodies with their bare hands, drinking the water with no precautions, mass graves in the open air, people using wherever they can as a toilet... all this combined is enough to create a breeding ground for a multitude of diseases.

Malaria - An infectious disease characterized by cycles of chills, fever, and sweating.

Cholera - An acute infectious disease of the small intestine, characterized by profuse watery diarrhea, vomiting, muscle cramps, severe dehydration, and depletion of electrolytes.

Dengue Fever - An infectious disease of the tropics transmitted by mosquitoes and characterized by rash and aching head and joints.

Typhoid - A communicable disease marked by fever, diarrhea, prostration, headache, splenomegaly, eruption of rose-colored spots, leukopenia, and intestinal inflammation.

Ill add another support link. Amazon has placed a huge link on their frontpage asking people to donate money to the Red Cross directly. So far, just from that link, just shy of $750,000 has been donated by over 15,000 people. Thats an average of about $50 per person. Please, do something useful. Donate here or at any of the other ones listed in this thread.

http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/.../PX3BEL97U9A4I

Does anyone have a link to video or pictures of a real Tsunami? I'm searching on google and turning up empty handed..

I'd love to see a tidal wave in action... these things have to be MASSIVE for it to do that much damage.

Comparing real life to Hollywood is never a good thing, but are they anything like the waves in that Deep Impact movie (I'm assuming that one was over exaggerated.. or prob because an asteroid hit the ocean)? Where it just rose up out of the sea like that and crashed inland?

"The estimated number of victims of Sunday's tsunami, triggered by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, has now surpassed 68,000."

CBC News
Last Updated Tue, 28 Dec 2004 21:56:38 EST

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/nation...ead041228.html

Look on CNN.com. They have a bunch of videos (most interviews and such) that have clips of the waves hitting interspersed. Its unbelievable... Dont expect anything like a giant hollywood-style cresting wave crashing down on a city, its more like a massive storm surge moving very fast. Still amazing to watch this wall of water was across the land.

LoL, not even close, I've seen videos somewhere but I do not recall where exactly, here are some pictures of the waves though, nothing even close to Deep Impact.

http://worldofgore.com/phpBB2/files/phuket001.jpg
http://worldofgore.com/phpBB2/files/phuket002.jpg
http://worldofgore.com/phpBB2/files/phuket003.jpg
http://worldofgore.com/phpBB2/files/phuket005.jpg
http://worldofgore.com/phpBB2/files/phuket006.jpg
http://worldofgore.com/phpBB2/files/phuket008.jpg

The sydney morning herald had a journalist holidaying in the wrong (right??) place. It is pretty moving reading:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...996555398.html

As for the whole "singy" thing... they're saying we're gonna give billions in aid... where exactly is this money coming from?

CNN-
The United States is offering a total of $35 million, followed by Japan with $30 million. Australia has now pledged $27 million, Saudi Arabia $10 million and Germany $2.7 million.

This is quite a grim story. So many people gone in and instant. The count will continue to rise... and THEN there is the disease factor. Wow... is there anything else one could possibly say?

Having lived in SoCal for most of my life, I've gotta say that mother nature has a funny way of using our buildings and belongings against us. So, when earthquakes hit countries like India or Turkey or what have you, you see a bunch of deaths because they tend to not have the best building codes. Now this tsunami shows me that nature doesn't need to spite you with anything you own; no, it'll just fucking thrash you about with a wall of water.

All we are are specks of living matter living on the outer crust of a spinning core of molten rock that's orbiting around a huge ball of fire.

Living in the PacNW and close to the Coast, one ALWAYS notices the tsunami warning systems and the signs. I am now especially glad they are in place, along with the buoys off the coast so that we may know in advance if a tsunami is coming. We are very, very fortunate in comparison to the people of SE Asia and those along the Indian Ocean. At least we will have warning.

Google now also has relief news on their frontsite:

http://www.google.com
http://www.google.com/tsunami_relief.html

CNN is now putting the death toll at 80,000...the numbers are just staggering.

I do wish that we were offering more aid - $35 million seems like an insulting drop in the bucket (particularly considering the hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars we are throwing at the war in Iraq, supposedly in response to the deaths of 3,000 people). These regions are going to be horribly destablized in the short term, and it will take years if not decades to recover. If nothing else, it would be politically wise of us to re-stablize these (heavily Muslim) areas and do everything we can to help.

If you read the newest reports on cnn Lurkette you'll see that when all is said and done we'll be giving over a billion in aid
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/....ap/index.html

Well people, this just in from a new report quoting the Red Cross. Unimaginable. I am actually shaking my head in disbelief.

-----

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - The Red Cross said Wednesday it feared the death toll in Sunday's earthquake and tsunamis in the Indian Ocean could top 100,000.

"We're facing a disaster of unprecedented proportion in nature," said Simon Missiri, Asia Pacific chief at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

The agency said its current estimate is 77,000, but it fears that could rise.

-----

In a sense...you're right. It does. But, bear in mind, these figures do not include "private" donations. I had an appointment last night to donate blood, and the Red Cross had a bucket there for donations to the relief fund. I'm also not sure if the $35,000,000 figure includes the costs of the C-130s flying in military food and water packets. I don't, for one moment, believe that we're not going to "step up".

I have a hard time seeing that number in my head...

but something that helps me put things like this into perspective is a simplification...

Giants Stadium in Meadowlands, NJ has a seating capacity of 78,741.

Madison Square Garden seats about 20,000.

go ahead, look at your local arena/concert hall, fill it with people to capacity and then imagine them all washed away in a moment. You may have to fill it several times if you have small venues in your town but it will help one really see what the climbing numbing number really is.

this is the phuket?
 

You're right, Cynthetiq, that's a good way to imagine something so incomprehensible. Whole families have been wiped off the earth by this. My healthy fear of the ocean doesn't seem so neurotic to me anymore!

I just donated some money to the Red Cross via that Amazon link. It's not much but all I could do.

its amazing to see how quickly that water level rose

nature is cruel thing sometimes

Jesus christ, the number is over 80,000. The number will get over a hundred 100,000 of just the "lucky" ones to die instantly. The sad part is the malnutrition, deseases, and lack of any health care. By the looks of it, it seems the number will easily hit a quarter million dead. Which is like filling the Silverdome three times over. I am trying to see if I can get my school to get a relief fund together.