Tsunami Satellite Images

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

wow

[scapermoya]

This really puts the disaster into perspective, im shocked.

Re:wow

[Gentlewhisper]

Current death tolls approaching 130k people.

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

Re:wow

[Kiryat Malachi]

I've said it before, I'll say it again.

It's a natural disaster. A large one, to be sure, but the Colombia volcano in 1985 killed around 25,000, Mont Pelee in 1902 killed 25,000, and let's not forget the Tangshan earthquake in 1976, which killed between 250,000 and 650,000 people. There's a qualitative difference between something that happened because Mother Nature got titchy, and something that humans planned and carried out.

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

I've said it before and I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

WWI: 16-18 million.
WWII: 40 million.

On a single day in the American Civil War, approximately 30,000 men were killed.

Feel free to dispute those figures, they vary from source to source. You'll not escape the orders of magnitude.

That's what war is like in the age of modern machinery. 9/11 was murder, not war.

Re:I've said it before and I'll say it again

[MightyMartian]

Well, the fact remains, that under international law, the attack on the Pentagon was not a legal act of war. It was not preceded by a declaration of war, it was not done by soldiers fighting under a flag, and it involved the intentional killing of civilians.

I don't have any problem with the US battling terrorism. Battling terrorism is a good thing, even if it isn't a winnable thing. Overthrowing the Taliban was a good thing. They were nothing more than an arm of a much larger international terrorism ring and were only recognized by three countries as the lawful government of Afghanistan anyways.

Attacking Iraq was a) stupid, b) illegal and c) has mired the US in a mess that no one else wants and it will be pumping money and manpower into for years to come.

Re:I've said it before and I'll say it again

[Chrax]

But my point is that international law means dick. The USA continuously flouts it. The only use it has is justifying the West's desires to go to war with smaller countries.

For example, when the Japanese destroyed most of the Russian Navy in a surprise Sunday Morning attack, the British praised it as a brilliant tactical move. When they did the *exact* same thing to the US, the British called it cowardly, and nowadays would call it illegal. But that doesn't mean a thing to anybody but the citizenry that is

Re:I've said it before and I'll say it again

[MightyMartian]

> But my point is that international law means dick. The USA continuously flouts it. The only use it has
> is justifying the West's desires to go to war with smaller countries.

I agree that the US has flouted international law, but I think the answer is to strengthen international law, and not to promote a gang of international criminals into some sort of pseudo-state by claiming that the attack on a military target like the Pentagon was legitimate.

> For example, when the Japanese destroyed most of

Re:wow

[alexre1]

It's sad that this type of inward looking nationalistic thinking is the norm these days. When will people realize that we are responsible for all of humanity? Does no one teach social responsability anymore? Let me let you in to a little secret here. The rest of the world *is* under an obligation to help SE Asia. Under a *big* obligation. Why? Because of international treaties? Nope. Because of legislation, or UN decisions? Nope. As humans, we are morally responsable for the welfare and well-being of the rest of the world.

As a Christian Libertarian...

[SonicSpike]

As a Christian Libertarian... I half agree with you and halfway don't.

My faith says that yes, we should help our brother in time of need, however my political philosophy says the government shouldn't be the ones to do it.

Legally, internationally, politically we are under NO obligation or responsibility to do such - nor should we be. However since we do have an abundence of wealth, I don't see a problem with the government having am emergency aid fund, or even low interest loans for foreign countries in times of crisis. But this should be used rarely and saved for large scale disasters such as this.

I don't think that the US Gov should dispense money to anyone out there who has a papercut however. The country shouldn't be overly philantropic.

As a Christian, yes I feel obligated to help anyone who needs help when they do - it is just the right thing to do. I would rather give my money to a private fund that I know, respect, and trust to properly distribute my donations. The government is usually the LAST place to trust in terms of spreading goodwill.

Re:wow

[ckaminski]

Oh please, you're comparing apples and automobiles man, not even in the same class. You losing your posh home (by the standards of these people) and car is nothing compared to dying a miserable death from malaria, dysentery or starvation, or lack of potable water.

Not. Even. Fucking. Comparable.

Re:wow

[b0r0din]

Not to nitpick about loss of life, but that's only forty 9/11s, not four hundred.

Although I agree, it's an awful loss.

The worst is that a lot of these deaths could have been prevented. But then, no one can predict mother nature.

Re:wow

[Ilgaz]

9/11: Terrorists
Iraq: USA
This one: Nature

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.

Re:wow

[Omnifarious]

And Saddam took 15-20 years, where we've only had 2 so far. Give it time.

Re:wow

[Anonymous Bullard]

Or one-twentieth of US dickwaving in Vietnam.

Shhh, hush now. You're spoiling it.

When asked "how many died in Vietnam war", nine out of ten Americans give the ballpark of "60,000". The two, perhaps three million Vietnamese deaths don't simply register.

Of course the USA still refuses to accept responsibility for the continuing tragedy caused by the massive Agent Orange contamination that is still killing and causing birth defects among the Vietnamese population.

More recently the US and UK war machines have scattered hundreds of tons of toxic and carcinogenic depleted uranium (used in hardening projectile shells) across Iraq. Does anyone think these two countries will ever take responsibility of the devastating consequenses affecting the current and future generations of Iraqi civilians?

While I can reason the deaths and injuries caused by the Indian Ocean Tsunami to be part of the cost of our existance on a living planet (I say this knowing that close friends of mine lost many friends and relatives, and my own relatives holidaying in Thailand only barely escaped death thanks to help by quick thinking locals), I find no good excuses for sending massive war machines to foreign countries to kill massive numbers of locals and to poison their lands for generations to come.

Re:wow

[BottleCup]

I dont think it is appropriate to make jokes about this catastrophe. I just saw a video footage someone took in Aceh, Indonesia. If you think satelite photos are shocking, think again. If you want to watch this I recommend you go to lokitorrent. Its the KATC tsunami video in wmv format.

The video was taken from the upper level of a 2 storey house (from the balcony to be exact). The view outside shows turbulent water rushing and submerging many houses. Its horrible and looks as if the house is right in the m

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.

Perspective, yes, but not as personal as this:

[Anonymous Coward]

The sattelite images show the extent of damage, but remains impersonal. This picture graphically shows the actual devastation and number of deaths..

http://img145.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img145&image=ruumi ita4ft.jpg [img145.exs.cx]

Yes very graphic.

[Martin Spamer]

As the image formed on the top of my screen, you first notice the smashed buildings. As as I scrolled down I though 'are those bodies ?' and I scrolled further I realised yes there are bodies in there. Eventually you reach the bottom of the screen and the true horror of the situation is shown.

Re:Perspective, yes, but not as personal as this:

[madprof]

After seeing this I feel physically revolted.
Every one of those people could well be someone's brother or sister, or parent....or child....

Dignity in Death.

[The Cydonian]

There's a view fast becoming popular back in India that the international media is using double standards when it comes to showing dead bodies; in 2001, CBS, CNN etc refused to show charred corpses at Ground Zero for privacy and sensitivity reasons, but in 2004, any corpse anywhere is fair game [indianexpress.com].

Then, of course, there are those who vehemently believe you need shock and gore to get aid pouring in.

Re:Dignity in Death.

[Ubergrendle]

Privacy has nothing to do with it. CNN, CBS, FoxNews would film their own mothers being raped if it meant better ratings.

They're afraid of press-corps blacklisting by the Whitehouse, for circumventing 'unofficial' policy.

I am of the believe that the truth can only make you stronger. As horrific as it is for me to sit looking at this picture, I still cannot imagine how painful and terrible it would be to experience this in person.

Donate

[XenonDif]

here [unicef.org]

Re:Perspective, yes, but not as personal as this:

[abelsson]

Horrific. I just donated $150 to the red cross. I had been thinking about it, but it was that image that pushed me over the edge.

Re:Perspective, yes, but not as personal as this:

[jnguy]

God. That image is quite disturbing, but necessary. You make a very good point, that image just made it very personal. Thanks for sharing...

Re:wow

[Compact Dick]

There were at least two other articles pertaining to the earthquake and tsunami.

Re:wow

[LiquidCoooled]

wtf?
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/26/143722 8&tid=99 [slashdot.org]
There are others, slash isn't exactly known for doing things once only.

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 :)

Re:Cisco

[aixou]

Forgive a bit of humor in the midst of tragedy, but it seems that Apple [apple.com] has led the pack yet again, only to be copied by Microsoft.

Seriously though, I think donating a little bit of money is the least one of us can do. It really puts things in perspective when something like this happens.

Re:Cisco

[Richard_at_work]

When the appeal was put out, a post was made on a mailing list I frequent which suggested that all those people who missed out on the Dell server offer a few weeks back might want to think about donating that cash to this cause. All in all, I think we collectivly donated more than £10,000 UKP. Come on people, these guys need it and we have it in excess (even the poorest over here can donate something and hardly feel it), currently the UK government has pledged $96million, while the UK public has don

Re:Cisco

[BeerCat]

The last I saw (on BBC News 24), it was the US people that had donated $70m, while the US government was lagging behind that. Yeh, the people. Boo the government.

Which I think says a lot - there is a big difference between Americans as individuals, and America as a nation state.

Re:Cisco

[Richard_at_work]

I agree, and I should have taken the time to look up US public donations but unfortunately I didnt, so I apologise if anyone takes offense at my post stereotyping the US people.

Re:Cisco

[opec]

What a shame. You people have turned even simple donations into a competition.

Tsunami

[Anonymous Coward]

This is simply amazing. I think that every so often Mother Nature decides she needs to show everyone who's boss, a sort of bitchslap to bring the nations of the world together; if only for a little while.

Re:Tsunami

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone wants to know more about what "Mother Nature" did then I would recommend the wiki entry [wikipedia.org]

Rhetorical

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Question.

Why can't we get these images from Fallujah?

This just in...

[Hobadee]

...President Bush and his International coalition (of which the next largest nation is contributing half of what we are) has just added Mother Nature to his axis of evil, saying that she is helping terrorists, as well as committing terrorist acts herself. Bush has given Mother Nature an ultimatum, telling her to leave this planet within the next 24 hours or we will declare war on her. It is expected that Mother Nature will stay and fight, but looks as if this will be another victory by the Bush administra

Re:Ill conceived humour

[budgenator]

Hard to imagine that too many people living in tin-roofed cardboard shacks, and worrying about where their next meals is going to come from, are going to have property insurance. Now I understand why they are teaching critical thinking in public schools.

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 m

one point about the Sri Lankan pictures...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's worth noting that the pictures show Kalutara, a town about 25 miles south of Colombo, and situated on the west coast of Sri Lanka, which pretty much escaped major damage and loss of life compared to the the south and eastern coastlines.

Flooding caused at least 40 deaths in Kalutara, though...

Re:one point about the Sri Lankan pictures...

[OffTheLip]

The people of Galle, one of the hard hit areas on the west coast, might take exception to your comment about escaping major damage.

Are you stingy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. [nytimes.com]

Re:Are you stingy?

[MvD_Moscow]

USA does not export democracy and freedom. The US does start wars for their own needs (e.g. oil) but not for freedom. And don't start about the US wanting to fight terrorist, if the US really wanted to fight terrorists they should have invaded Saudi Arabia not Iraq. Afterall, in terms of freedom they were on similar levels.

Re:Are you stingy?

[Carewolf]

Actually the US has inserted more corrupt dictatorships than they have inserted democratic governments. The dictators were prefered for many years because they were less likely to turn socialist than a democratic country was.

Re:Are you stingy?

[chialea]

There are of course more, but I just wanted to mention one: Congo. They managed to finally wrest their freedom from Belgium, and the CIA shows up trying to put poison in the president's toothpaste (seriously). It's unclear as to whether the US or Belgium actually were responsible for killing him, but the US has certainly admitted it was going to.

Lea

Re:Are you stingy?

[Mmm coffee]

Freedom exported at gunpoint is not free.

Re:Are you stingy?

[bcmm]

I can't even tell if you are a troll or not...

That really isn't funny.

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:Are you stingy?

[The Dobber]

Nicely said. But I still contend that our priorities are seriously out of whack when we spend $40 million for a elitist party and pledge (initially) $15 million in aid for what can only be one of the worst disasters ever.

I voted for the W both times. He's been pulling some big boners of late though.

Receding Waters?

[MarcQuadra]

I'm a bit confused by the Kalutara series, it appears to show a LOT more beach, but no damage to the buildings. Could this be in that few minutes when the water level dropped before the tsunami hit?

Or is Kalutara not in the direct path and this is after-effect on non-direct impact sites?

A couple more images

[centipetalforce]

http://eobglossary.gsfc.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImage s/images.php3?img_id=16774 [nasa.gov]Very
http://eobglossary.gsfc.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImage s/images.php3 [nasa.gov]Devastating
If you donated to lokitorrent but not this, I don't know what to say to you...

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:So much for clean water....

[Malc]

Have you thought that perhaps most of that discolouration is no more than just sediment such as top soil? It isn't necessarily related to human activity at all.

If I were there, smell would be the least of my worries. I'd be more concerned about things such as cholera, and other miscellaneous tropical diseases and the general environment that means even a simple scratch can become life threatening.

Videos

[Vicsun]

Here [contemporaryinsanity.org] you can find videos of the tsunami captured by tourists.
Here [blogspot.com] you can find torrents of said videos in case the original site dies under the load.

Re:Videos

[adpowers]

Wave of Destruction [waveofdestruction.org] has a lot of photos on their website and large collection of BitTorrent videos [waveofdestruction.org].

FLV format

[hackrobat]

I've converted the videos to Flash Video (FLV) [revise.org] (my blog).

Re:Videos

[Illissius]

The ed2k links work, though.

Helping

[gregbaker]

Perhaps this would be a good time to donate to the Red Cross [redcross.org]? (US [redcross.org], Canadian [redcross.ca], others [google.ca])

The Canadian one, at least, is a fast online credit-card donation. You can print out your tax receipt right away. (hey, before midnight gets it in for this tax year, right?)

Or, there are plenty of other organizations [usaid.gov] that would be happy to receive a donation.

Re:Helping

[adeydas]

Google and Amazon have put up a list of sites too. You may donate to those NGO's too.

Re:Helping

[Angostura]

And http://www.apple.com/ [apple.com] deserves a little bit of kudos for the way it has transformed its home page.

Re:Helping

[mjfrazer]

And Canadian donations to MSF, Red Cross, Oxfam, Care Canada, and two others I cannot recall are matched 1:1 by the Canadian federal government.

Rescue efforts update... and some thoughts

[asliarun]

Speaking as an Indian, a big heartfelt THANKS for all of you who've empathised with the tragedy and have helped the rescue efforts. It's in trying times like these that one's faith in humanity is restored.

Thankfully, in spite of Indian bureacracy being well Indian bureaucracy, rescue and rehabilitation efforts are going on VERY effectively. An enormous number of people in India, be it the government, armed forces, or even the common woman/man is pitching in. Most companies here have setup collection boxes and at the very least, we're donating medicines, soaps, toothbrushes, disinfectants, clothes, utensils, non-perishable food items etc. There's also an army of volunteers who's landed in the disaster struck areas with truckloads of donated stuff and are distributing it to the needy.

Strangely enough, it seems that too many clothes are being donated! A friend of mine is physically helping out with the rescue efforts and he tells me that there's piles and piles of clothes lying around but of little use to anybody. Well, i guess too much help is always better than too little help.

Another thing that amazes me is the resilience of the common man or woman. Here are people living on the edge of poverty, getting hammered everyday with issues like eking out an existence. Perhaps they've scrounged and saved enough to get their daughters married, hidden a few hundred rupees in a hole in the wall. Perhaps they've just bought a shiny new radio or a bicycle. What do they wake up to? A tsunami that takes away their children, their friends, and everything they own. What do they do? Shrug it off eventually and mark it off as karma, god's will, or god's punishment depending on their religion (no, most poor Indians cannot afford the luxuries of athesim or agnosticism). Then, they take it one day at a time and slowly start rebuilding their lives.

You want to see miracles, mental strength, and the answer to life, the universe, and everything? You don't have to look far in times like these.

Tsunami Warning System

[xpeeblix]

While there there has been an International Tsunami Warning system [noaa.gov] in place since 1965, the affected countries were not part of that system and had no mechanism in place to allow for early warning.

NPR [npr.org] has a few [npr.org] good [npr.org] reports [npr.org] on the problem.

Cringely [pbs.org] has a rather interesting solution that does not rely on governmental action, though with a serious flaw. It only relies on earthquake data, which isn't necessarily conclusive, nor the only cause of Tsunami's.

Re:Tsunami Warning System

[EvilStein]

I was reading something earlier about this, and that such a warning system would not be wanted because it could potentially scare off tourists, thus causing financial losses for the areas tourism industry.

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.

Over here in Finland (and Scandinavia I bet)

[Aggrajag]

Most (all?) of the official New Year celebrations and fireworks have been cancelled. The money will be given to aid helping those who suffered from the tsunami.

At the moment there are more than 200 Finns and over 2000 Swedes missing and most likely all of them are dead. To see things in perspective: Finland has a population of 5.2 million, Sweden around 9 million. Everyone with basic math skills can calculate what that would mean if it had happened for tourists from US.

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

[XenonDif]

Meanwhile, Bush is planning to spend $30-$40 million in lavish inaguration festivities [timesonline.co.uk].

Moving at the speed of government

[Galvatron]

Colin Powell stated that he fully expects the eventual US aid to the region to top $1 billion. Over the past few days, aid has been raised from $15 million to $35 million, and now to $350 million. Plus, the military which you are so down on has dispatched a aircraft carrier group to help with physical manpower. Finally, a task force is being dispatched to determine where future funds should be allocated to do the most good.

I'm not a huge fan of Bush by any stretch of the imagination (I voted against him in November), but I can't fault the US government's behavior so far. They authorized a small amount of money to begin with, to help with the most urgent needs (sending food, clearing bodies, and so forth), and over the next few weeks and months will continue to increase the commitment as the specific needs of the countries who have been hurt are ascertained.

The world rallied around the US after 9/11, irrespective of past tensions and difficulties, and I don't think anyone here has forgotten that. We'll do everything within our power to help rebuild those countries devastated by the tsunami, just give us time to get through the bureaucracy, and to make sure our money is going to the right place (someone earlier posted about how in India, so many donations of clothing have been recieved that there are piles of stuff no one wants to wear just lying around. Imagine if the US sent over $100 MILLION of unnecessary clothing).

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.

It was so much easier to be blase about it

[Anonymous Coward]

...or make poor tsunami jokes when there were no pictures that showed the magnitude of the tragedy.

Seeing the BBC report that showed the young coupld silently carrying their two dead children and seeing the picture of the beach covered with debris -- and then realizing the "debris" consisted of human bodies -- brings the point home that real humans suffered a real tragedy halfway across the world.

Damn, I'm getting tears in my eyes just remembering those pictures.

images and video links

[spoonyfork]

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

Why not warn people ourselves?

[Futurepower(R)]

Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 22:04:31 -0200
From: Futurepower [futurepower_usa (-AT-) yahoo.com.br]
To: "U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center" [sedas (-AT-) neis.cr.usgs.gov]
Subject: NEIC: Why didn't you warn about the Tsunamis?

Question:

I haven't seen this discussed anywhere.

Why didn't the NEIC call the U.S. State Department, so that they could warn people about the Tsunamis?

The earthquake position and magnitude was known 6 hours before the waves arrived in Thailand, I understand. Wouldn't almost every person's life have been saved if Thailand, for example, had had warning?

Michael

_____________


Reply:

Michael,

Phone calls were placed to the State Department operations center, the White House situation room, the U.N. Department of Humanitarian Affairs, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, as well as several other organizations within 90 minutes of the occurrance of this earthquake.

The problem is the absence of local warning systems in the countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. There were no systems or response plans in place to warn the local populace.

Stuart Sipkin
USGS/NEIC

_____________


Stuart,

I have a suggestion for a local tsunami warning system. There continues to be an enormous amount of earthquake activity in the area around Indonesia. It seems likely that there will be another big earthquake. Next time there is an earthquake that is likely to cause a tsunami, call me, any time of night or day. I will promise to call at least 30 hotels within 2 hours. I will promise to get 10 friends involved. They will promise to call 30 hotels each, also. We would each take a different country.

My suggestion is that we would use Google to find hotels, for example in Sri Lanka [google.com.br]. This is one of the hotels I found there, a 5-star hotel with more than 400 rooms:

Galadari Hotel
The Businessman's Home in Sri Lanka
64, Lotus Road,
Colombo 1.
Sri Lanka.
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
E-Mail: galadari (-AT-) sri.lanka.net

"The Galadari Hotel is in the heart of the city in Colombo, over looking the beautiful Indian ocean."

Big hotels answer their phones 24 hours a day. Presumably there is a staff of at least 200 at that hotel, for three shifts. I think if one person were told, everyone else would know soon. They don't want their family and friends and neighbors near the water to die, and they know how to reach them, even if they have to ride a motorbike to those who don't have phones.

There are two easy ways to prove that a call about an earthquake is not a hoax. I would tell the person who answered the phone that it is an emergency and I need to talk to a manager. I would tell the manager to check the USGS web site at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ [usgs.gov]. Any 5-Star hotel, and most others of any size, have internet access. I would also tell the manager that, if the water at the beach receded, people had only a few minutes to get to safety. I would ask the manager to get staff members to call radio and TV stations in their area.

You said in your message, "The problem is the absence of local warning systems in the countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. There were no systems or response plans in place to warn the local populace."

It seems to me that this is a workable plan for a local tsunami warning system. It wouldn't cost much. Using Skype [skype.com], a two minute call to any land line phone in Sri Lanka is about 40 U.S. cents, for example. Using iConnectHere [iconnecthere.com]'s most expensive service, a two minute call is 80 cents.

Re:Why not warn people ourselves?

[gatkinso]

1) USGS knew there was an earthquake, but not a tsunami. Plus they *did* make the calls to the appropriate people specified in their operations plan.

2) Had you called a hotel with such a warning they would have called you a kook (or whatever the word for kook is in the various languages) and hung up.

3) Even had it worked, way to go you just saved all the tourists lives but the natives would have still suffered horribly as most of the areas hit were not tourist attractions. I life saced is a life saved

Worldwide Earthquake Activity

[sunsrin]

in the last seven days here [usgs.gov]. The Andaman and Nicobar islands has experienced more than 60 aftershocks !
In related news [telegraphindia.com], the tsunami split one of the islands in Andaman & Nicobar into two. Here is what one of the officials say ..

Another island, Trinkat, appears to have been split in two, said S.B. Deol, inspector-general of Andaman and Nicobar. "Part of the island has been submerged, while one half is visible," he said.

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]

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.

Re:Corrected allignment

[AstroDrabb]

They look nice. I didn't credit "my work" because I did it in two minutes, hence the mis-alignment. Also, would I be allowed to credit modified versions of these images without permission from the copyright holder? Or are the original images public domain?

Please donate

[rsax]

If you are worried that your donations won't reach the right people then consider donating to CARE [care.org]. They seem to have some of the lowest administration costs [careusa.org] among relief agencies. Over 90% goes to affected victims.

Re:don't hear too many

[oz_canetoad]

From the CIA world book on Sri Lanka;

Buddhist 70%, Hindu 15%, Christian 8%, Muslim 7% (1999)

I can see why you wouldn't, but continue to play your banjo...

Re:Don't get me wrong, but..

[Vo0k]

we can do nothing to prevent, only to try to mitigate.

or send a warning early enough. With 15-minute warning (easy for science/engineering, harder for bureaucracy/business) the casualities could have been halved

Re:Don't get me wrong, but..

[Kiryat Malachi]

That would fall under mitigation. In fact, that would be the definition of mitigation - to lessen the severity of some event or force.

Re:Philosophy 101

[Kiryat Malachi]

Well, speaking for the significant number of people who believe in some form of free will, either with a god in the picture or without one: your response is totally vapid Philosophy 101 bullshit. I'm not looking for a philosophical argument regarding free will; I'm pointing out that the cause does matter when considering the importance of an event.

I believe you're full of shit and looking for an argument. Now, argue my point on the merits of the point, not on free will, or fuck off and troll elsewhere.

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

Re:Philosophy 101

[Kiryat Malachi]

1: I'm not at all convinced that's a common belief these days, but yes, if you believe there's no such thing as free will, then the two are directly comparable.

2: If there is a God, and he gave us free will, he isn't culpable for our actions: the act of giving us free will made us responsible for our own actions. If you assume he maintained any right to overrule our actions if he sufficiently dislikes them, you actually don't believe in free will - you believe in determinism with the ability for God "no

Re:Philosophy 101

[Kiryat Malachi]

Because if God overrules free will, even once, he's made the entire thing meaningless. If he, even once, says "Hey, humans, I'll save you from the consequences of your collective choices", he's just made free will meaningless, because its no longer free - its free 'to a point'. By giving us free will, God inherently relinquishes both his right and his duty to overrule our actions.

Trying to make a valid philosophical argument by comparing police to God is bunk, man. The police aren't omnipotent, omniscient, and they aren't the ones who have the ability to decide whether or not we get free will. Of course, anyone who stands by is partly culpable. However, if God intervenes, he destroys the idea of free will. The only way to maintain free will is to stay out of it; as such, by rigorously asserting free will, God becomes non-culpable - he has, in essence, said "I will not interfere, because the consequence of interfering once is to mean that I must take responsibility for all of your actions that I allow to occur." It is, in an odd sort of way, similar to the search engine DMCA exemption - software that indexes material is legal and non-culpable, even if it indexes illegal material, except if it ever filters out some undesirable material on basis of copyright or legality, at which point it immediately becomes culpable for all such infringing material found on the service.

This is just one more reason why God is a bunch of crap. Study the origin of ethics and look into hard vs. soft command, and you'll begin to come towards my point of view, which is that ethics in and of themselves point to the non-existence of God via contradiction.

Re:Don't get me wrong, but..

[Kiryat Malachi]

Really?

So a hypothetical photorealistic painting of an item isn't any different than the (indistinguishable) photograph of that item, despite it having required far more technique, time, and intent? Is it any different than your memory of the original item? Intent matters in art as well.

Even better, let's take two blank white canvases, side by side. One is blank because the artist hasn't gotten around to painting it. The other is blank because its Kasimir Malevich's "White Square on White", on loan fr

You're missing the difference.

[raehl]

40,000+ people die in car accidents every year. Thousands are killed in floods every few years. Millions die every year from famine.

Death, and to a lesser extent, death from natural disasters, is pretty common. A lot of death from a natural disaster is less newsworthy than a little death from a terrorist attack.

There's also an information problem - it was a lot easier to get information out of new york on 9/11 than it is to get information out of a devastated remote area in Thailand.

per capita counts are unusable

[klang]

Denmark: 300M DKR (USD$55M) at a population of 5.4M .. that's $10,14 per capita ..
USA: USD$45M at a population of 293M .. that's $0,15 per capita

both theese sets of numbers are what the Government provides, not what is collected privately. (no taxreductions are given for donations in Denmark)

I guess that every country will give what it can.

Re:A thing I don't understand

[Kiryat Malachi]

Of course, they can't possibly be making huge amounts of private donations, can they?

We have no control over our government these days. If you haven't figured that out in the past 20 years, welcome to the next 200.

Re:A thing I don't understand

[Angostura]

Are there any figures available for private U.S donations? The UK figure currently stands at GBP 32million and is rising rapidly - pretty astonishing for a country with a population of around 60million.

Re:A thing I don't understand

[Kiryat Malachi]

I couldn't find any figures for even a rough total of US private donations, but, as of 12/29, American donations to the Red Cross *alone* stood at USD18 million. That does not count donations to other charities or the last day and a half of donations. Pfizer alone (corporations count as private to me) donated 10 million, plus an additional 25 million in medical supplies.

Re:Engineering speculation...

[Capt'n Hector]

I hate to say it, but if everybody from a town dies, there's not much use in that town being its original size.

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:do we know what actually caused this?

[THEbwana]

Well - I live in Europe and my guess is that the media will soon find a way to blame:
0. Bush (he's gotta have something to do with this, right?)
1. Global warming (since its clearly happening much more often now compared to last year; 1 tsunami compared to 0 during last year).

Re:Deaths could be in the millions

[pclminion]

This is probably going to be the biggest natural disaster in human history.

Not likely.

On November 12, 1970, a cyclone struck Bangladesh and killed 300,000 people. In the year 1991, 139,000 died on April 30 (another cyclone). And just over a month later another cyclone struck killing another 126,000. See here [msn.com]

There are mostly unverifiable records that 830,000 people died in the earthquake which struck Shaanzi (in China) in 1556. And again in China, the Tangshan earthquake of 1976 killed (officially) 2

Reality Check

[SoupaFly]

Get your facts [consumeraffairs.com] straight next time. All money donated specifically for 9/11 was allocated for exactly that. Here [cnn.com] is a follow-up on the long-term use of remaining funds.

The amount of money donanted after 9/11 was large [christianitytoday.com] in relation to the need. That seems to be less likely with this disaster.

Re:Over 120 000 people lost their lives

[jericho4.0]

I'm continually dismayed by efforts to spin critisism of Israels forign policy into anti-Semitism, blatent at that.

This report [fas.org], backs up the factual statement that Israel has been the biggest recipiant of US $ than any nation since 1976, and has recived, by far, the largest total amount of any nation.

Oh, and also that Jews are planning to take over the world via Hollywood.

Re:Make that *$350M*, fuckwad.

[gothzilla]

AFTER being chastized by the world, AFTER it became known that Bush's 2nd inaugural party was going to cost $40 million (yes, 2nd party). Raising the amount isn't being done out of true charity for the hundreds of thousands of people who died or for the millions who lost everything, it's being done as damage control. That's whats so sad about it.

Slamming the Red Cross?

[valkraider]

Not exactly. The RedCross responds to ALL disasters and many more places where relief is needed. The only error was that many people expected their donations to go directly to 9/11 only.

In response the Red Cross changed their donation policies and guidelines to better reflect what actually happens with the money.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/redcross_06-0 5 -02.html [pbs.org]
http://www.redcross.org/press/disaster/ds_pr/02060 5dsfunds.html [redcross.org]

Basically now, if you give to the "Disaster Relief Fund" they us