Quake and Tsunami Devastate South Asia

pfb writes "From reuters, 'The world's fifth-largest quake in a century has hit southern Asia, triggering a speeding tsunami that crashed into Sri Lanka and India, drowning hundreds, and swamping tourist islands in Thailand and the Maldives.'"

Re:Arthur C. Clarke?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

Re:Arthur C. Clarke?

[mOoZik]

Yes, he lives in Colombo [hazardous.com]. As you can see from the picture, he is on the coast. I hope he is all right. :(

More earthquake links

[zxSpectrum]

I keep a list of earthquake related resources [virtuelvis.com].

Brother vacationing Thailand...

[RefuX]

Yeah my brother and wife (John and Brigette) are currently in Thailand and were planning to dive today... unfortunatly I have no idea where in Thailand they are....

He hasn't cotacted me yet, but even if he wanted to I doubt he could.

Fingers crossed!

p.s. The British Foreign office have set up an emergency help line: 0207 008 0000, I havn't been able to get through yet, its really busy.

Re:Difficult to detect / prevent

[Anonymous Coward]

A BBC World report said that this sort of warning might be available in the Pacific where such things are more common but is not (yet?) set up for the Indian Ocean.

Re:Arthur C. Clarke?

[Phosphor3k]

From CNN's article on the subject:

Sri Lankan officials imposed a curfew as night fell, and tourists were being evacuated from the eastern coasts to the capital, Colombo, unaffected on the west coast.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/12/26/asia .quake/index.html

Re:Video?

[bugbeak]

Check out the BBC News site [bbc.co.uk]. There is a link that says "Live Video", given that the earthquake is top news ATM.

6300 dead at 15:13 GMT

[fbjon]

And it was around 3200 just a few hours ago. Here's the Reuters [reuters.co.uk] article. Watching BBC world, it appears that some northern areas of Sumatra still can't be reached, and the situation there is unknown. Here's a map of the affected area. [bbc.co.uk]

It seems that a displacement in the sea bottom ocurred, moving 10-30 metres up along a rupture of 1000 km, causing a wave of hundreds of cubic kilometres of ocean water [bbc.co.uk].

Latest News ...

[sunsrin]

You can find the latest news at http://news.google.co.in [google.co.in] (The Indian Version of Google News )

Re:Difficult to detect / prevent

[d_strand]

You're beeing a bit harsh. These waves travel hundreds of kph/mph so any warning will only give you a few minutes, at most maybe an hour. All countries in the region are poor and not very well developed so they cant afford the types of systems you're talking about. Mostly they rely on western countries for warnings and the timings are very tight.

A warning system should really be installed along the american southeast coast. The mountains/ocean shelves on several islands of the european/north african coast are extremely close to colapsing into the atlantic which would send enormous tsunamis towards USA. USA, as opposed to the countries struck today, can afford the systems...

going back to hoping my neighbours made it... they're on vacation in Phuket

Tsunami

[sunsrin]

More on Tsunami at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

Live Indian News ..

[sunsrin]

You can watch live Indian News at http://www.ddinews.com [164.100.51.209]. I hope they can handle the Slashdot effect :(

Re:Energy release

[Snarfangel]

A 9.0 earthquake would release the equivalent of 1,800 Megatons, so it would be in the same ballpark.

Re:Arthur C. Clarke?

[cypherwise]

According to this bbc picture Colombo, Sri Lanka also saw some destruction.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictur es/4125643.stm

goto picture 10.

Creepy...

[Kjella]

..I saw Phi Phi was hit hard. I've been there, and I understand why. It is shaped like a concave lens with the settlement in the bays on either side. The "ends" of the island are pretty tall with jungle and all, but inbetween, where all the people are it is maybe 2m above sea level. The floodwave sounded big enough that it'd pass straight *across* the island. I expect the cabins we used to rent are leveled to the ground.

.__
<..> <-- high ground
.\/
.|| <-- people, low ground
./\
<__> <-- high ground

Dots to avoid anti-ascii art crap :p

It always feels so much more personal when you've been there. I don't think the odds are any different if you've been in one place or traveling the world, but it is always creepy to know "I've been there. That could have been me there."

Kjella

You think that's crazy?

[Anonymous Coward]

the NYTimes even said it disturbed the rotation of the earth.

I live in Coastal South India

[EqualSlash]

I live in Chennai(Madras) [wikipedia.org],(Capital City of the State Tamil Nadu [wikipedia.org] - the region worst affected by the Tsunami in India ). For us, this is the first time ever something like a Tsunami hits our coast. The earthquake itself was not deadly but the tides alone were responsible for the death of more than 1000 people according to some reports. Since this happened early in the morning and the day being a sunday, not many people were awake at that time. In my city alone almost 100 poor fishermen who live in the huts along the seashore were washed away. Coastal regions in the Southern parts of my state where even more affected - a lot many were drowned in the flash floods. The fact that I was sleeping unaware of the whole thing at that time, less than a kilometre away from the sea, sends a shiver down my spine.
You can find some pictures here [sify.com].

Re:Not unpredictable, but probably unavoidable.

[Anonymous Coward]

There was ample time - the P-wave of the quake hit Madras, India at about 6.30 AM (local time), about 4 minutes after the quake occurred. However, the Tsunami reached only at about 9 - 9.30 AM (local time), giving a clear 2.5 to 3 hours after the quake.

Re:Oh, STFU

[Anonymous Coward]

Until 3 years ago the nation that gave most was Japan. They've cut back in the last few years though, and the US has given a lot of money recently to Pakistan, even though it has been selling its nuclear secrets to terrorists.

The country giving the largest proportion of aid per unit income is Norway, which gives about 6 times as much as the US per unit income.

I found some stats here [globalissues.org] if you're interested

Re:Energy release

[RockDork]

Earthquakes over M8.0 are called 'great,' as in catastrophic, for a good reason...

There are several kinds of earthquake 'magnitude' measures, all of which yield similar numbers. Moment magnitude may be converted directly to energy:

Magnitude = log (energy in ergs)/1.5 - 10.7

For moment magnitude 8.9, this works out to 2.5 x 10^29 ergs, which is about 6 Million Megatons of TNT. The impact of 2004MN4 works out to an earthquake magnitude 6.2 to 6.6.

Re:Aussie earthquake: tsunami?

[Weird O'Puns]

It's explanied here: http://www.news24.com/News24/AnanziArticle/0,6935, 2-13-1443_1639881,00.html [news24.com].

Quote from the article:

Seismologist Cvetan Sinadinovski said it caused buildings to shake in the island state for up to 15 seconds, but did not cause a tsunami or unusual tidal activity because it was of horizontal rather than vertical displacement and struck far off the coast.

Re:Aussie earthquake: tsunami?

[Anonymous Coward]

An earthquake along a subduction (upthrust) fault is more likely to generate a devastating Tsunami than one from a lateral fault line (the Andaman fault is a subduction fault).

Re:Arthur C. Clarke?

[AnuradhaRatnaweera]

Dr Clarke used to live in Barne's Place (quite far from the coast), and I don't think he has shifted. I traveled by a road closeby this evening, and there was zero damage to that neighbourbood.
However, as far as health is concerned, Dr Clarke is not fareing very well. I saw him on a wheelchair at a recent convention where he was a (the?) guest of honour.

'Inamura no hi'

[suikyo]

I'm a Japanese, and I feel I heard of the legend, but uncertain.
So I googled.
see the full story [bo-sai.co.jp](Japanese page)

The story was known as one article of our very old language arts schoolbook of national elementary schools. It was published about from 1937 to 1947. I've never seen the text, of cource, but I think I heard this story from my teacher.
This is a story about a farmar and an earthquake which hitted Kishu (now, Wakayama Pref.), in 1854. Outline of the story is totally same as Rob Carr described above. In addition, he is not just a farmer, but a 7th meister of Yamasa soy sauce factory, a first chairman of council of Wakayama Pref., and a first minister of Post Office Dept. (It was a era of revolution...)
For foreign countries, Lafcadio Hearn (known as Yakumo Koizumi in Japan) introduced this story first, in his book 'Gleanings in Buddha-Fields (ISBN:1596050217 or other)'. One Japanese teacher rewrited this to a simple and dense text for children, and choosed as an article of textbook by the nation. This version is re-translated to English, and taken in textbook of Colorado state elementary school, titled 'The burning of the rice fields' (the page is saying so. I don't know it's true or not).

Actually, in Japan, everyone knows, I believe, that sea surface oftenly drawn off before a Tsunami. We live with earthquakes, typhoons, volcanos, and fires (because of densely build old wooden houses). We are so careful(even an exess sometimes) and preparing for such disasters, so we can imagine to some degree what is going on. It is terrible to have a great Tsunami without no warning and information. Systems and informations are required.

Re:Energy release

[bubbaprog]

Richter is a logarithmic scale, not linear.

welcome to slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an astounding loss of life, and a healthy fraction of the posts are just evil. If this is what slashdot has come to, prejudice, intolerance and ill-will for those that have suffered, I'm outta here. These are your brethren. Mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, uncles and aunts that have been hit by an unannounced, unpreventable, and unknowable tragedy. I'm appalled.

The stereotypical Slashdot computer geek is an amoral dork who rarely wanders away from his computer, which is probably located in his parents' basement. There are exceptions, but that's the stereotype. Enjoy.

there were some warning signs

[frooddood]

There was a huge earthquake (8.1 on Richter) south of Tasmania 3 days before. It made headlines http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000081&si d=aUIanL7wC_m8&refer=australia/ [bloomberg.com] but fortunately no victims. However if you look at a map of tectonic plates http://geology.about.com/library/bl/maps/blplatesw topoehem.htm/ [about.com] and compare it with the location of the earthquake http://www.iris.edu/seismon/ [iris.edu] you can see it happened at the southern tip of the Indian plate. Now 3 days later on the middle of the eastern edge of the same plate another huge earthquake...looks like plate movement to me.

Re:Full Moon

[Shag]

I probably shouldn't dignify this with a reply, but:

1. The moon's orbit is elliptical, and as any Slashdotter who "knows about science" can tell you, that means its gravitational pull on Earth varies. :)
2. Even if the moon's gravitational pull didn't vary, the interplay between the gravitational pulls of the moon and the sun does vary, with the greatest combined effect occurring at new moon, the second-greatest at full moon, and the least effect at the quarters. (Read a tide table [dolphinkey.com] to see what I mean.)

Hope this clarifies matters somewhat...

Re:Full Moon

[cheekyboy]

more like a lot of geologists didnt study ANY astronomy at all, there are very few scientists skilled at both sectors.

And they have prooved that the moons orbit does effect the land like tides, they did GPS measurements and found the land does indeed move, but you cannot see/feel it.

But dude, please do a statistical analysis of all quakes vs moon positions and get back to me.

PubSub search for latest Earthquake info in blogs

[bobwyman]

To get the latest info on the Earthquake, try monitoring this feed from PubSub.com:

http://rss.pubsub.com/ef/c3/b9173332d3d1011651b6f2 bd5f.xml [pubsub.com]

Content will be updated every 15 minutes and will contain the most recent 32 blog entries that mention the event.

bob wyman

Re:Difficult to detect / prevent

[n3m0s]

From Reuters ...
NO WARNING SYSTEM

In Los Angeles, the head of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said U.S. officials who detected the undersea quake tried frantically to get a warning out about the tsunami.

But there was no official alert system in the region, said Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's center in Honolulu.

"It took an hour and a half for the wave to get from the earthquake to Sri Lanka and an hour for it to get ... to the west coast of Thailand and Malaysia," he said. "You can walk inland for 15 minutes to get to a safe area."

"We tried to do what we could," he said. "We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world." ....
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?typ e=topN ews&storyID=7180384&pageNumber=1

No Tsunami Warning from the NOAA warning Center

[rduke15]

This report [noaa.gov] (reproduced below) from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center [noaa.gov] sounds weird when you know how terrible the Tsunami was on the other side.

Basically, it says "THERE IS NO TSUNAMI WARNING OR WATCH IN EFFECT.".

Yes, of course, there was no tsunami in the region this warning center is responsible for. But who writes these reports? Is it sensible to just write "no tsunami warning", without specifying that it's a different story on the other side, in the Indian ocean? Wouldn't people writing these reports be supposed to be aware of it?

Anyway, that report, while it may be technically correct for it's region, sounds really weird to me.

Since the link is for the "latest report", and will change over time, here is the complete text of that page:

TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 002
PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER/NOAA/NWS
ISSUED AT 0204Z 26 DEC 2004

THIS BULLETIN IS FOR ALL AREAS OF THE PACIFIC BASIN EXCEPT
ALASKA - BRITISH COLUMBIA - WASHINGTON - OREGON - CALIFORNIA.

.................. TSUNAMI INFORMATION BULLETIN ..................

ATTENTION: NOTE REVISED MAGNITUDE.

THIS MESSAGE IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY. THERE IS NO TSUNAMI WARNING
OR WATCH IN EFFECT.

AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS

ORIGIN TIME - 0059Z 26 DEC 2004
COORDINATES - 3.4 NORTH 95.7 EAST
LOCATION - OFF W COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATERA
MAGNITUDE - 8.5

EVALUATION
REVISED MAGNITUDE BASED ON ANALYSIS OF MANTLE WAVES.
THIS EARTHQUAKE IS LOCATED OUTSIDE THE PACIFIC. NO DESTRUCTIVE
TSUNAMI THREAT EXISTS FOR THE PACIFIC BASIN BASED ON HISTORICAL
EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI DATA.

THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF A TSUNAMI NEAR THE EPICENTER.

THIS WILL BE THE ONLY BULLETIN ISSUED FOR THIS EVENT UNLESS
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE.

THE WEST COAST/ALASKA TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER WILL ISSUE BULLETINS
FOR ALASKA - BRITISH COLUMBIA - WASHINGTON - OREGON - CALIFORNIA.

Re:Brother vacationing Thailand...

[RefuX]

Well just got off the phone with Bridget's folks.
It was a very close call, Bridget got up in the morning, looked out of the window and saw it coming.
John and Briget started running
On the way they overtook one person, he was unable to keep up.
Some others who they were running with showed them the way to safety, the one guy they overtook, heh didn't make it...
John's feet got badly cut up and they lost alot of their items.