Maybe Up To 6000 Dead, Tidal Waves Slams Thailand

[tracer0]

Tourists missing after tidal wave

Kamala and Patong under water

"As of now there are four foreign tourists missing and we are conducting a search," deputy Phuket governor Pongpao Ketthong said.

Police said thousands of people had been forced out of their homes while hundreds of homes along the coast had also been washed away.

=====

Living in Kamala and having experienced this mess personally and having escaped by swimming.....

First I suggest anyone to start multiplying any Thai victim numbers by at least 10.

Its clear from 20 years of watching newspapers that they cannot count....

In Patong the Ocean supermarket is below sealevel and just the number of employees and customers there will by far exceed number of victims they mention now. Not counting the gold shop which was raided by a number of Thais between wave 1 and 2 and second wave then cleaned the shop out.

As whole beachfronts where destroyed in at least 3 places I know, Patong, Kamala and Bangtao and having seen the bodies being brought in its clear that even more will never been found having been swept out to the sea.

In Kamala there are about 4 bars left, maybe 2-3 restaurants, the beach is destroyed and all obotor does is feed and give water to the people in a friendly way , give wave alarms every 2 hours and try to keep foreigners far away so that likely they cannot see whats happening.

Well many shops were emptied of booze by Thais and loads of harvesting took place of motorbikes and other stuff as there wasnt any police to prevent it.

Considering that there was an eartquake of this strength and that no official alarm was given via those damned village speakers making blaring noises day and night about any subject possible, I can only asume that on Christmas day they all had a hangover...

[Darknight]

Reuters updates Death toll figure, Thailand now 1,473

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The death toll from a magnitude 9.0 earthquake near Indonesia and the resulting tsunami in the Indian Ocean rose to 29,030 people, government officials and media from affected countries said.

Officials fear the figure could rise to almost 57,000. Indonesia said its toll could hit 25,000, while Sri Lankan officials warned up to 20,000 people may have died there. Thailand said its toll may exceed 2,000.

These figures are preliminary and in some cases rough estimates by local officials:

Country

Bangladesh 2

India 9,499*

Indonesia 5,700up to 100,000

Kenya 1

Malaysia 59 218 injured

Maldives 52

Myanmar 34

Somalia 38

Sri Lanka 12,212

Tanzania 10

Thailand 1,473 7,000 injured

TOTAL 29,030

* The figure includes an estimated 5,000 feared killed in India's Andaman and Nicobar islands.

The numbers are based on comments by official sources and local media.

Numbers of injured were not available for all countries affected, but are expected to exceed the number of dead.

[phuketrichard]

hi;

Well its day 2 after the 26th. relief efforst in kamala and Patong are in effect and bodies are still being found beneath rublle and in the water.

kamala has been totaled. Al expcet 1 hotel are closed and in need of rebuling. All restaurants are shells.

Ko lak was leveld and hunrdeds of tourists died and are still rpeortsed missing.

The goverment has sent people around today asking what was damaged and asking for estimites with nerely EVERYONE giving higher value than the truth. Spoke with a few friends that lost shops and buisnesses and they all plan on rebuilding but have no idea where the money will come from.

The goverment promises to help but when???

The totla number will surely surpass the 2,000 mark as thousnads of people are missing and many dive boats and fishing boats have not been located.

A distaer that thailand needs to help qick

Thaksin is asking for everyone to wear black, great, that will accomplish the same effect the 60,000,000 doves did for the troubles in the south NOTHING.

the locals need$$ they need to find a way to feed their familes not sympathy

Hospitals are in desperate need of blood.

help if you can.

Stop with the comentary of deaths and requotes of what someone else says, we all have cnn.

[phuketrichard]

Tracer,

I live 2 kms behind fantasy, where are you?? No restaurnats open on the beach/beach road or the main road althought the small thai chickne places on the hill to Patong are.

Bang tao was hit hard as was Lam Sing. Surin and Laguna were barely touched at all and they are still open for buiness.

New years??? celebrate to forget the trouble OR not to remember?

tough call but I will try for the first one

it took almost 2 hours to hit. why was no one told? All it needed was a phone call to Bangkok from wherever they first registered the quake and saying it might lead to something. 5 minute warning would have saved hundreds if not thousand of lives.

[tuky]

Stop with the comentary of deaths and requotes of what someone else says, we all have cnn.

not all of us, I am at work and only have the oportunity to keep one website open, and this is it.

I am really glad that these things have been reported as it has kept me and the guys in my office in the loop.

Thanks to all.

[tuky]

it took almost 2 hours to hit.  why was no one told?  All it needed was a phone call to Bangkok from wherever they first registered the quake and saying it might lead to something.  5 minute warning would have saved hundreds if not thousand of lives.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Please keep these comments to the topic set up for them.

Tsunami Warning System

Cheers

moderator

[Darknight]

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Some 1,600 Swedish holiday makers are still unaccounted for after tsunami waves from an underwater earthquake devastated south Asian beach resorts on Sunday, Swedish public radio said Tuesday.

The data is compiled from several Swedish travel agencies, which count those who have not yet made contact after the disaster, which killed more than 27,700 in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Maldives and Somalia.

Prime Minister Goran Persson told reportes Monday at least 10 Swedes had been killed and the number was likely to rise as around 10,000 could have been in the region.

The Swedish foreign ministry had no official figures of those missing or an update on how many were killed. It would send identification experts to the region Wednesday, spokesowman Ingrid Iremark said.

[andyadam]

People are being evacuated to a centre in Bankok, the centre is at Thamasart University, they are in neet of translators;

German

All Scandinavian languages

French

able to translate to Thai or English.

The contact numbers are:

01-338-6111

01-822-4664

[Darknight]

Reporters Logs update tuesday

Rachel Harvey : Aceh, Indonesia : 1105 GMT

I must have walked down this road, six or seven times during my trips to Aceh over the past two years.

It used to be a bustling market area, there were fruit and vegetable stalls her and cafes along the sides of the road. Now it is absolutely wrecked.

There is mud, debris, masonry, cars, motorbikes, all upturned, mangled, covered in mud. And in the midst of it all, you can see limbs sticking out bodies still lying where they were left when the water retreated.

Chris Hogg : Phuket, Thailand : 1055 GMT

Most of the bodies recovered here have been piled up in a temple, which has been turned into makeshift mortuary.

The Thais say they expect the number of casualties to double over the next few days, as the relief teams reach more far flung islands.

It's becoming clear that the majority of those who died here were from abroad. But many Thais too have lost their lives, and those who survived, in many cases they lost their livelihoods.

The rescuers here are coping, but there's much to do.

Roland Buerke : Galle, Sri Lanka : 1016 GMT

This small city is filling up with the desperate.

Tourists and Sri Lankans alike are trudging up the road from villages and resorts along the coast. But they're finding little here; relief supplies have yet to get through in any quantity.

People are scrambling through the mud and the ruins for food and bottles of water, and everywhere they're also unearthing the dead, so many there's little time for funeral ceremonies, they're being reburied as quickly as they can be found.

Roads to this part of Sri Lanka are being cleared and people in areas that are unaffected have been coming forward to donate clothes and food.

But perhaps a million people have been left with nothing.

Geeta Pandey : Port Blair, Andaman Islands : 0750 GMT

At least ten navy and coastguard ships have reached the affected areas and defence helicopters are being used for providing relief and rescue to those stranded.

Many civilians have also joined in. In Port Blair they are collecting clothes and food for distribution among the refugees but the scale of the tragedy is overwhelming and officials here say it will cost millions of dollars and take months, probably years, before normalcy can be restored here.

The aftershocks continue to jolt an already shaken population and hundreds of people have been sleeping outside on the streets or in their cars out of fear.

[dragonmasterzip]

Here is a press release from the Pacific Asia Travel Assn. It was issued just a day after the tsunami struck. I understand the need to protect the tourist industryand cancelling holidays will only to the pain of local merchants....still given that this appears to be the worst natural disaster in a century, I think this is a little too quick to be issuing "business as normal" statements. The wording is rather unfortunate too. That's my view.  -ThaiGene.

PATA Press Release

Contact: Ken Scott/Paveena Olansuksakul/David Gillbanks

Tel: (66-2) 658-2000

E-mail: [email protected].

MOST OF ASIA UNAFFECTED BY TSUNAMI

Find out more about PATA at www.PATA.org.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Are you recommending they issue a warning to tell all the money which will not be a drop in the bucket, compared to what is needed, all stay home?

I would advise anyone thinking of taking a vacation to take it in Thailand, leave ALL your clothes at home, pack two suitcases filled with chlorine beach crystals pack a carry on bag of food with as much dense nutrients as possible, break the laws on how much money you can transport out of the country and go to Thailand.

Give your suitcases and carry=on to the relief people at the airport and go shopping for clothes.

Contact people on this site who know the area and know some people and take ONE family or Two under your wing and put them on your feet.

Make a difference.

Go to Thailand NOW

[Darknight]

Tsunami causes sea level fluctuations as far away as California

HONOLULU, Hawaii (DPA): Waves unleashed by a devastating 9.0-magnitude undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean have increased sea levels in Pacific Ocean ports, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu said in an advisory Monday.

The tsunami, which struck on Sunday morning with devastating effect on Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Indonesia, produced "minor sea level fluctuations at many places in the Pacific", the center said.

The fluctuations ranged from 6 centimeters in Hilo, Hawaii, to 65 centimeters in Jackson Bay, New Zealand. In the southern California port city of San Diego, sea level was 22 centimeters higher than normal.

The center also said sea level at Manzanillo, Mexico, was up 2.6 metres, but it attributed the rise to "local resonances" in addition to the earthquake.

The waves causing the sea level increases "leaked" into the Pacific Ocean "probably from south of the Australian continent", the center said.

"Small sea level changes could continue to be observed across the Pacific over the next day or two until all energy from this event is eventually dissipated," the center's advisory said.

The death toll from devastating tidal waves caused by the world's largest earthquake in four decades rose to 28,000 across several south Asian countries.

[Darknight]

Taiwan relief teams leave for Indonesia and Thailand

TAIPEI (AFP): Two relief teams from Taiwan on Tuesday left for Indonesia and Thailand, two of the countries hit hardest by massive killer tsunamis at the weekend.

The government dispatched a team of ten medical and relief workers to Medan, Indonesia, bringing with them some 3.5 tons of food, medicine, tents and sleeping bags.

Another 35-member team organized by the non-profit Rescue Headquarters of Taiwan left for the Thai resort island of Phuket carrying relief supplies and advanced rescue equipment, including an underwater robot.

Taiwan will also pledge US$100,000 to Indonesia and $50,000 each to India, Thailand and Sri Lanka, a foreign ministry spokesman said.

One Taiwanese national was killed when tsunamis devastated Phuket island, a popular destination for local tourists, while two are still missing.

About 150 fishing vessels from Taiwan were in the tsunami-affected region in South Asia, according to Tsai Je-yao, an official at the Fisheries Administration.

Tsai clarified earlier reports of 35 missing boats, saying they were actually at anchor in Phuket and some were damaged by tsunami waves which washed them ashore.

There was one minor injury reported among some 200 crew members, he told AFP. The foreign ministry has warned its citizens to stay away from the tsunami-hit areas.

[Darknight]

Asian quake tsunami reaches New Zealand

WELLINGTON (DPA): The tsunamis triggered by the massive Asian earthquake took 17 hours to reach New Zealand, more than 8,000 kilometers from Indonesia where it was centered, it was reported on Tuesday.

Sea levels rose 10 to 30 centimeters at tidal gauges at New Plymouth and Bluff and Jackson Bay in the South Island, Rob Bell, of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) told the New Zealand Press Association.

Earlier, seismologist Warwick Smith, of the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, Wellington, told Radio New Zealand: "In practical terms it is very small. It didn't doany damage and most people wouldn't think of it as a tsunami, but technically that's what it was."

He said it had raised sea levels around West Australia and "sneaked around the south of Australia and onto New Zealand".

[Tornado]

I am very interested to hear from anyone who might have news of what happened at Nui Beach - the beach between Nai Harn and Kata Noi . I fear the worst, given that it is a very narrow bay.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sorry to report it is not there anymore. I was there yesterday and it is flat.

[Darknight]

Reuters reports greater death toll in thailand and sri lanka

(Not for sensitive readers)

By David Fox

GALLE, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - Survivors in seven countries on the shores of the Indian Ocean scrabbled frantically through debris and devastation for their loved ones on Tuesday as the death toll climbed inexorably toward 40,000.

The scale of the destruction caused by Sunday's monster tsunami left governments helpless and groping for succor. On coastline after coastline, the sea disgorged the dead and rescuers fought through a morass of wreckage, mud and body parts.

The United Nations said the disaster was unique in encompassing such a large area and so many countries.

Aid agencies struggled to cope with the enormity of the disaster. The International Red Cross said it may have to treble its appeal for funds.

"The enormity of the disaster is unbelievable," said Bekele Geleta, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Southeast Asia.

The United Nations said hundreds of relief planes packed with emergency goods would arrive in the region from about two dozen countries within the next 48 hours.

Authorities waited in trepidation for the outbreak of diseases caused by polluted drinking water and the sheer scale of thousands of putrefying bodies.

Many of the dead were children, and television screens and newspapers were full of images of grief-stricken parents.

Sunday's giant 9.0-magnitude earthquake cracked the seabed off the Indonesian island of Sumatra. That tectonic movement triggered a tsunami that raced across the Andaman Sea and struck Sri Lanka, southern India, the Maldives, Malaysia, Myanmar and resorts packed with Christmas vacationers in Thailand.

In Sri Lanka, which appeared worst hit, the government said more than 18,700 people were confirmed dead and officials fear the toll will hit 25,000.

Indonesia said the death toll on Aceh island had reached 7,072. Along Khao Lak beach on the Thai mainland north of Phuket island, a magnet for Scandinavian and German tourists, miles of shattered hotels began yielding up their dead, bloated, gashed and mangled bodies -- at least 770 dead, many of them Thai Officials fear the figure could rise above 60,000. Indonesia said its toll could hit 25,000, while Sri Lankan officials warned up to 25,000 people may have died there. Thailand said its toll may exceed 2,000.

"There are lots of dead foreigners because it is during our high season and Christmas. It is a family vacation time," Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told reporters.

Only 112 dead foreigners had been identified. They included 22 French people, 13 Norwegians, 12 Britons, 11 Italians and 10 Swedes, 9 Japanese and 8 Americans, as well as tourists from Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and Taiwan.

CATASTROPHE EVIDENT AS RESCUERS REACH NEW GROUND

The extent of the catastrophe and the human toll became clearer as rescue teams began to reach remote areas.

On some of India's Andaman and Nicobar islands, located almost atop the epicenter of Sunday's earthquake, rescuers found only a third of inhabitants still alive. A hundred air force officers and their families vanished from one island base.

Police say at least 5,000 people are confirmed or presumed dead in the group of more than 550 islands bordering Myanmar and Indonesia. The death toll across India is estimated at 9,500.

On the island of Chowra, rescuers found only 500 survivors from 1,500 residents, the territory's deputy police chief, C. Vasudeva Rao, said. "We thought the entire island was washed away. But we found 500 survivors."

Residents in Sri Lanka's southern port city of Galle, strewn with the twisted wreckage of buses, toppled buildings and the debris of people's lives, surveyed the scene in disbelief.

"Look around," said jeweller Ifti Muaheed, who lost tens of thousands of dollars' worth of precious gems to the deluge and faced restarting his generations-old business from scratch. "This will take months, maybe years to sort out."

Bodies littered the streets in northern Indonesia, closest to Sunday's giant earthquake. About 1,000 people lay where they were killed when a tsunami struck as they watched a sports event.

"I was in the field as a referee. The waves suddenly came in and I was saved by God -- I got caught in the branches of a tree," said Mahmud Azaf, who lost his three children to the tsunami.

"This was the worst day in our history," said Sri Lankan businessman Y.P. Wickramsinghe as he picked through the rubble of his sea-front dive shop in the devastated southwestern town of Galle. "I wish I had died. There is no point in living."

"The cost of the devastation will be in the billions of dollars," said Jan Egeland, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"However, we cannot fathom the cost of these poor societies and the nameless fishermen and fishing villages ... that have just been wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of livelihoods have gone."

ARC OF DESTRUCTION

Thousands of miles of coastline from Indonesia to Tanzania were battered by deadly waves. Fishing villages were devastated, power and communications cut and homes destroyed.

Dozens perished in Malaysia, Myanmar and the Maldives and in far-away Somalia, 6,000 km (3,600 miles) to the west of the epicenter, 38 people were killed. At least 10 people were killed in Tanzania.

"My son is crying for his mother," said Bejkhajorn Saithong, 39, searching for his wife at a hotel on Khao Lak beach. The hotel had been knocked off its foundations and a few body parts jutted from the wreckage.

"I think this is her. I recognize her hand, but I'm not sure," Bejkhajorn said.

Television pictures taken from the air showed bodies tangled in debris littering a beach. Other bodies floated in the sea.

In Sri Lanka about 1.5 million people -- or 7.5 percent of the population -- were homeless, many sheltering in Buddhist temples and schools.

Throughout the region, people fearing another wave sheltered in public buildings, schools and on high ground. There was a shortage of clean water and provisions. Those not searching for survivors hastened to bury the dead.

The U.N.'s Egeland said there could be epidemics of intestinal and lung infections unless health systems in the stricken countries got help.

Countries on the Pacific Ocean have tsunami warning systems but those on the Indian Ocean, where tsunamis hit about once a century, do not.

Sunday's huge waves were tracked by U.S. seismologists who said they had had no way of warning governments in the region.

[Darknight]

Eyewitness: Patong salvage starts

From BBC news

British visitor Keith Lambert, 31, described the clean-up operation in the Thai town of Patong as the community comes to terms with the devastation left by the tsunami waves.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A massive clean-up operation is under way in Patong which started yesterday.

Shop and bar owners have been trying to salvage what they can

Spent the afternoon down there once again, observing. There is no selective clearing as such - JCB and mobile CATs have been brought in along with a queue of dumpers. The streets are being bulldozed and everything is being scooped and skipped.

Very little can be saved. I spoke to a shop owner yesterday whose answer I think sums it all up - "I've lost everything. My shop, my car, it's all gone. Maybe I will be up and running again in two months, who knows."

Bodies were still being retrieved and will be today as well, as they were pumping out the basements and garages of malls and guesthouses. Police divers have been in there searching and retrieving those they found.

All the hotels and guest houses on the beachfront have been either severely damaged or destroyed. All the buildings, shops, stalls, beer bars and streets leading off the beach have been wiped out.

All the owners were making valiant efforts to try and salvage something out of the mud. There have been hundreds of tons of sand and mud dumped into the town.

Cars were wrapped around trees, impaled on electricity posts, shoved through buildings and piled three deep on top of each other. Shops were gutted, with everything just being sucked out. Roads and walls were ripped up and deposited nowhere near where they should be.

The beachfront walls have just been sucked away, street lights twisted... the list goes on and on.

The day it happened, the earth tremors struck at 0800 Thai time, and the wave hit at 1000.

Missing

I arrived in Patong in the afternoon at around 1500 as the roads had been sealed off by the police, with access only granted to the emergency services.

The pictures give you an indication as to what I initially saw and describe more than words can say. Before the waves hit, there were hundreds of people on the beaches and around hotel pools, out on diving courses and trips, on jet skis, boats.

Patong had been a lively hub of business before the waves hit

As yet, the proper death toll is unknown as a lot are still presumed missing. It could be that they have either fled the area and made their own way to other towns in the country, or they have failed to register with the refugee centre.

A rescue centre has been set up here in Phuket Town at the Provincial hall, with facilities for everything from consular information to free food and accommodation - a lot of which is being provided by the community here in Phuket, along with the army.

People here are all well and safe, though in a great degree of shock. I appreciate that it is now nearly three days after the event, but people are still coming in via helicopter and army transport from the surrounding areas and outlying islands.

The best thing people can do right now is sit tight - everything here is a waiting game, which is no consolation. But as things stand, everyone is working as hard and fast as they can to get things restored and a semblance of normality restored.

[rhaugland]

Hotels in Phuket and surrounding areas

For those of us who still plan to come to Phuket soon despite the damage, this site lists the status of hotels there by a color code:

http://www.phuket1st.com/

It is difficult to say whether their listings are at all accurate, however, or overly optimistic or just plain false.

[Laurie]

I am very interested to hear from anyone who might have news of what happened at Nui Beach - the beach between Nai Harn and Kata Noi . I fear the worst, given that it is a very narrow bay.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sorry to report it is not there anymore. I was there yesterday and it is flat.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thank you. I have now managed to get in touch with my friend and his family which is the main thing. Tragically one of the staff has lost 6 of his family which puts the economic loss into context.

[Tornado]

I am very interested to hear from anyone who might have news of what happened at Nui Beach - the beach between Nai Harn and Kata Noi . I fear the worst, given that it is a very narrow bay.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sorry to report it is not there anymore. I was there yesterday and it is flat.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thank you. I have now managed to get in touch with my friend and his family which is the main thing. Tragically one of the staff has lost 6 of his family which puts the economic loss into context.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Im very happy, that your friends are ok. That made my day Laurie

Being there yesterday was very depressing as I met many of those who had lost everything. Some good news out of all the bad is still good news!

[bina]

can anyone please point me to a place that has real up to date info (in thai) or write a short synopsis (in thai) for the thai workers here in israel that work with me: i dont know how much is really being reported on satellite tv from thailand as opposed to cnn bbc etc and i cant read thai to see what is written in the internet news ( the guys dont like browsing thru the internet so i print stuff out) they dont seem to know what is really going on from what they see on the tv and they really want to know.... the thai language newspaper here comes out only in one more week....can pm me if not relevant to this thread....

thanx and sympathy to those that lost everything

bina

[gburns57au]

Here in West Australia....we have had tidal surges up to 2 metres going on....some swimmers were taken out to sea but all were rescued. One fishing boat sunk at its mooring.

The areas affected were from Geraldton down to Esperence...Just a rough guide there.

[onethailand]

Over 1,500 confirmed dead as corpses continue to pour in 

REGIONAL DESK, Dec 28 (TNA) – Rescue workers struggled to haul in hundreds more corpses today as the official death count rose above 1,500.

A brief government announcement at 16.00hrs this afternoon put the number of dead at 1,516, with 8,432 more people injured.

But in Phang-nga, which has already recorded 950 deaths, rescue workers said that there were still around 1,000 more bodies which they had not yet been able to reach.

In Takua Pa district, one of the areas worst affected by Sunday’s tsunami tragedy, workers have already discovered the corpses of 750 Thais and foreigners, while local hospitals are overflowing with more than 1,000 of the 3,200 injured in the district.

In Takua Pa and surrounding districts, the tsunami destroyed 50 hotels, three schools and over 2,800 houses, as well as a huge number of vehicles.

A team of forensic experts led by Dr. Porntip Rojanasunan, the nation’s most famous forensic scientist, is rushing to perform autopsies on the corpses, but rescue officials say that there could be as many as 1,000 dead bodies still to come.  (TNA)--E006

More than 1000 bodies still on PhangNga. What a disaster

[MarcoH]

Any one have any idea where to find Updated patient list. admitted of Dead?

thanx for any info,,

i still have 4out of 9 people missing from Khao Lak area.Finnish Nationality

[Darknight]

Any one have any idea where to find Updated patient list. admitted of Dead?

thanx for any info,,

i still have 4out of 9 people missing from Khao Lak area.Finnish Nationality

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

links in the pinned topics in this forum branch....

[DaveYo]

after some small studying on those plates involved, you have 3 of them squeezing each other all the way around. It is very much possible the entire plate moved 100 feet, thus moving everything 100 feet including the islands and land involved in with that particular plate. With the Indian plate being the largest part, it is like something as follows as a mere description

Say for example you have two pieces of bread and a piece of meat like a ham slice. The Burma plate being those islands inside the ham slice. Now when the Indian plate being one bread slice moved against the ham slice it was also being pushed on its back end from the other bread slice something had to give. The end result is the Burma plate sunk under the Indian plate while the other plate at the backside got less pressure now since the Burma plate went under.

End result, the indian plate caused the huge wave to hit Phuket.

Here is the future event perhaps centuries ahead of us. Once that Burma plate gets small enough there will be a gigantic earthquake once the australian plate meet with the Indian plate and that back plate being part of Sumatra meet and the Burma plate disappearing completely under the Indian plate. Everything surrounding this part of the region will be completely destroyed and it includes all of Thailand , Cambodia and perhaps Vietnam, and Indonesia will suffer huge massive wipeouts.

This will be felt even in Russia and China and perhaps as far as Europe. Australia will feel it as well as Taiwan, Japan and the Phillipines which is also going to get practically wiped out from a Wave so huge perhaps maybe a mile high up or higher by the time it hits the American coasts. A mile high of water will go inland perhaps as far as Sacramento in California.

The other interesting point here is we will have a brand new mountain range formed. Those rocks are going to crunch upwards like similar to Mount Everest.

This is a guess cause by that time all of us here will be obviously dead hundreds of years earlier.

Daveyo

Estimated Ritcher scale perhaps around 30 or so or higher.

[Darknight]

Asia Struggles with Disaster Aftermath, Reuters reports now 50,000 Dead

(not for sensitive readers)

By David Fox

GALLE, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - The sea and wreckage of coastal towns all around the Indian Ocean yielded up tens of thousands of bodies on Tuesday, pushing the toll from Sunday's tsunami past 50,000.

The apocalyptic destruction caused by the wave dwarfed the efforts of governments and relief agencies as they turned from rescuing survivors to trying to care for millions of homeless, increasingly threatened by disease amid the rotting corpses.

"Why did you do this to us, God?" wailed an old woman in a devastated fishing village in southern India's Tamil Nadu state. "What did we do to upset you? This is worse than death."

"The enormity of the disaster is unbelievable," said Bekele Geleta, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Southeast Asia.

Sri Lanka and Indonesia each reported death tolls around 19,000 and expected them to keep rising.

India's toll of 11,500 included at least 7,000 on one archipelago, the Andamans and Nicobar. On one island, the surge of water triggered by Sunday's cataclysmic undersea earthquake killed two-thirds of the population.

At magnitude 9.0, the tremor was the biggest in 40 years. The chasm that it tore in the seabed off the Indonesian island of Sumatra launched a tsunami that raced across the Andaman Sea and struck Sri Lanka, southern India, the Maldives, Malaysia, Myanmar and resorts packed with Christmas tourists in Thailand.

The surge battered thousands of miles of coastline in a vast arc from Indonesia to Tanzania. Fishing villages, ports and resorts were devastated, power and communications cut and homes destroyed.

FIELD OF DEATH

In northern Indonesia's remote Aceh region, closest to the epicenter, bodies littered the streets. About 1,000 people lay on a sports field where they were killed when the three-story-high wall of water struck.

Mahmud Azaf, a referee, lost his three children."I was in the field as a referee. The waves suddenly came in and I was saved by God -- I got caught in the branches of a tree," he said.

Miles of shattered hotels along Thailand's Khao Lak beach, a magnet for Scandinavian and German tourists, began yielding up dead, bloated, gashed and mangled bodies.

The 770 dead so far counted at Khao Lak came from dozens of countries as well as Thailand.

Many of the bodies were already decomposing in the heat, underlining the growing health risk.

"Rescuers are holding their breath and using their bare hands, axes, or shovels to dig through piles of wrecked buildings and debris at Khao Lak," said a senior provincial official, Chailert Piyorattanachote.

"We don't have enough coffins and those that we have are too small for the bloated bodies of foreigners."

Around the ring of devastation, Sweden reported 1,500 citizens missing, the Czech Republic almost 400, Finland 200 and Italy and Germany 100.

More than 20 countries have pledged emergency aid worth more than $60 million. Several Asian nations have sent naval ships carrying supplies and doctors to devastated areas.

The United Nations said the disaster was unique in encompassing such a large area and so many countries, and would require the biggest and costliest relief effort in its history.

Gerhard Berz, a top risk researcher at Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurer, estimated the economic cost of the devastation at over $13 billion

MILLIONS HOMELESS

Around Sri Lanka's southern coasts about 1.5 million people -- or one in 12 of the population -- were homeless, many sheltering in Buddhist temples and schools.

For the most immediate needs, hundreds of relief planes packed with emergency goods were due to arrive in the region from about two dozen countries within the next 48 hours.

But authorities waited in trepidation for the outbreak of diseases caused by polluted drinking water and the sheer scale of thousands of putrefying bodies, lying in mud or being washed onto beaches.

The U.N.'s Egeland said there could be epidemics of intestinal and lung infections unless health systems in the stricken countries got help.

A top World Health Organization expert, David Nabarro said there was "certainly a chance that we could have as many dying from communicable diseases as from the tsunami."

In Aceh, Lieutenant-Colonel Budi Santoso said: "Many bodies are still lying on the streets. There just aren't enough body bags."

"I've never buried so many in a single day in my life," said Shekhar, an Indian gravedigger

On the island of Chowra in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, not far from the epicenter of Sunday's quake, rescuers found only 500 survivors from 1,500 residents. A hundred air force officers and their families vanished from one island base.

Authorities said at least 7,000 people were confirmed or presumed dead in the group of more than 550 islands.

The United Nations' children's fund said Sri Lankan survivors faced an unexpected threat from some of the 2 million land mines buried there as the result of ethnic conflict.

"Mines were floated by the floods and washed out of known minefields, so now we don't know where they are," UNICEF's Ted Chaiban said in Colombo.

"The greatest danger to civilians will come when they begin to return to their homes, not knowing where the mines are."

[britmaveric]

Czech Supermodel Injured in Tidal Wave

1 hour, 54 minutes ago - AP

LONDON - Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova, who appeared on the cover of 2003 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, was injured and her photographer boyfriend is missing after the pair were caught up in the Asian tsunami disaster, a spokeswoman for the boyfriend said Tuesday.

Nemcova and British photographer Simon Atlee had been vacationing in the resort of Phuket when the waves swept over them on Sunday, said Atlee's agent, Eve Stoner.

"She is in hospital and he is missing. We don't have any further information than that at the moment," Stoner said,

The Sun newspaper reported Tuesday that Nemcova clung to a tree for eight hours as the water swirled around her. It said she suffered a shattered hip and internal injuries.

Stoner said British authorities had no information on Atlee's fate.

"We are just very hopeful," she said. "As time goes on we are getting quite frantic and stressed about it. Our thoughts are really with Petra and Simon's family at the moment."

"It just seems horrific, like something out of a movie," she added.

Nemcova, 25, has appeared in magazines including Sports Illustrated, Marie Claire and Vogue, and also has modeled for Victoria's Secret.

Atlee, 33, is a well-known fashion photographer who recently shot the pictures for Nemcova's 2005 calendar.

[britmaveric]

Death toll in Asian quake disaster over 55,000

Tue Dec 28, 9:14 AM ET South Asia - AFP

JAKARTA (AFP) - The confirmed death toll from the massive earthquake and tidal waves that devastated much of Asia's coastline passed 55,000, with officials warning the figure was likely to rise steeply.

In Indonesia, the government's disaster relief centre said at least 27,174 were killed after the country took the full force of the huge earthquake and tidal waves that swallowed entire coastal villages.

Indonesia's health ministry said at least 27,174 had been killed in the quake as the true scale of the catastrophe becomes clear.

In Sri Lanka more than 17,600 people, including at least 70 foreigners, were killed in Sunday's disaster.

More than 8,500 people were reported killed in India with many more victims expected, officials said.

Among them were about 4,000 in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, close to the epicentre of the quake, where thousands were missing after five villages were swept away, an official said.

More than 1,400 people were killed, among them more than 700 foreign tourists, in southern Thailand, officials said, putting the toll at 1,439.

In Malaysia 65 people, including many elderly and children, were killed, officials said, while at least 90 people were killed in Myanmar.

At least 52 people including two British holidaymakers were killed while another 68 were missing in the tourist paradise of Maldives, officials said.

In Bangladesh a father and child were killed after a tourist boat capsized from large waves, local officials said.

Fatalities also occurred on the east coast of Africa where 100 fishermen were declared dead in Somalia and 10 in Tanzania.

The US Geological Survey said the earthquake west of the Indonesian island of Sumatra measured 9.0 on the Richter scale -- making it the largest quake worldwide in four decades.

Death toll

Sri Lanka 17,640

India 8,523

Indonesia 27,174

Thailand 1,439

Malaysia 65

Myanmar 90

Maldives 55

Bangladesh 2

Somalia 100

Tanzania 10

Total 55,098

Edited December 28, 2004 by britmaveric

[benlee53]

<font color='#000000'>Any ideas from our forum as to this guys legal standing?</font>

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes its Dave from Patong at Baan suan Kamnat.

I have recived word that Dave has been found dead in his truck in Khao lac.

I'm also live in baan saun kamnat but am in Califoria at the moment.The tv i'm seeing here just makes my heart hurt.

what esle can i say.

stay in touch

Ben

[onethailand]

Jeez, the Narenthorn list is such a mess! Way too many duplicates, non-standard data entry, etc...

I am working on a new list which is up-to-date as of now, and hopefully will list names in every which way but loose (surname, first name and first name, surname) since the data entry people often don't know which is which. This two-way list will ensure that you have the best possible chance of finding who you're looking for - so look for both Tom Jones and Jones Tom.

I will post again when this list is ready.