Maybe Up To 6000 Dead, Tidal Waves Slams Thailand

[Darknight]

Asia tsunami death toll 82,847, Thailand 1,975

By Reuters

SINGAPORE, Dec 30 (Reuters) - The death toll from the Asian tsunami, triggered by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off Indonesia, stood at 82,847 people, government and health officials said.

Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India were the hardest hit.

All figures are preliminary:

Bangladesh 2

East Africa 136*

India 12,500**

Indonesia 45,268

Malaysia 64

Maldives 67

Myanmar 36

Sri Lanka 22,799

Thailand 1,975

TOTAL 82,847

* The tsunami killed people as far away as East Africa. This figure includes Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia and Tanzania.

** Official estimate, including about 7,000 confirmed deaths.

Numbers based on government and health officials.

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

[george]

Survivors insist on completing their Thai holiday

BANGKOK: -- Several foreigners who survived tsunamis on Sunday are insisting on completing their holidays in Thailand, rather than returning home.

At Thammasat University's Rangsit Campus, 33 foreigners are still being housed in temporary accommodation after having experienced one of the worst natural disasters in living memory.

For many of the tourists, from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Britain, the experience has been too much.

Many are still waiting for news from their missing friends and relatives, while others are waiting for air tickets to return home.

But others have said that they will remain in Thailand to complete their holidays despite the tragedy.

The Rangsit centre is also accommodating Thais who were working in the affected provinces at the time of the tragedy, and last night accepted 17 more Thai workers, who are said to be depressed and unwilling to speak to anyone.

The centre is now preparing vehicles for the Thai workers to return to their home towns in places, including the country's northern provinces of Tak, Petchabun, Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai.

--TNA 2004-12-30

[Darknight]

Advice to tsunami donors: Send cash, not bread

Reuters

By Irwin Arieff

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Relief groups have some friendly advice for people who want to lend a helping hand to desperate tsunami survivors: Don't donate that old sweater or a loaf of bread. Just send cash.

Aid groups have come a long way since CARE invented the "CARE package" of canned goods and sugar to ship to hungry families in war-devastated Europe in the 1940s.

"CARE as a policy does not take in-kind contributions. It's too expensive to ship stuff abroad. Then, the logistics of getting goods to the site are often very complicated," said spokeswoman Lurma Rackley of the international aid group now active in 70 countries around the world.

U.S. President George W. Bush had similar advice for potential donors, telling reporters in Crawford, Texas, that gifts of money would help organizations "focus resources and assets to meet specific needs."

"A lot of times Americans, in their desire to help, will send blankets or clothes. That may be necessary, but to me it makes more sense to send cash," he said.

Some relief groups will accept goods but they also have many stories about inappropriate offers.

"People call up and say, 'Can we send a loaf of bread?' We received donations of high heel shoes for East Timor, and that's really not going to help," said Caroline Green of aid group Oxfam International. East Timor in Southeast Asia is one of the world's poorest lands.

"Cash enables us to scale up quickly, buy needed equipment and start getting out relief," Green said.

Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, said businesses and governments as well as individuals should always consult with a major relief agency like the United Nations or the Red Cross-Red Crescent system before donating anything besides money.

"In my 25 years of humanitarian work, there have been too many examples of week three and four and five really being a week where you try to navigate between the things that there was not really a need for and those things that may be clogged up that there is a desperate need for," said Egeland, who is coordinating the response to the Asian tsunami disaster.

"There are very few airstrips in many of these areas and air space and air strip space is very very precious," he said.

After an earthquake struck the Iranian city of Bam last year, killing 31,000 and leaving 100,000 homeless, relief aircraft unloaded their goods at the nearest air strip in such a rush that the runway was soon too crowded to use, U.N. officials recalled.

Volunteer search-and-rescue teams, not bothering to check first with local officials, kept pouring in to Bam from around the world for weeks after the search for survivors was called off, officials said.

"We ask people to send cash. The cost of transporting goods is just prohibitive," said Alisha Lumea of the International Rescue Committee, a relief group active in 25 countries.

The group is channeling its donations into water and sanitation equipment, plastic sheeting and emergency medical gear for Indonesia's Aceh province, she said.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N29144806.htm

[george]

Meteorological Dept warns against more tsunami rumours

BANGKOK: -- The Meteorological Department today urged the public not to believe rumours of a further tsunami coming to Thailand, while promising to issue an immediate warning should any more incidents occur.

The department, which has taken some of the blames for failing to issue a warning prior to the massive tidal wave attack which struck the country's southern coastlines on Sunday, took pains today to stress that reports of further earthquakes affecting the Andaman coast were unfounded.

The announcement by the department's director-general, Mr. Suparerk Tansriratanawong, came after earth tremors were felt in the country's northern city of Chiang Mai this afternoon.

An aftershock with an epicentre in the Nicobar Islands, measured at 5.6 on the Richter Scale, came at 13.38hrs, while a second aftershock with an epicentre in Myanmar, measuring 4.5 on the Richter Scale, came at 15.47hrs.

Although the tremors could be felt in Chiang Mai, no damage was recorded.

Mr. Suparerk acknowledged that the public, still terrified after Sunday's tsunamis, was apt to believe rumours easily, but insisted that the department was monitoring the situation closely.

--TNA 2004-12-30

[george]

British survivor attempts suicide

Many survivors extremely stressed

BANGKOK: -- More than 30 foreign tourists whose dream holiday in the sun was turned into a nightmare within a few seconds when tidal waves struck Thailand's southern Andaman beaches on Sunday sit huddled in temporary accommodation at Thammasat University's Rangsit Campus.

Mrs. Sanrat Wuthi-asa, a psychologist working with the foreign survivors of the tsunami, has seen it all.

Most of the survivors are still reliving the nightmare every second of the day.

One British tourist who was holidaying alone and lost all his belongings in the tragedy has been drinking continuously since Sunday, and has already tried to throw himself off the building in an attempt to end his life.

"He's extremely stressed. When I saw him, he wouldn't stay still, but kept pacing up and down. Doctors prescribed him medicine, but he refused to take it. The people looking after him said that he was about to commit suicide", Mrs. Sanrat told reporters today.

And then there are two French tourists who say that as soon as they close their eyes in an attempt to sleep the image of the tsunami comes back to them, over and over again.

For now, on dry land, they can take sedatives and hope for the best.

But they admit that once on the plane heading back to France, the terror might come flooding back to them.

--TNA 2004-12-30

[Tornado]

Any reports from Burma as yet? I know Ranong has had some casualties.

[Darknight]

Myanmar tsunami toll at least 90 - U.N.

29 Dec 2004 09:44:26 GMT

Reuters

YANGON, Dec 29 (Reuters) - At least 90 people were killed in Myanmar by a tsunami that wreaked death and destruction along the coasts of the Indian Ocean, a United Nations report said on Wednesday.

Officials said they had no update on the government death toll of 36, but the U.N. report issued in Yangon said officials acknowledged privately it was likely to be higher and that reliable sources said it was at least 90.

More than 68,000 people in nine nations were killed by Sunday's tsunami, which was triggered by an earthquake off Indonesia's nearby Sumatra island.

The report said the remote Co Co Islands, close to India's Andaman Islands where several thousand people are thought to have died, were believed to have been hit particularly hard but no precise casualty or damage reports were available.

"Numerous" fishing boats were also unaccounted for, it said.

The miltary government, which has said so far only that some parts of the Irrawaddy Delta were hit by Sunday's tsunami, had been offered assistance but had not taken up the offer.

"They told us that the situation was manageable and they would come back if they need any assistance," a U.N. official told Reuters

[Darknight]

Anger in Scandinavia as Europe Mourns Tsunami Dead

Reuters

By Patrick Lannin

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Scandinavians fumed at their governments' initial lax response to Asia's tsunami disaster as hopes dimmed on Thursday for some 5,000 foreign tourists, mostly Europeans, still missing four days after the wall of water hit.

Sweden feared its tourists had been hardest hit by the tragedy which killed nearly 83,000 people in Indonesia, India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and other countries as far away as Africa.

Swedish media said as many as 4,000 Swedes could be missing as the official 1,500 figure seemed to be based only on charter tours, without backpackers or those on scheduled flights.

Newspapers across the Nordic region fired off editorials accusing their leaders of being too slow to respond to the initial disaster and to send out help to their countrymen.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?t...storyID=7206343

Swedish tabloids were the harshest government critics. "She went to the theater," said Aftonbladet, referring to Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds, saying she waited 30 hours after the initial disaster report to go to her office.

Some 1,000 Germans, 600 Italians, 464 Norwegians, 219 Danes, 200 Finns and 200 Czechs have been reported as missing, along with 294 Singaporean tourists.

More than a thousand others, including 930 Norwegians, are still unaccounted for.

The Swedish government has conceded it took too long to react, but no one at the time understood the scale of the disaster.

On Thursday, the Svenska Dagbladet daily screamed "Bring them home now," referring to Swedes still stranded in Thailand.

"There is good reason to ask whether it took too long for governments in Denmark, Sweden and Norway to understand the scope of the catastrophe and of the acute need to help their citizens," said leading Norwegian daily Aftenposten.

In Denmark, one opposition party demanded a special meeting of parliament's foreign affairs committee

"My firm opinion is that the government should have sent down a disaster management team," said Danish Social Democratic opposition leader Mogens Lykketoft to the Politiken daily.

Former Finnish Finance Minister Sauli Niinisto, who saved himself and his two sons by clinging to a lamppost for two hours as the water kept rising, was highly critical of his government.

"I assumed that there would be an emergency meeting by the government within 4-5 hours of the disaster and more officials would be sent to Phuket," he told a TV talk show after his ordeal in Khao Lak, the worst hit beach in Thailand, where he suffered a leg injury saving a Swedish child from drowning.

"After 18 hours, when I got in touch with Bangkok and Phuket, I realized we had not been taken seriously ... I was left with the feeling that no one wanted us anywhere."

Tourist Benny Engard told Finnish daily Hufvudstadsbladet he could not reach a government helpline. "That's just incredible in this 'Nokia-country', with millions of phones."

MUTED NEW YEAR

Finnish tabloids painted their front covers black and showed photographs of the missing. "Where are they?" they questioned. A chain text message was also being sent by mobile phone in Finland asking people to light a candle in their window.

Officially, only 212 foreign tourists have been reported as killed by their home countries, but Thailand alone has said that at least 435 foreigners had died there. Many could be among the 6,043 missing in Thailand, where the death toll rose to 1,975.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told citizens to expect that hundreds of missing compatriots had been killed.

Thailand's dead tally includes 54 Swedes, 49 Germans, 43 British, 20 Americans, 18 Norwegians and 11 Italians.

Tourists from Australia, Canada, Japan, Singapore, South Africa and South Korea were also among the dead. Thai police said 3,000 people may have been killed in Khao Lak.

Major Chakrit Kaewwattana said more than 1,800 bodies had been recovered from Khao Lak beach and its luxury hotels, especially popular with Scandinavians and Germans escaping the long, dark winter back home. He said searchers expected to find several hundred more bodies on an island north of the beach.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer urged people to give money to victims instead of buying New Year fireworks, and across Scandinavia there were signs people would do the same.

Sweden planned to fly flags at half mast on New Year's Day.

[taxexile]

quotes from front line aid workers

"They knew corpses would decompose soon, but they never prepared for enough formalin to preserve the bodies. When formalin arrived, there weren't people to inject the bodies. When experts came, these bodies were too bloated for injection."

Despite annual combined military and police exercises to train for airlifting natural disaster victims, disaster agencies have no comprehensive contingency plan, officials said.

Pornthip put it all down to lack of planning and cooperation.

"This is chaotic," Pornthip whose team was collecting DNA samples at a Khao Lak temple from unidentifiable corpses, told a Bangkok radio station.

It took Bangkok three days to send the first refrigerated containers to the region to store decomposing bodies.

German aid worker Andre Stulz said the danger of epidemics was rising hourly due to packed hospitals, a shortage of shelter and insufficient water supplies.

Even "can-do" Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra admitted the search and relief effort was below standard as German aid workers said the danger of epidemics was rising rapidly by the hour.

quote (kiss of death) from yet another blustering ignorant politico who like most of them know nothing about anything.

“However, we are not worried about an epidemic in the area because our personnel and systems are good enough to deal with and control an outbreak of any kind of disease,” he said.

probably not the right time to make this point but i cant help wondering what the good people of this country have ever done to deserve the inept politicians that control this country.

[Darknight]

Wave aid 'too slow to save lives'

BBC news

Aid workers around the Indian Ocean are struggling to reach millions of victims of Sunday's devastating tsunami waves.

Relief teams and supplies are pouring into the region, but have yet to reach the hardest hit and remote areas.

There are reports of desperate people fighting over aid. Aftershocks and fears of new tsunamis have sown panic among survivors in Indonesia and India.

Millions remain at risk from hunger and disease, five days after the disaster, now known to have killed 84,000 people.

The US, Australia, Japan and India have formed a coalition to provide relief.

Foreign governments have pledged more than $220m in aid - $35m of which is promised by the US.

But the UN's relief co-ordinator, Jan Egeland, said it will take another "two or three days" for the relief effort to get into full swing - by which time it may be too late for "tens of thousands of people who would like to have assistance today - or yesterday".

"We are doing very little at the moment," he admitted.

"I believe the frustration will be growing in the days and weeks ahead."

Survivors have begun to express anger in the Indonesian province of Aceh, near the epicentre of Sunday's earthquake.

"There is no food here whatsoever. We need rice. We need medicine. I haven't eaten in two days," a local woman told Reuters news agency.

Fights have broken out over food packets in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, the Associated Press news agency reports.

Panic

The BBC's Andrew Harding says relief supplies are barely trickling into the city where drinking water is also scarce and corpses clog the streets.

Thousands of survivors, broken by their loss, face new dangers

A lone airport serves the entire region and road links to many remote areas have been washed away by sea waters, he says.

Indonesia's navy has sent ships to isolated communities on the west coast of Sumatra, but the picture there remains unclear.

On Thursday, aftershocks off Indonesia triggered fresh panic among survivors in Aceh.

Officials in southern India later issued a tsunami warning, prompting many residents to flee coastal areas.

The mood began to calm again after high waves failed to materialise, reports said.

There were similar rumours in Sri Lanka where the military urged people not to panic.

Disease

Across the region thousands remain unaccounted for since the 9.0 magnitude undersea earthquake off Sumatra that forced a wall of water smashing into coastlines as far away as east Africa.

KEY AID PLEDGES

EU $44m

US: $35m

Canada: $33m

Japan: $30m

UK: $28.9m

Australia: $27m

France: $20.4m

Denmark: $15.6m

Saudi Arabia: $10m

Norway: $6.6m

Taiwan: $5.1m

Finland: $3.4m

Kuwait: $2.1m

Netherlands: $2.6m

UAE: $2m

Ireland $1.3m

Singapore: $1.2m

Source: Reuters, United Nations

Tsunami: how to help

There are fears that epidemics will erupt because water supplies have been contaminated.

The UN has said it is set to issue what may be its largest ever appeal for aid.

The US is sending two aircraft carriers and other ships to the region. It is also using its spy satellites to assess damage to roads, bridges, ports and airfields.

The head of the World Health Organization's crisis team, David Nabarro, said as many as five million people cannot get water, food or adequate sanitation.

International aid is beginning to arrive at some of the worst-hit areas along Sri Lanka's southern and eastern coast, says the BBC's Gina Wilkinson in Galle.

The priority, she says, is to prevent an outbreak of water-borne disease amid the hot and humid conditions.

[Darknight]

Fears rise for Andaman thousands

BBC News

The fate of thousands of people missing in India's Andaman and Nicobar islands is still unclear as rescuers battle to reach remote communities.

Air and ground searches are targeting about 40 inhabited islands. Only 359 people are confirmed dead but thousands more are feared to have perished.

Sunday's tsunami is also thought to have wiped Indira Point - India's most southerly location - off the map.

A volcano is also reported to be spewing lava on one Andaman island.

Evacuation

The administrator of the island chain, Lieutenant Governor Ram Kapse, said he feared as many as 10,000 people could be buried in sand and mud across the islands.

There is a lot of stench. From the stench, they are trying to follow the direction to the bodies

He told the Press Trust of India that one inhabited island, Trinket, was cut in two by the impact of the tsunami.

Helicopters have been flying over islands around Car Nicobar island, which had a population of 30,000 before Sunday's sea surge.

Rescue leader Brigadier J Divadoss told the AFP news agency: "There's not one village that has not borne the fury of tidal waves.

"We can't see life anywhere but it's still impossible to hazard a guess on the death toll."

Port Blair residents reach higher ground amid new tsunami reports

Mohammad Yusef, a 60-year-old fisherman rescued from a village on Car Nicobar, told the Associated Press: "There's not a single hut which is standing. Everything is gone. Most of the people have gone up to the hills and are afraid to come down."

An airfield has been made operational on Car Nicobar and six Russian-made AN-32 planes are evacuating hundreds of people.

Rescue operations elsewhere have been severely hampered by the destruction of most of the jetties on the islands.

Deputy inspector-general AN Basudev Rao said: "The rescue parties are approaching inch by inch. There is also a lot of stench. From the stench, they are trying to follow the direction to the bodies."

Lava flow

A government ship reached the island of Hud Bay and brought back 580 survivors to the capital, Port Blair. Survivors say 800 there are dead or missing.

"We just managed to save our lives," survivor Dana Amma, told AP. "All our houses, our cattle, everything is gone. We don't know what to do."

The BBC's Geeta Pandey in Port Blair says refugees being brought to the capital are being kept in school buildings, which have been turned into relief centres.

Fears are also growing for four international scientists and 16 staff stationed at Indira Point, south of Great Nicobar and about 140km from Indonesia.

It is the southernmost point in India and is named after former premier Indira Gandhi.

Milind Patil, coastguard commander at Car Nicobar, said: "A coastguard helicopter made a sortie to Indira Point and it has reported it is under the sea."

On Middle Andaman island, lava is reported to be spewing near Baratang town, 100km (60 miles) from Port Blair.

Police chief Samsher Deol said: "It began on Tuesday night. Flames and lava are shooting up three metres high. We cleared the population from a half kilometre range as a precaution... and put up barricades."

About 2,000 people live in Baratang.

ANDAMAN AND NICOBAR

About 400 islands, 30-40 inhabited

Islands are peaks of submerged mountain range

Indian owned, area of 8,249 sq km

Population around 370,000, about 100,000 in Port Blair

Number of tribes, including Jaraqwa and Onge. Shompens are only aboriginal tribe

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4134751.stm

[Khun Jean]

Forums search engine was offline so i don't know if this was already posted.

This site has a massive amount of information.

Official addresses, how to help....

The South East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami

[Darknight]

Echoes of 9/11 in hunt for loved ones

PHUKET, Thailand (AP) -- Pictures flutter from notice boards at Phuket's city hall: Thai families posing stiffly for a formal photo; Smiling tourists basking in the sun; Battered corpses. They are the missing and the dead from Sunday's devastating tsunamis.

In scenes reminiscent of the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York, anxious friends and relatives are converging on city hall -- a makeshift diplomatic enclave and relief center on the Thai island of Phuket where nations have set up temporary embassies on fold-up tables.

Diplomats log lists of names in computers and offer free phone calls to survivors.

There are computers giving access to Web sites and Internet message boards designed to link up family and friends with the missing.

Experts from around the world have poured into Phuket with equipment to identify victims or take DNA samples and photographs to help put a name to them in the future. Computer-generated lists of the dead and digital photos are posted on notice boards alongside those of survivors.

But there is a huge gulf between the well-coordinated efforts in this tourist haven -- where many victims were wealthy foreigners -- and impoverished regions even harder hit by Sunday's tragedy.

In poor coastal regions of India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka -- where most of the 84,000 victims died -- most relatives have virtually no access to computers and many are illiterate.

In Indonesia's Banda Aceh region, Samson, who uses only one name, was looking for his grandmother by checking corpse after corpse.

By the side of a road where she used to live, he lifted a mattress covering a bloated body.

"It's not her," Samson shouted to his mother, who couldn't bare to watch. "This one has black hair."

Samson, with cotton wool in each nostril to block out the stench, said he would check all the hundreds of corpses still littering the streets close to where her house used to be. If he had no luck, he would check Banda Aceh's one functioning hospital and then the scores of refugee camps.

"If we still can't find her, then we will accept it as God's will," he said.

Many of the corpses it seems are destined to end up unidentified and buried in mass graves, amid fears rotting corpses could spread disease.

The story is the same along the southeastern coast of India.

In Tamil Nadu state, where more than 6,000 of the national total of nearly 7,000 deaths occurred, hundreds of distraught people left no stone unturned, literally, to look for loved ones. They combed the beaches, turned every boat, every piece of wood and rocks to look for bodies. Many found them.

In the Christian town of Velangani, most of the dead were out-of-town visitors and pilgrims. After the disaster, hundreds of relatives descended on the region looking for their loved ones.

The task of finding the bodies has been left to the police, who have cordoned off beaches to all except a volunteer force of body searchers.

"Relatives cannot search for themselves so we have employed volunteers who are tracing the bodies, consoling kith and kin. We have made arrangements for them to stay here also," said Father P. Xavier, the rector of the Bascilica of Our Lady of Good Health, a shrine dedicated to Virgin Mary.

Grief and hope

In Sri Lanka, where more than 4,000 people are unaccounted for, television channels are devoting 10 minutes every hour to read the names and details of the missing. Often photos of the missing are shown with appeals that they should contact the family or at the nearest police stations.

Back in Phuket -- and despite the high-tech efforts, Catherine and David Smith from Vancouver, Canada, were supposed to meet their friends John and Jackie Knill on Wednesday.

Instead, the Smiths spent the day poring over pictures at city hall after spending the night sleeping on the lawn of a hospital.

At the hall -- where dazed survivors mingled with diplomats, volunteer helpers and other people trying to track down loved ones -- the Smiths registered their friends, also from Vancouver, as missing.

There is no word on their plight.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra warned Thursday that most of the nearly 6,000 still missing in Thailand are likely dead.

German volunteer Thomas Mueller said a German came in Wednesday looking for his mother-in-law. Instead he found her image -- among those of the dead.

"The man he was very sad about it ... he didn't cry. But you could see it in his face -- very sad," Mueller said.

The photo boards are like a United Nations of grief and hope with images of people from countries including Mexico, Sweden, Russia, Switzerland and France.

"The saddest thing is just all the other foreigners that we've run into over the last day and just hearing who they're looking for," Catherine said, her voice choking with emotion.

"Not to sound cliche but I feel like I'm reliving 9/11. I remember sitting at home and watching people who were searching for their missing loved ones and now I'm doing it, it's very surreal."

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/12/3...g.ap/index.html

[Dario]

A Thai minister (my wife couldn't catch his name) was just now giving an interview in Phanga on ITV said:

There are in Phanga alone already more than 4,000 bodies recovered. In one single bus we found today 24 bodies.

This is a steep increase from the just publicised total number of 2.394.

Edited December 30, 2004 by Dario

[george]

New death tolls from Indonesia just in:

80,000 dead.

[cdnvic]

Report From CBC News

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/200...ami-041230.html

Tsunami's toll leaps above 114,000

Last Updated Thu, 30 Dec 2004 09:50:11 EST

JAKARTA, INDONESIA - The death toll from the tsunami disaster has rocketed to more than 114,000 after Indonesia found tens of thousands of new bodies on the northern island of Sumatra.

A Sri Lankan family shelters in a building at a higher elevation after warned of new tsunamis Thursday. (AP photo)

* INDEPTH: Disaster in Asia

Indonesian officials reported Thursday that nearly 28,000 more people had been confirmed dead on the island, which lies only 150 kilometres from the epicentre of Sunday's quake.

The double hit of earthquake and tsunami obliterated the northwest coast and destroyed nearly two-thirds of Aceh province's capital city, Banda Aceh, according to the United Nations children's agency, UNICEF.

The new count brings the death toll to about 80,000 in Indonesia – the country hardest hit by the disaster, followed by Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.

False tsunami alarm sparks panic

Meanwhile, officials in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand tried to reassure tens of thousands of people who fled the coasts after officials warned that new tsunamis might be on the way.

* PHOTO GALLERY: Disaster in Asia

The Indian government issued the alert at midday following reports that several smaller quakes – aftershocks of the 9.0-magnitude temblor that sent tsunami waves into 12 countries on Dec. 26 – had pushed up water levels.

Tens of thousands of residents fled for high ground along India's southeast coast, in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and on the Andaman and Nicobar islands.

In Sri Lanka, villagers on the coast climbed onto rooftops while the military warned them not to panic.

In southern Thailand, emergency sirens sent people sprinting from beaches.

Indonesians who lost their homes to the tsunami line up for food in Banda Aceh on Thursday. (AP photo)

But experts said the quakes were about 1,000 times less powerful than Sunday's temblor which devastated shorelines around the Indian Ocean and unlikely to send out a tsunami.

Hours later, no major waves had reached shore and India's science minister, Kapil Sibal, dismissed the warning as "hogwash."

Food dropped to Indonesian villagers

Meanwhile, rescuers raced against time to reach survivors, as the World Health Organization warned that up to five million people urgently need clean water, food and sanitation.

* Send us your thoughts, photos or videos of the tsunami

On Sumatra, pilots dropped medicine and instant noodles to cliff-ringed coastal villages that rescuers hadn't yet reached on foot.

In the capital city of Aceh province, Banda Aceh, military vehicles dropped off food, sparking fights among desperate residents.

In India, emergency crews combed thick forests in the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, where authorities fear as many as 10,000 more people may be buried in mud and thick vegetation.

* YOUR SPACE: Read letters about the tsunami

Many villagers there haven't eaten for two days and have faced additional danger from crocodiles that washed ashore during the tsunami.

In other parts of southern India, paramedics are vaccinating as many as they can against cholera, typhus, hepatitis A and dysentery. Bleaching powder is being spread on beaches where many of the bodies were found.

In southern Thailand, the resort area around Khao Lak north of Phuket is the focus of a massive search and recovery operation.

Rescue teams from Germany, Taiwan and Sweden have arrived to help in the search for missing Europeans and locals. The Swedish government says many of its 1,500 nationals in Thailand are still unaccounted for and may be dead.

Up to 500 Norwegians, hundreds of French and about 1,000 Germans are also missing.

World leaders have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to provide relief to the survivors.

Written by CBC News Online staff

[george]

Struggle to identify Thailand dead

KHAO LAK, Thailand (Reuters) - Foreign forensic experts have joined the desperate race to identify Thailand's tsunami victims as the death toll and the number of missing mounts and people give up hope of finding loved ones alive.

With much of Europe transfixed by a disaster that killed hundreds of its tourists escaping a dark, cold winter for the warmth of Thailand's Andaman Sea shores, German, Swiss, Dutch, Australian and other forensic teams started their gruesome task.

There were signs of fractiousness with Thais wanting to bury bodies, decomposing fast in the tropical heat and piling up quickly, and diplomats insisting no unidentified body be buried.

The diplomats won the argument, with Thai Deputy Health Minister Suchai Charoenratanakul saying no unidentified body would be buried.

Some governments, especially Sweden, are under pressure to find out just how many of their people were among the 6,130 Thailand said were still missing five days after the wall of water struck.

Fulminating Swedish newspapers said as many as 4,000 Swedes could be missing as the official 1,500 figure seemed to be based only on charter tours, without backpackers or those on scheduled flights.

The death toll from the tsunami, triggered by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off Indonesia on Sunday, is more than 120,000 people.

In Thailand, the government said nearly 2,400 were known to have died and 710 of them were foreigners.

Both numbers are expected to rise and experts fear some of the badly decomposed bodies, many wearing only what they had on when the tsunami stuck, may never be identified.

"It will be challenging," said Karl Kent, head of a 17-member forensic team from the Australian Federal Police of the kind sent to Bali in the wake of the 2002 bombings that killed 202 people.

"The scale is of a magnitude that Australia and other countries have not experienced," he said.

LONG, GRUESOME JOB

Local police say more than 1,800 bodies had been recovered from Khao Lak, north of the resort island of Phuket.

They believe as many as 3,000 people may have died around Khao Lak when the wall of water swept up its gently sloping beach -- which made it an ideal family holiday spot with safe swimming for children.

It smashed into a line of luxury hotels and ploughed up to 1 km (1,000 yards) inland from a beach particularly popular among Scandinavians and Germans. About 1,000 Germans are unaccounted for and many of them, too, could be among Thailand's missing.

Khao Lak is yielding at least 300 bodies a day, despite a search and rescue operation officials admit is struggling to cope in a country that rarely suffers natural disasters worse than floods during the annual monsoon.

Forensic specialist Wirachai Samai said slightly more than half the 150 bodies brought to one collection site in Khao Lak on Thursday were foreigners.

How long it will take to finish finding the missing and identify the dead, nobody knows.

"It's going to be a huge operation," said Australian envoy Bill Patterson. "I think it could take weeks."

GRUESOME MOSAICS

Most of the bodies are beyond recognition and survivors searching for loved ones are faced with gruesome mosaics of photographs at Buddhist temples used as a temporary morgue.

For some, there are no photographs, only hints -- a watch, a ring, a mobile telephone.

Briton Rob Ward was handing out photographs of the young son of a friend in what he acknowledged was a vain attempt to find someone who might know he is alive.

"It would be some comfort for the parents to know definitely what happened," he said.

The forensic teams will collect dental evidence and DNA samples, take fingerprints, photographs and X-rays, and will look for jewellery or documents that may help identify bodies.

An immediate need was refrigeration to preserve bodies and Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra promised refrigerated containers.

Aid teams were also starting to worry about disease on the coast, where local sources of drinking water are likely to have been contaminated by sea water.

"We are very concerned that there will be later disease outbreaks in places with lesser availability of medical and public health facilities," said Australian Drew Richardson, part of medical team from Canberra Hospital.

--Reuters 2004-12-30

[yeti]

When Tv reports about people looting bodies, taking money, jewelries and throwing away passport and IDs ?

When Tv reports about police taking huge percentage from those looters ?

I guess never...

Good reasons for so many bodies to be unidentified (not only people in swimsuit).

Makes me sick.

[Darknight]

Relatives Flock to Thailand for Grim Survivor Hunt

Reuters

By Darren Schuettler and Karishma Vyas

PHUKET, Thailand (Reuters) - Jeff Ekkelkamp is looking for his mother. Miriam Rhyner's sister vanished on Khao Lak beach. And Luke Simon hasn't lost hope despite false rumors that his brother is alive.

As survivors of Asia's killer tsunami fly home from shattered southern Thailand, friends and family of hundreds of missing foreign tourists have flown here to begin a grim search.

Briton Luke Simon said he'll keep searching despite three false reports that his brother, Piers, was alive.

Last night, Simon heard of someone matching his brother's name in Koh Lanta, one of several islands hit by the tsunami that has killed at least 2,400 people, more than 700 of them foreigners, and probably many more.

More than 6,000 people are listed as missing in Thailand.

"When we managed to track him down at about midnight. It was just someone completely different from England who was here on holiday," Simon said.

"We have lots of leads which you follow and you get excited.

"Then you will find some information which takes you off that trail but you have to remain positive, you know miracles do happen.

"If you start believing the worst has happened you start to crumble, so you have to be positive all the time," he said.

Miriam, 23, and her father Walter arrived from Switzerland on Wednesday after they heard nothing from her 25-year-old sister Nicole as they watched the tragedy unfold on television.

The two, accompanied by a family friend, have shuttled between hospitals and Buddhist temples turned into temporary morgues for hundreds of bloated bodies pulled from wrecked hotels and muddied mangrove forests

She was with her boyfriend on Khao Lak. My father is there searching," Miriam said after pinning a photograph of her blonde sibling on one of eight crowded bulletin boards at Phuket's City Hall.

"MAYBE THERE IS A CHANCE"

The hall grounds are a gathering place for hundreds looking for lost loved ones -- and a magnet for the intense media coverage triggered by the disaster.

A Japanese couple was trailed by half a dozen camera crews on Thursday as they checked photographs of the dead.

Many are searching for family missing at Khao Lak, the worst-hit beach in Thailand where 1,800 bodies have been found so far. Police believe 3,000 people may have died in the area.

"I came from Germany to look for my girlfriend, Susanne. She was on Khao Lak," said Dominic Koller. "Please if anyone sees her please contact the numbers," he said of the telephone number on the photographs he is distributing. "Maybe there is a chance."

Aside from dealing with injured and scared survivors wanting to go home, diplomats say a key part of their job will be helping distraught relatives arriving in the tsunami's wake.

"We will have a process to meet them at airports, assist them with accommodation and give them daily briefings," said Australian envoy Bill Patterson.

As the death toll mounts, rescue officials doubt anyone will be found alive.

But Jeff Ekkelkamp, who flew from Holland with a friend, says he won't give up looking for his 53-year-old mother, Ria.

She was last seen at Khao Lak's Merlin Beach Resort.

"We still have hope and we are not going leave without her. Dead or alive, we have to find her," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?t...storyID=7207861

[Dickie]

It's probably not over yet, if the report on today's TV is anything to go by. Aftershocks could throw another tsunami at the shore. Best thing is to get to higher ground or do what people who can ARE doing: leave altogether.

Speaking from England where this has been extensively reported.

[Darknight]

It's probably not over yet, if the report on today's TV is anything to go by. Aftershocks could throw another tsunami at the shore. Best thing is to get to higher ground or do what people who can ARE doing: leave altogether.

Speaking from England where this has been extensively reported.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Think you have to switch to another channel Dickie. Several expert sources already said a second tsunami is unlikely. There have been more then 30 aftershocks already.

No reason to spread further panick.

Only scare is disease breaking out in areas in indonesia and sri lanka. Thailand with it's medical facilities won't have a big problem with disease.

[george]

Thais getting to grips with worst calamity

BANGKOK: -- Thailand is slowly getting a grip on the mammoth task of dealing with the tsunami catastrophe, its worst natural disaster by far, but is still struggling to cope, rescue officials said on Thursday.

As foreign experts and aid pour onto the Andaman Sea coast four days after the wall of water struck, the government is also sending more rescue workers to retrieve decomposing bodies from once pristine beaches and turquoise waters.

Supplies of food, bottled water, heavy equipment and generators are arriving in greater amounts, the officials said.

But there were still plenty of problems with 6,130 people officially still missing -- many likely to be foreign tourists -- and 2,394 known dead, 710 of them foreigners.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who said the search and relief effort was below standard, demanded all bodies be retrieved in two days but rescue officials said it was impossible.

Foreign diplomats were squabbling with Thais over what to do with the corpses which have been recovered at Khao Lak, a beach lined with smashed luxury hotels north of Phuket resort where police say more than 1,800 bodies have been retrieved.

The Thais wanted to bury corpses decomposing fast in the heat and the diplomats were trying to persuade them not to bury unidentified bodies, the officials said.

"There are internationally accepted protocols for dealing with this," one said. "The Thais are trying to go around the protocols and the governments involved are determined to persuade them that they will cause bigger problems later on."

Thaksin, who faces a general election in February he is expected to win handsomely, said he had turned down foreign offers of further help.

"Some government leaders have called me and asked if we needed anything else and I said 'thanks for your consideration, but no thanks, we have enough,'" he told state television.

DIRE NEEDS

But Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai said Thailand was in dire need of metal caskets for the bloated bodies of foreign tourists and Britain, Sweden, Germany and Canada had pledged to send them as soon as possible.

He also appealed for dried and canned foods, surgical masks, rubber gloves, antiseptics and generators.

Other officials appealed to Thais to volunteer to help collect bodies despite state television reporting that 200 disgruntled workers pulled out of Phi Phi island, where the film "The Beach" was shot, due to a lack of official support.

"Since we are still short of people to search for and retrieve bodies, anyone or any agency who would like to help, please contact us," Soonthorn Riewlueang, head of the disaster department, said on its Web site.

Thaksin told state television at least 5,000 soldiers and several hundred prisoners had been sent down to the six disaster-hit provinces for the gut-wrenching search operations.

Soonthorn, whose department also appealed for forensic experts, said dozens of boats, cranes, mechanical diggers and generators had been moved to Phi Phi from nearby areas, but rescue officials said they did not have not enough.

Police Colonel Somkiat Jiewtan, head of a rescue team on Phi Phi, where 340 people are known to have died, told Reuters he had only two generators and some mechanical diggers.

Villagers were complaining they did not have openers for the canned food they had been given nor pots to cook the rice in.

--Reuters 2004-12-30

[Darknight]

Reporters' log: Asia disaster

As aid efforts get under way in response to the Asian quake disaster, the BBC's correspondents report from affected areas around the region.

Thursday 30 December

Gina Wilkinson: Galle, Sri Lanka 1705 GMT

We've seen more aid arriving today compared with previous days. And many individual Sri Lankans have loaded up their cars wth food and supplies and headed up to Galle.

They are handing it all out to people they see. It has created a little bit of confusion regarding who is distributing what.

When the tsunamis first hit, the military put a 30,000-strong force on the ground.

They are still looking for surviviors but the focus now is increasingly on opening up the vital road links. They say most are now open, though they can be difficult to traverse.

It's happening slowly but aid is now trickling in to where it's needed.

Rachel Harvey: Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia 1610 GMT

It does feel like ###### on earth here. Each new day seems to bring new horror. We keep finding new areas it seems no-one else has reached.

In one street today, not far from the centre, people started to come out of their homes, saying "Where is everyone, we haven't had any help."

People had been trying to pull out the bodies but they're saying they can't do any more and they can't cope on their own.

There are still bodies littered around. There are areas we saw on Tuesday where bodies have been removed, but you walk around the corner and there's more. It never seems to end.

People are getting desperate - fresh drinking water is running out fast and food is in short supply. But we're being told things are far worse in other areas of the province.

Charles Haviland: Nagapattinam, southern India 1430 GMT

On Thursday there was total panic here. Vehicles travelling into Nagapattinam were met by a surge of humanity and traffic coming the other way, fleeing inland.

The panic was fed by official warnings multiplied by rumours. Home ministry officials had said another tsunami might take place because a new earthquake was being predicted in the Indian Ocean.

Local officials ordered the evacuation of people living along the coastal strip and a helicopter bringing the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on a visit turned back without landing.

There was similar panic all along the coast. As a result, relief and rescue operations including major disinfection campaigns have been interrupted.

Officials in Delhi are now telling people not to panic and earthquake experts are saying new tremors at sea are far weaker than Sunday's quake, but half this town is now believed to be empty and the ranks of the displaced people here have swollen.

Geeta Pandey: Andaman Islands 1415 GMT

We've had more than 50 aftershocks since 26 December. After the warning today people started to run around, trying to get to higher areas, and there was absolute chaos for two hours on the streets here.

I saw a woman right before my eyes who was so worried, and some children asked us if we would take them to Delhi.

Some said they can no longer live with this uncertainty, and they want to leave the islands forever. I think the damage was done by the initial words of the authorities.

Kylie Morris : Phuket, Thailand 1310 GMT

At a makeshift morgue there are more than 300 bodies, mainly of foreign tourists. Photos of the dead are posted outside.

The bodies have to be identified quickly as corpses are deteriorating fast. Forensic teams are arriving and volunteers offer counselling for those whose sad search comes to an end.

Nick Bryant : Tamil Nadu, India 1300 GMT

People began running for their lives when they heard from local officials that another tsunami was about to hit. They were told to retreat over a mile from the incoming waves, but people scrambled anywhere that offered sanctuary.

Women were praying. Some had already lost children in Sunday's disaster, and didn't want others to suffer the same fate.

Word then came through that the government had warned a tsunami was possible, not imminent.

It said it was acting out of an abundance of caution and didn't want to make a mistake.

It did have an immediate affect on the aid effort though, as the area evacuated was the area targeted by the relief effort. And that effort had to come to a halt.

Rachel Harvey : Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia 1255 GMT

The focus is shifting to the needs of the living, with food sent from villages in the highlands. Local produce donated by local people. It's not much, but it's a start.

The military is managing to get some supplies in. Planes with international aid are waiting for clearance to enter the disaster zone, while on the ground people wait for it to arrive.

Aid will need to be distributed quickly. Part of the problem is the lack of petrol, but even if you had a full tank, how would you manoeuvre a vehicle around here?

The main problems are the sheer delays in getting aid in and the fact that more areas of devastation are being found all the time.

On the south west coast, close to the epicentre, we're told things are even worse. Aid will get to places in a matter of days, but the two stages are getting it to Aceh, and the next is getting it around.

Parts are completely inaccessible, so once the aid is there, the challenge isn't over then.

Andrew Harding : Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia 1210 GMT

We have spoken to many doctors who have arrived here to help, who are saying more and more injured people are flooding in from places outside the city and their injuries are often very badly infected.

We saw a grandmother die in front of our eyes. She was already half-drowned, and the doctors said there was nothing they can do because she had swallowed so much dirty water.

Some are privately quite shocked by the lack of organisation and the failure of the authorities to take some basic steps such as getting rid of the corpses quickly.

I guess they are still dwarfed by the scale of the suffering.

And there is a time lag - it takes a while for the aid agencies to figure out what is needed and where.

The aid is now building up further down in Sumatra, and soon it should start arriving here. Bits are already arriving.

But then there is a logistical log jam here because roads are closed. It's a question of getting aid all round the region, and there are no easy answers to the problems.

Chris Hogg, Phuket, Thailand : 1015 GMT

It's a varied picture across Thailand.

It's fair to say the focus is shifting now, so we shouldn't call it a search and rescue anymore, but a recovery.

The numbers of survivors coming out has slowed to a trickle - it's about recovering the bodies now.

Mainly the destruction is along a thin coastal strip. Here there are places where you can get hold of food and water, but in islands so severely devastated, the concern is finding the bodies and getting them out as quickly as possible.

The government is trying to get refrigerated lorries to these places, so the bodies can be preserved for as long as possible and identified.

Again we have seen scenes of some panic as somebody set off the sirens which had been installed and there were scenes of people running off the beach.

Rescuers ran off as soon as they heard the sirens, trying to get to high ground as soon as possible.

But along Patong beach, where many lost their lives, some people have returned to the beach and are sunbathing today.

Dumeetha Luthra: Galle, Sri Lanka : 1002 GMT

When they heard the rumours here in Galle people started running away from the sea. But the government has issued a warning saying there's no need to panic - they're confident this is a false alarm.

We understand there is enough food in Sri Lanka to feed 750,000 people, but the key is getting that to the parts of the country where it's needed.

Bodies are buried as quickly as possible now and this is a key element of any recovery operation.

Sri Lanka is trying to come to terms with what has happened. There are still people who don't know where their families are, and there are people standing around who just want to know what has happened to their loved ones.

Sunil Raman: Nagappatinam, Tamil Nadu, India : 0850 GMT

Hundreds of panic-stricken residents in the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu are leaving their homes and shelters after fresh warnings of tsunami were issued today.

The 25-km road from Nagappatinam to Thiravarur, the nearest town, is clogged with vehicles leaving the town.

People clutching their belongings have begun an exodus on foot from the towns and villages along the coast.

Just before 1100 (IST) people at the Nagapattinam harbour saw sea water levels rise. Soon, the government agencies warned that past noon a fresh tidal wave could hit the coast.

The town which was to be visited by the state chief minister, Ms Jayalalaitha, and later prime minister Manmohan Singh, suddenly saw people run out of their homes.

Women with babies in their arms and old people were helped out, and others ran out onto the streets.

"It is coming", screamed a few men who were escaping atop a lorry. Many people stood confused but were pulled out by others.

Driving towards Vilangani, we saw vehicles with headlights on speeding in the opposite direction. Policemen frantically waved to people to turn back.

Old and infirm had a difficult time moving out. Some just stood by as the able-bodied jumped into trucks and lorries. The rescue effort was abandoned.

Rescue teams piled onto lorries and drove out. Bulldozers and earthmovers have driven out of the affected area.

Such was the panic to get out of the area that cars were being forcibly stopped to take people.

One old woman clutching her grandchild said: "They are saying that the wave is coming". One more query and her husband called out: "Come fast, there is no time to wait."

Paul Danahar: Nagapattinam, southern India : 0632 GMT

There was panic in Nagapattinam after rumours that another tsunami wave was about to hit the city.

Thousands fled after a coastal alert issued by the Indian Home Ministry reporting a possible aftershock from Sunday's earthquake.

The Home Ministry says it was warned by the Indian Space Research Organisation of tremors measuring up to 7.5 on the Richter scale in the Indian Ocean. However a spokesman from the Indian Space Research Organisation said he could not confirm that that information was correct.

Matthew Grant: Nagapattinam, India : 0505 GMT

Aid workers in Nagapattinam say the next 24 to 48 hours will be critical in preventing the spread of disease.

Sanitation is dreadful in the relief camps, they say. Children with diarrhoea are going to the toilet right next to where their families are eating.

Simple measures such as building proper facilities and giving people soap to wash their hands could make all the difference.

The director of medical services says the need for counselling is equally pressing. Many people remain in a complete state of shock and can't even think about how to begin rebuilding their lives.

Gina Wilkinson: Galle, Sri Lanka : 0500 GMT

Teams of foreign aid workers and engineers are fanning out along the battered southern coast.

Their priority is fixing water pipes and sanitation systems. In these hot and humid conditions relief workers are racing to prevent an outbreak of water-borne disease from compounding the tragedy.

The military says it is now focusing on repairing damaged roads and communication links to speed up the delivery of aid to the worst hit parts of the country.

Chris Hogg: Phuket, Thailand : 0450 GMT

It's been so hot here each day since the wave struck that the bodies being pulled from the wreckage are now often barely recognisable.

The authorities here believe that most of the 6,000 people still missing are likely to be dead. If that turns out to be the case, the final casualty figures will be seven times greater than the government's worst fears in the early stages of this disaster.

Foreign aid has started to arrive - funds to help pay for the relief effort, and supplies. Search and rescue teams from several European countries are already working with the Thais and British forensic scientists are expected to arrive in the next few hours to help with the effort to identify those killed.

Andrew Harding: Aceh, Indonesia : 0255 GMT

Progress is painfully slow here, relief supplies barely trickling in. The regional capital is still desperately short of drinking-water, the streets clogged with corpses.

The logistics are daunting: one small airport to bring in aid, petrol scarce and key coastal roads blocked where the wave took out bridges. Indonesia's navy has sent ships to isolated communities on the west coast of this vast island, but the picture there is still unclear.

The town of Meulaboh, population 95,000, has been almost completely wiped out: the epicentre was just offshore. Across the whole region clean water must now be the main priority, followed by food and medical supplies. Hospitals here are overwhelmed, with infection spreading in the tropical heat.

[george]

Surviving the tsunami in Ko Surin

Briton Ian Colledge, 29, is a keen diver who has traveled widely in southeast Asia. He was on a diving trip to Thailand with Czech girlfriend, Petra Vesela, when the tsunami struck the island of Surin Neua. Since then he has been keeping a Web log for CNN.com. He lives in Prague and is writing his first novel.

My girlfriend Petra and I had been spending the 10 days leading up to Christmas on Surin Neua island in the Andaman sea, some 50 kilometers off the Thai west coast.

The island is one of five that make up the Mu Ko Surin National Park archipelago, which has some of the most stunning shallow coral reefs in all of Thailand.

It is a perfect spot for diving and snorkeling with daily close encounters with reef sharks, green turtles, moray eels, and schools of iridescent fish.

The north island, where we stayed, has a dozen bungalows set high up on the hillside, but most people sleep in tents scattered along the beach front.

There are also two beach-side villages where 40 families of Moken sea nomads live in delicate stilted wooden houses; their roaming culture, dark-skinned appearance, and fearless attitude to water distinguishing them from the Thais holidaying with us.

As usual the island population had tripled for the weekend, with eighty foreigners being joined by 300 plus weekending Thais. Most were due to leave on Sunday afternoon and were enjoying a final morning of photographs by the sea.

They were joined by around 100 more from the Ocean Princess, a cruise ship visiting for the day, all wearing bright orange life jackets, even when paddling and walking on the hot sand.

Recovering from an ear infection, I decided against a diving expedition and spent the morning reading outside our tent while Petra headed off for a trip to the island of Ko Stork, the most exposed island with strong currents.

It was coming up to 11 o'clock when I was drawn from my book by the sound of water rushing and a few shouts, and looked up to see a wave turning the corner some 100 meters away to the left, moving into the sheltered bay between the north and south islands.

It looked quite small, less than a meter, and I thought it must be the full moon tide coming in fast. Grabbing my camera, I walked out onto the beach. The Thais on the sand bar some 50 meters ahead of me were laughing and pointing, filming the wave, some moving slowly back to the beach.

Fifty meters further out the first snorkelers were met by the wave and swept forward, no screams, just arms flying and grabbing hold of each other, causing those on the sand bar to start running towards the beach.

I turned and ran back to my tent as the orange life jackets were picked up and swept towards the narrowest point between the two islands which had changed into swirling angry rapid.

Reaching the tent and grabbing Petra's camera I suddenly felt water at my feet and turned to see a much bigger wave turning the corner from the south island.

Ignoring my backpack, wallet and air tickets, I ran up the hill, mercifully close to the beach.

Five seconds later the tent was swept away, joined by all the others, bright yellow rubbish bins and beach-front trees as I started to climb through the thick forest, the rushing, boiling angry water rising and rising.

More Thais were swept against the hill, caught in the trees and fortunately saved from being swept into the channel; a man smashed into a tree below me, blood streaming from above his left eye as I pulled him higher and out of the water.

Some were marooned on instant tree islands, climbing the branches as the water rose, water and debris still pounding against the hill before surging off to our left and into the channel between the two islands which had become impossibly high, a raging torrent of white water, the whole bay acting as a funnel.

A few orange jackets were rushing through now, but most people had already been swept through and out the other side into the wide eastern bay where the water was dispersing and becoming less fierce.

Everyone on the hill was safe, able to climb higher until the waves started to diminish. It felt like an immense portion of my life but can only have been five minutes or so.

I started thinking about Petra, if she was in the water when the wave struck, if her boat was overturned. I felt comfort that the wave was so bad and high where I had been and rationalized that it couldn't have been so bad out at sea where she was, the first of many attempts to apply logic with insufficient information.

I also imagined that the wave wouldn't be as big when it hit the mainland, spread out across the shore rather than funneled into one small channel.

I couldn't have been more wrong. South Surin had shielded us, with even the small island guarding the entrance to our western-facing bay protecting us and diverting the energy of the wave away. But knowing none of this, and unsure what had caused the wave, I assumed we had been the worst hit.

Running across the side of the hill, I scanned the eastern bay, where the huge white Ocean Princess was unmoved, standing firm at anchor, at contrast to the scattered long-tail boats that were noisily battling the current at full throttle, turning into the waves yet still maneuvering to pick up the scattered orange specks.

These boat boys were the true heroes of the first minutes, all their years of driving these small vessels in differing currents and winds distilled into the skill now needed to save hundreds of terrified people, some having been ripped from their life jackets by the force of the wave.

With nothing to do there, I climbed back to the western beach where the water was receding, revealing a beach stripped of sand. A dozen beach front trees had been swept aside like twigs but most held firm, holding the soil and rocks in place.

I met a Japanese man stumbling in the trees, bleeding from cuts and with a broken foot. He spoke little English but his face told it all. He kept repeating, "My wife, my wife wash away".

I held his shoulder and took him to the first aid hut but it had been evacuated, all supplies moved further up the hillside.

I told him over and over, "I think she will be safe, the boats are picking up many people. I think she will be safe."

But she couldn't swim, and I feared for her and this crushed man, his back bent, unable to lift his head.

An American man was searching for his Thai girlfriend. I recognized him as our neighbor who had spent his daylight hours lying on the beach in front his tent with his girlfriend, laughing an irresistible full-body laugh.

I told him about the boats picking up the people in the western bay and it seemed to calm him. I also told him I had lost everything but my camera and swimming shorts as I grabbed other people's bags from the water and threw them up the hill. He suddenly realized he too now had only the shorts he was wearing.

At the top of the hill people were congregating, the injured being patched and stitched up, the first aid team having sprung into action and dragged stacks of supplies to higher ground.

The canteen and kitchen were still standing, and the only other building, the National Park office, was also unscathed.

We were all asking why we were not warned by radio, and were told that the Ko Similan National Park further south had radioed a warning, being hit earlier, but that nobody was told; one of many rumors that would never be confirmed.

Half an hour later, again without warning, a wave appeared from the other direction, from the mainland, and raced past the Ocean Princess out in the eastern bay and towards us.

We knew what to do by then, and raced again to higher ground, watching in disbelief as this even bigger wave wiped out the buildings, swept up the long-tail boats that were upturned on the beach, and hurled them into trees and buildings like smashed toys.

For the next four hours smaller waves appeared, along with a warning of another big one which never materialized. People began collecting food and drinks scattered from the kitchen storeroom.

Some national park staff were busy collecting hundreds of scattered beer cans and bottles of whiskey. I met two boat boys out on the beach rifling a washed up bag, but they were an exception. Everyone else was bringing the bags in for people to claim, or searching the seas for anyone washed away.

Walking back from the beach collecting scattered food and drink, I suddenly heard Petra screaming my name and turn to see her walking in her bikini, fins in hand, wide-eyed and staring with her mouth open.

She had been in the water with her friend Steffania, had felt a strange current, and swam back to the boat in time to see whirlpools form near Ko Stork island.

The long-tail boat was powering at full throttle to stay out of it, bare coral exposed at the center as waves appeared by the rocky coast and traveled in the wrong direction, away from the island.

She had expected Ko Surin to be untouched, having seen only minor waves, although bizarrely behaving ones, and so was shocked by the boats impaled in the remains of buildings, and the completely missing tent city.

Two hours later our Canadian friend Michi appeared. We had been truly worried for her, as she had been diving with a research group from Bangkok University at the time.

They had felt the shock wave and were swept by crazy underwater currents, grabbing coral which broke off with the force of the current and then been carried into a buoy line which they were able to cling to and surface.

Having survived, yet surrounded by devastation, and maybe because of the small death toll on the island (three people though some still missing), nobody from the park office took control of the situation.

That job was left to an officer from the Ocean Princess who appeared on the scene with a radio and began collecting names and numbers to be evacuated.

As dusk approached, he decided it was safe to ferry people via long-tail boat to the cruise ship. Mid-transfer another wave appeared which, though small, caused a minor panic before the transfer resumed.

We had wanted to stay on the island, fearful of the next big wave that had been promised for hours without materializing, and reasoning that high land was always safer than the biggest ship.

We had still heard nothing from other islands or the mainland, though knew there had been an earthquake in Indonesia. However, we were forced to leave, which turned out to be a good move.

The Ocean Princess was amazing, as were the boat boys steering us through a dark and newly rock-strewn bay, bumping into underwater obstacles, but bringing all 300-plus evacuees to safety.

We were welcomed aboard, given blankets, a soft floor to sleep on, and free food and drink from the ship's amazing restaurant buffet; a stunning example of Thai hospitality that would be repeated again and again.

We settled in for the night, waiting moored in the shelter of the island, and began sharing stories of near misses and fortuities. Both the large American with his huge lovely laugh and the Japanese man with his non-swimming wife found me and introduced me to their rescued other.

The whole ship clapped and cheered as the last family arrived on board, a Swiss couple with two angelic blonde daughters of three and seven who immediately became the ship's mascots.

The family had been kayaking and were capsized by the first wave. The youngest, unable to swim and sinking in the torrent, was hauled from below by her father.

He kept looking across at his daughter when telling me the story, checking that she was really still alive.

Almost to a man, woman and child we were penniless and battered, yet we felt truly blessed to have survived.

--CNN 2004-12-30

[george]

Tsunami survivors flock to Bangkok for the shelters

BANGKOK: -- The former Asian Games village in Bangkok has been converted into a half-way house for stranded and injured travellers.

This in the wake of Sunday's disaster as droves left the southern Thai resorts and descended on the Thai capital.

With lodging a problem, Thammasat University where the village is located, swung into action to help, by providing rooms.

Missing was six-month-old baby Ruby Rose and her 32-year-old mother, last seen in heavily devastated Khao Lak. Also missing was an Argentinian family.

Posters in colour or simple photocopies are a stark remainder of that other tragedy, after the deaths.

That of the missing and the separated.

And then, there are the lucky ones like 27-year-old Canadian veterinary student Erin Wilson, who escaped by climbing up a tree.

But she did not know at first what had hit her.

Erin said: "We got three minutes down the beach and the resort manager called us back. We saw this white wave in the water and we did not know what it was. So we kept watching it because we did not know it was dangerous. "

But for the terrified student, not knowing when and if a second wave was going to come was the problem.

Erin added: "Water just everywhere and chairs sweeping past and then the water went the other way. A Thai man helped us down and we got scared again. He told us to get back up the tree but we were not sure if it was going to happen again."

Erin and her friend finaly escaped by moving out to dry land, onto a mountain, where they were airlifted out by a helicopter.

But her experience hasn't deterred her. She says she will be back.

"Like the people here, we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them," she said.

And the help for travellers was clearly seen at one halfway house.

"Scared ... completely scared. Never have I feared for my life like that. Dead bodies and babies everywhere."

This is the nerve centre of the halfway house where travellers can get help from interpreters, free Internet to send email mesages to their loved ones as well as free IDD calls.

And that was a boon for many.

Though many made a beeline for the missing persons list.

There, volunteers manning the centre tell of tales with both happy and sad endings.

Kim Muurholm Jur Gensen, a volunteer, said: "He was looking for a friend who was supposed to be here but he had checked out and left for Finland.

"So he was quite happy but while we were talking, he saw a photo on my table and and said 'oh no, is he missing too?' So positive and negative. Find one friend and another is missing."

But while the soft touches may have been there, free food, free clothes, help with changing money and getting air tickets home, there has been criticism too.

And that's the lack of a single co-ordinated agency to quickly find information on missing loved ones that these travellers so desperately seek.

-- CNA 2004-12-30

[george]

Thailand's biggest ever rescue operation scours for missing, rushes to ID dead

PHUKET: -- International teams and thousands of Thais were mounting the country's largest-ever rescue and relief operation Thursday, as a senior government minister said 3,500 bodies had been found in one province and the prime minister warned the death toll could soar to nearly 7,000.

"There are many people listed as missing and we think that 80 per cent of them are feared dead. Twenty per cent may have lost contact," Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told reporters.

The official death toll was 2,404, including 713 foreigners, but after visiting the southern province of Phang Nga's Takuapa district, Interior Minister Bhokin Balakula told Channel 9 television that more than 3,500 bodies have been found there.

More than 6,000 people are listed as missing since Sunday's tsunami disaster.

Two Canadians were listed among the dead in Thailand, while at least two others are officially listed as missing. Dozens of others are described as "unaccounted for" in the region.

Meanwhile, crack rescue and forensic teams from Australia, Japan, Germany, Israel and other countries fanned out across corpse-strewn areas in southern Thailand, racing against time to find survivors and identify rapidly decomposing corpses.

"We have to have hope that we'll find somebody," said Ulf Langemeier, chief of 15 German veterans of earthquake disasters who, along with three sniffer dogs, combed a wrecked resort under huge flood lamps early Thursday.

Langemeier sounded an ominous note: There's always a chance of finding survivors trapped under rubble when earthquakes strike on land, but "when waves enter a building you have no chance."

Underscoring his pessimism, thousands of coffins and body bags poured into the country from countries including Britain, the United States and Japan.

But Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment Suwit Khunkitti refused to give up hope.

"Anything can happen," he said. "When these kind of things have happened everywhere in the world, some people have lived for nine days, without food and water, even if injured. So we keep our hopes high and we fight for it."

The rescue and identification teams focused their efforts on a 30-kilometre stretch of beach in Phang Nga province, north of the internationally popular resort island of Phuket.

More than half of Thailand's confirmed deaths occurred in Phang Nga province, where police say up to 3,000 bodies may yet be found among the five-star hotels and poor fishing villages.

"Villagers say that the search teams want to help the foreigners first and they don't care about them," said Jurit Laksanawisit, a member of parliament from Phang Nga. Describing the rescue effort as slow and chaotic, he said some victims might have been saved, since on Wednesday a number were found to have just recently expired.

Thaksin admitted co-ordination problems existed because multiple areas were hit.

"Everybody going to these areas has good intentions, as they go with their heart and a sense of dedication. These are not good places to stay, no comfort, no toilets, only the smell of corpses. If there are any misunderstandings, we can discuss them," he said.

In some places sniffer dogs weren't necessary, "as we can smell it, the corpses, even before the helicopter lands," Thaksin said.

As rescue workers toiled at Khao Lak, hundreds of people darted from the beach in panic after a siren sounded a warning of another possible tsunami. But only small waves came.

The warning, also issued in India, followed several aftershocks in the region.

The government said 6,130 Thais and foreigners were still missing. They include about 1,500 Swedes, 200 Finns, 200 Danes and hundreds of Norwegians, according to reports from Scandinavian capitals.

Trucks loaded with refrigeration units were spreading out over the area to store corpses, as Thai volunteers and rescue teams rushed in from around the country.

Even prisoners were mobilized to clear away debris and build coffins for the foreigners, Media reports said. Most of the Buddhist Thais killed were being cremated at local monasteries.

Monks chanted for the victims at many monasteries throughout the country in religious services that began simultaneously at 7 p.m. The government had asked that Buddhists and Christians offer their prayers at the same time, while Muslims follow during their regular Friday services.

Citizens of more than 40 countries were reported vacationing in six southern Thai provinces when the disaster struck.

There are about 114,000 people confirmed dead around southern Asia and as far away as Somalia on Africa's eastern coast, most of them killed by tidal waves from the 9.0-magnitude earthquake off Indonesia's coast on Sunday.

--CBC Canada 2004-12-30

[george]

Phuket Parish: Anger, prayers and solidarity among survivors

There is need of food, houses and work to restore the economy of the area, based on tourism. Christians are working as “translators” between foreigners and local people.

Phuket (AsiaNews) – The Thai people have a “very profound” religious sense and they are seeking comfort in their faith for their “immense pain”. Fr Peter Bancha Apichartvorakul, parish priest of the Catholic Church of the Assumption of Phuket, told AsiaNews about the pain of people “ who have lost their loved ones, their home, their work” and who search for relief “in masses held every day” and in revering “relatives who disappeared by participating in their funeral”.

Fr Bancha emphasised the commitment of Catholics who “sought in all ways to help people who have lost everything”. People need “food, homes and work to restore the economy of the region, largely based on tourism.”

“Besides,” continued Fr Bancha, “Many local people do not speak English, so Christians are serving even as interpreters and they are fast becoming a point of reference for foreign relief workers who want to communicate with people from the place.”

The tragedy which struck the coast of Thailand “has shocked people”, but even “greater is anger, because no warning came from the competent authorities”.

The seaquake “took everyone by surprise”, said the parish priest, because “it was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and people were enjoying the holiday. All of a sudden, the wave came and it struck the defenseless people, who were powerless to take shelter.”

The reason why thousands of people died lies in “the lack of alarm signals or other signs which could have averted the tragedy”. The “anger and reproach of people is evident” because with a little more attention, “plenty of lives could have been saved”, and the tragedy “would have assumed lesser proportions”.

In these days, said Fr Bancha, the most pressing problem is a “lack of food”, but in future the real problem “will be thousands of homeless people who live in southern Thailand: they have lost their home and have nowhere to live. We must help them to find a new home and new work: we want to guarantee them the possibility of building their life anew.” For the moment, displaced people have found refuge “in churches, temples and parks”, but the commitment of Christians is to identify “a new means of livelihood for them as soon as possible”.

Solidarity and closeness are not lacking in this difficult moment: even those struck by the tragedy “are busying themselves recovering corpses, sustaining those in difficulty and in need.” The situation is “critical in the coastal area, the worst-hit by the sea quake”, while further inland and in the cities “there was no great upheaval and people are trying to go on with life as usual, as far as possible”. (DS).

[lukamar]

KEY AID PLEDGES

Source: Reuters, United Nations

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It's hard to wrap your head around some of these numbers and probably some like the UK have just upgraded. I worked out the Per Capita cost to the individual countries listed using the populations in the CIA Factbook.

KEY AID PLEDGES & per capita pledges by country

EU $44m

US: $35m .......$0.119

Canada: $33m ..... $1.03

Japan: $30m ..... $0.236

UK: $90m ..... $1.50

Australia: $27m ..... $1.42

France: $20.4m..... $0.60

Denmark: $15.6m...... $2.88

Saudi Arabia: $10m .....$0.389

Norway: $6.6m.........$1.43

Taiwan: $5.1m .....$0.44

Finland: $3.4m .... $0.65

Kuwait: $2.1m ..... $0.95

Netherlands: $2.6m .....$0.159

UAE: $2m ..... $0.004

Ireland $1.3m ...... $0.30

Singapore: $1.2m .... $0.28

I'm not trying to point a finger, but in general a lot of these developed countries are not stepping up to the plate. As a Canadian, I'm almost embarrased at the pitance my country has responded with. I believe that it should be in the range of $5US to $10US range per capita. That would make it between 160M and 320US as an example and would alow some of the countries hardest hit to start the rebuilding process without further bankrupting their countries. We wealthy nations must do more to help the less fortunate not just in this disaster but in general.

Justy personal thoughts.

[Darknight]

Web logs aid disaster recovery

From BBC

By Clark Boyd

Technology correspondent

Blogs are proving useful to people wanting to help

Some of the most vivid descriptions of the devastation in southern Asia are on the internet - in the form of web logs or blogs.

Bloggers have been offering snapshots of information from around the region and are also providing some useful information for those who want to help.

Indian writer Rohit Gupta edits a group blog called Dogs without Borders.

When he created it, the site was supposed to be a forum to discuss relations between India and Pakistan.

But in the wake of Sunday's tsunami, Mr Gupta and his fellow bloggers switched gears.

They wanted to blog the tsunami and its aftermath.

One Sri Lankan blogger in the group goes by the online name Morquendi.

With internet service disrupted by the tsunami, Morquendi started sending SMS text messages via cell phone from the affected areas of Sri Lanka.

"We started publishing these SMSes," says Mr Gupta.

Communications are slowly being restored in disaster regions

"Morquendi was describing scenes like 1,600 bodies washed up on a shore, and people burying, and burying and burying them. People digging holes with their hands. And this was coming through an SMS message.

"We didn't have visual accounts on radio or on TV, or in the print media."

Soon, thousands of web users around the world were logging on to read Morquendi's first hand accounts.

In one message, Morquendi wrote about a Sri Lankan woman who was running home with a friend when the wave hit.

"She was being swept away," Morquendi's message read. "She grabbed a tree with one hand and her friend with the other. She says she watched the water pull her friend away."

Mr Gupta says the power of Morquendi's text message blogs was palpable.

"He was running around, looking for friends, burying bodies, carrying bodies," Mr Gupta says of Morquendi.

"I can't even begin to imagine the psychological state he was in when he was sending us reports, and doing the relief work at the same time.

"He was caught between being a journalist and being a human being."

Aid stations

Others blogs and forums are helping to spread information about relief efforts.

Dina Mehta is an Indian blogger who's helping with the newly created South East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog. She says the blog is not meant to be filled with first person accounts.

"What we're doing is we're building a resource," she says.

"Anyone who says, OK, I want to come and do some work in India, volunteer in India, or in Sri Lanka or Malaysia, this is the sort of one-stop-shop that they can come to for all sorts of resources - emergency help lines, relief agencies, aid agencies, contacts for them etc."

Blogs are helping people sign up for aid agencies

Ms Mehta also says she wishes that governments in the region would realise the power of blogs.

"Imagine if they had this resource available to them, if there was a disaster, how quickly you could funnel aid in, and get people to help," she says.

Bloggers in the United States are also getting involved.

Ramdhan Yadav Kotamaraja is originally from India, but now lives in Dallas.

Mr Kotamaraja wanted to help those affected by the tsunami by pooling money with concerned friends.

So, he set up an online payment system on his website.

Then, says Mr Kotamaraja, the blogging world found out.

"All my blogger friends started linking up my site, and I saw a lot of people other than my friends. I'd say 70% of the donations came from people I don't know.

"It's simply unbelievable to me, that people that I don't know will come and start donating."

News spreads quickly on weblogs, a phenomenon that helps bloggers expand their audience and scope.

In Sri Lanka, blogger Morquendi is recruiting others to help.

One recruit calls himself Heretic.

In one of his latest posts, Heretic asks: "Have you ever seen fishing trawlers on the road? Ever seen a bus inside a house?

"Well," Heretic writes, "that was just the least affected areas - so you can just imagine - or can you?"

He concludes: "Keep it blogged."

Clark Boyd is technology correspondent for The World, a BBC World Service and WGBH-Boston co-production.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4135687.stm

[Darknight]

Sport Figures unite for tsunami victims

From BBC Sports

The world of sport has united to help the victims of the tsunami disaster.

Premiership clubs have joined forces to donate £1m to the Asian earthquake disaster fund, with every one of the 20 clubs pledging £50,000 each.

Tennis star Maria Sharapova handed $10,000 (£5,200) to Thailand's prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, while she was in Bangkok for an exhibition match.

England's cricketers have donated £15,000 to the appeal, while their fans are hoping to raise a further £20,000.

The England cricket touring party met on Wednesday to discuss their response to the disaster and decided to make the donation, which will be boosted by a further £5,000 provided by the Professional Cricketers' Association.

Meanwhile, the chief of English football's Premier League, Richard Scudamore, spoke of shock felt among the Premiership clubs following the Asian disaster.

"I think everyone has been taken aback by the sheer enormity of events following the Indian Ocean earthquake," he said.

"The Premier League and our clubs have strong connections throughout the region.

"There was a real feeling amongst the clubs that we should do something as a collective to try and alleviate some of the pain and suffering.

"Our thoughts go out to those who are suffering as a result of this catastrophe and hopefully this donation will help make a real difference as the disaster relief operation gets under way."

English football's Championship clubs, Wolves and Derby, have also begun their own collections.

"Natural disasters like this could affect any of us at any time and when we're anywhere in the world," said Wolves boss Glenn Hoddle.

"I really believe it's important our industry do something to help and the players have started things off by putting into the bucket at training."

Elsewhere, Wimbledon champion Sharapova, who was lying on a beach in California when she heard news of the disaster, expressed her shock.

"Life is unpredictable. We have to live every second not knowing what is going to happen," said the 17-year-old Russian.

The teenager was in Bangkok to play an exhibition match against former world number one Venus Williams