Tsunami Satellite Images

JakeisBland writes "Here is a collection of before/after satellite pictures of the devastation in Asia due to the tsunami/earthquake."

Cisco

[sjrstory]

Even Cisco [cisco.com] has posted Earthquake and Tsunami Relief on their main page. I guess a good chunk of their CCIEs are affected by this :)

Are you stingy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. [nytimes.com]

So much for clean water....

[YITBOS]

It's almost disgusting to see how much the color of the water changed... it's bad enough they have hundred upon hundreds of bodies lying around rotting, but the water looks disgusting even from the sky... just imagine the smell. I wonder how long it will take, with all the flooding and then the following withdrawl of the water, before it's a nice, clean blue ocean beach again?

Re:Tsunami

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny thing is, there was a wild-life center near the coast, that got flooded. They found quite a few people dead, tourists, people who work there,.. Not a single dead animal though. They all sensed it coming, they all ran to safer regions. I guess we lost touch with our own instincts, and mother nature.

We are all so scared of terrorists. (or are supposed to be if you believe the media). We thought we had nature under control, with our superior technology and science. I guess we thought wrong, a little shake of mother nature has been worse than hundred bin ladens and sadam hoesseins.

Re:Philosophy 101

[nagora]

I'm pointing out that the cause does matter when considering the importance of an event.

I agree; I was idly pointing out the implications of two common beliefs: 1: that there is no such thing as free will, which implies that human actions are no different from "natural" actions or disasters, and 2: that there is a god, in which case there again is no difference becase in both the human and natural cases god is equally culpable for letting it happen.

Personally I believe in free will and not in gods, so it really was idle speculation and "Philosophy 101". Given what I belive, I agree totally with your post but it did occur to me that ours is simply one view point and there are others. I'm not quite sure why that wound you up so much but I wasn't trolling.

TWW

Re:do we know what actually caused this?

[AndyCater]

The indian ocean tectonic plates are historically very active. Look at the major earthquakes and a lot are in/round Java. Ditto volcano eruptions: Tambora 1813?? and Krakatau 1883 Just one of those things - it will happen again in due course when the plates move again. There were apparently three plate shifts - one of them almost immediately off the Andaman isalnds, but the first was down near Aceh.

Re:wow

[shadowmas]

i'm a sri lankan. i wasnt in the effected area but the footage that i saw was so disturbing i simply stopped watching tv after a few hours.

busses with people still in it were swept away as if they were paper boats. people who were trying to hold on to a building were swept away one by one. and while all this was happenning the people who were taping the scene along with a few others who were on a bridge could do nothing to help. it makes you feel completly helpless.

so many people have died that even identifying them is simply impossible. most of the dead are being buried in mass graves. and most of them havent even been identified.

its simply unbreable.

Re:Over 120 000 people lost their lives

[Anonymous Coward]

All the major cities and most of the citizens in Finland have decided not to fire any rockets this New Year's eve. They will all donate the money to help out these people instead. There's a good example to America!

Re:Over here in Finland (and Scandinavia I bet)

[Necroist]

In Singapore, fireworks have also been cancelled and countdown shows have been cancelled. I'm proud of my country, with so many people chipping in, from executives, to your low-middle class workers. Whether is it $1 pitched in, or $100,000, I think its really heart-warming to see people all over the world taking out their wallets (or other items) to help the victims of this terrible disaster.

images and video links

[spoonyfork]

Lots of images and video of the tsunami and aftermath at http://www.waveofdestruction.org/ [waveofdestruction.org].

Re:wow

[XenonDif]

Different. You can't compare them on the same scale.

Oh but you can!

When you add up the casualties from Gulf War I ~158,000 [businessweek.com] and the casualties from the latest conflict ~98,000 [time.com] you can easily match the numbers from the typhone. The difference is that humans planned and carried these things and not mother nature.

Donate! [unicef.org].

Re:Over here in Finland (and Scandinavia I bet)

[tuxette]

Yeah, it pretty much the same deal in Norway. Various official fireworks have been cancelled, and officials are encouraging people to donate the money relief charities that they otherwise would have spent on expensive fireworks.

Re:wow

[tdemark]

You can also see the sat photos here [mac.com], with the difference that I aligned the images so you can toggle between before and after views.

I submitted this link last night, but, of course, it was rejected in favor of the plain, individual sat photos.

- Tony

Re:wow

[Kiryat Malachi]

How does "the negative effects of planned and exploitative capitalism" have anything to do with this?

The rest of the world is under no obligation to help SE Asia. They're doing it because they feel it's the right thing to do. Do you bitch at your mom when she shorts you on a Christmas present, too? The developed world doesn't owe them anything; calling us stingy is unlikely to help loosen our pursestrings.

Trees

[Anonymous Coward]

what the pictures also show is that areas with many trees look less damaged than areas with few trees.

Re:Tsunami Warning System

[Neophytus]

It is misleading to describe it as an "international" tsunami warning system as that gives the perception it's reach is wider than the pacific basin.

Re:wow

[garethwi]

If you thought 9/11 was big think again, we are talking about FOUR HUNDRED 9/11s here.

Or one Iraq War, so far.

A photo of dead bodies scattered all over...

[antdude]

Not an aerial map, but still related to tsunami event. link [compfused.com].

Warning: Very gross and disturbing!

Composite images

[AstroDrabb]

The images look a lot more powerful when you stack two in layers and set the top layer transparency to around 80%. You can really see all the homes under water. I put some together here [nyud.net]

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

>> If you thought 9/11 was big think again, we are talking about FOUR HUNDRED 9/11s here.

>Or one Iraq War, so far.

Oh go to hell! Disaster strikes, thousands dead, and all you can do it whine about your politics!

Re:Are you stingy?

[ScentCone]

Bush could have scored some real points if say he'd cancelled his $40 million "I got elected again" party and given the money to the cause.

Reminds me of the scene in - was it Animal House? - where the witless, self-important sorority girl participating in the dance planning committee says something to the effect of, "I don't see how anyone can have a party when there are hungry people in the world!"

But of course, dramatically not having a party doesn't magically create self-sufficient economies, rule of law, rational discourse, and all of the other things that make countries more able to weather trouble. If our Atlantic coast cities were built the way the tsunami-impacted areas are, our recent hurricane season would have been catastrophic. But we have the infrastructure and financial resiliance that comes from our industrious culture. South Asia is working on that too, but they have a lot of catching up to do... and now even more.

If the plight of a million people living and dying in misery should be a reason to cease the celebration of our nation's recurring elections and the success of our constitutional structure, then we should stop every party, all the time. Many, many more millions live in what we would call deathly misery, tsunamis or not. How, oh how can we enjoy, strengthen, and insure our prosperity under those circumstances? Or, is the cancel-the-party political camp so breathlessly partisan, and so desparate to score a fleeting shot on Bush (only appreciated by the same crowd anyway) that it takes a more immediate calamity like this to leverage that bit of theatre?

People who say "Bush should have done X" (even as all sorts of critical things were already under way the same day as the earthquake, and will be for years now) are being sleazy opportunists. To imagine that Bush won't take the opportunity of the upcoming inaugural to comment on the Asian disaster is ridiculous. Now: please comment on why Clinton and his show-biz supporters threw such big parties, even as people were dying - in numbers just as big, but in slow motion - throughout Africa, and Burma, and North Korea. Oh, that's right: he "felt their pain," and that took care of it, right?

Re:Ill conceived humour

[Reality Master 101]

Have you ever actually filed a home insurance claim? Thought not.

You're probably used to car insurance, which indeed are run by going-to-hell jerks. That's mainly because there's so much fraud in car insurance.

Home insurance is a whole different animal. When I had to file a home insurance claim, dude was offering to give me more money than I actually wanted. I actually turned down a full replacement of wallpaper in our kitchen -- he offered to replace it because one little corner had been damaged.

It might just be my insurance company, but I doubt it. It's just a different deal.

Rhetorical

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Question.

Why can't we get these images from Fallujah?

Re:Over here in Finland (and Scandinavia I bet)

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct about Sweden too, almost all official fireworks have been cancelled although I'm not sure if all the money will be donated (maybe most have been payed for allready and it was too late to cancel the contracts).

Article about it in aftonbladet (in Swedish) here;
http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/nyheter/story /0,2789 ,582756,00.html

Corrected allignment

[KMSelf]

AstroDab, nice concept. I've corrected the allignment and posted results here [iwethey.org].

You're welcome to post these to your own site, crediting DigitalGlobe (as you should your own work) and myself.