Asia Quake’s Tsunamis Kill Over 11,000

 Ministry of Information said 32,600 but may be upt o 35,000

Asia Struggles As Death Toll Hits 44,000

50 minutes ago   Top Stories - AP


By ANDI DJATMIKO, Associated Press Writer

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Mourners in Sri Lanka used their bare hands to dig graves Tuesday while hungry islanders in Indonesia turned to looting in the aftermath of Asia's devastating tsunamis. Thousands more bodies were found in Indonesia, dramatically increasing the death toll across 11 nations to around 44,000.


AP Photo

   

Emergency workers who reached Aceh province at the northern tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island found that 10,000 people had been killed in a single town, Meulaboh, said Purnomo Sidik, national disaster director at the Social Affairs Ministry.


Another 9,000 were confirmed dead so far in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, and surrounding towns, he said. Soldiers and volunteers combed seaside districts and dug into rubble of destroyed houses to seek survivors and retrieve the dead amid unconfirmed reports that other towns along Aceh's west coast had been demolished.


With aid not arriving quick enough, desperate residents in Meulaboh and other towns in Aceh � a region that was unique in that it was struck both by Sunday's massive quake and the killer waves that followed � began to loot.


"It is every person for themselves here," district official Tengku Zulkarnain told el-Shinta radio station from the area.


"People are looting, but not because they are evil, but they are hungry," said Red Cross official Irman Rachmat in Banda Aceh, where houses and the city's shopping mall were leveled by the quake.


In Sri Lanka, the toll also mounted significantly. Around 1,000 people were dead or missing from a train that was flung off its tracks when the gigantic waves hit. Rescuers pulled 204 bodies from the train's eight carriages � reduced to twisted metal � and cremated or buried them Tuesday next to the railroad track that runs along the coast.


"Is this the fate that we had planned for? My darling, you were the only hope for me," cried one man for his dead girlfriend � his university sweetheart � as Buddhist monks held prayer nearby.


More than 18,700 people died in Sri Lanka, more than 4,000 in India and more than 1,500 in Thailand, with numbers expected to rise. Scores were also killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives. The giant waves raced nearly 3,000 miles to east Africa, causing deaths in Somalia, Tanzania and Seychelles. The Indonesian vice president's estimate that his country's coastlines held up to 25,000 victims would bring the potential toll up to 50,000.


Europeans desperately sought relatives missing from holidays in Southeast Asia � particularly Thailand, where bodies littered the once crowded beach resorts. Near the devastated Similan Beach and Spa Resort, where mostly German tourists were staying, a naked corpse hung suspended from a tree Tuesday as if crucified.


A blond two-year-old Swedish boy, Hannes Bergstroem, found sitting alone on a road in Thailand was reunited with his uncle, who saw the boy's picture on a Web site.


"This is a miracle, the biggest thing that could happen," said the uncle, who identified himself as Jim, after flying from his home country to Thailand to reach Hannes at the hospital were the boy was being treated. The boy's mother and grandmother were missing, while his father and grandfather were reportedly at another hospital.


The vacationing former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was evacuated by Sri Lankan military helicopter from the hotel he was trapped by flooding in the south of the country. In Thailand, Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova, who appeared on the cover of 2003 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, was injured and her photographer boyfriend Simon Atlee was missing, Atlee's agent said.


So far, more than 80 Westerners have been confirmed dead across the region � including 11 Americans. But a British consulate official in Thailand warned that hundreds more foreign tourists were likely killed in the country's resorts.


Sunday's massive quake of 9.0 magnitude off the Indonesian island of Sumatra sent 500-mph waves surging across the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal in the deadliest known tsunami since the one that devastated the Portuguese capital of Lisbon in 1755 and killed an estimated 60,000 people.


Amid the devastation, however, were some miraculous stories of survival. In Malaysia, a 20-day-old baby was found alive on a floating mattress. She and her family were later reunited. A Hong Kong couple vacationing in Thailand clung to a mattress for six hours.


In Sri Lanka, more than 300 people crammed into the Infant Jesus Church at Orrs Hill, located on high ground from their ravaged fishing villages. Families and childres slept on pews and the cement floor.

   



"We had never seen the sea looking like that. It was like as if a calm sea had suddenly become a raging monster," said one woman, Haalima, recalling the giant wave that swept away her 5-year-old grandson, Adil.

Adil was making sandcastles with his younger sister, Reeze, while Haalima sat in her home Sunday morning. Haalima said the girl ran to her complaining that waves had crushed their castles, then came screams and water entered the home. "When we looked, there was no shore anymore and no Adil," she said.

Death was so widespread in Sri Lanka that the government waived rules requiring an autopsy before burial. In Muslim villages in the east of the otherwise Buddhist-dominated island, some survivors, lacking shovels, used giant iron forks used for communal cooking and their hands to scrape out graves for several dozen victims, half of them children.

"The toll is going up and I will not be surprised it reaches 20,000 to 25,000," said Nimal Hettiarchchi, director of Sri Lanka's National Disaster Management Center.

Relief workers warned that survivors could face outbreaks of disease, including malaria and cholera. "Our biggest fear at the moment is the shortage of drinking water," said Janaka Gunewardene, a director at Sri Lanka's disaster management center, adding that waterways and well across Sri Lanka's northern, eastern and southern coasts were contaminated, said.

A new danger emerged Tuesday: the floods uprooted land mines in Sri Lanka � a nation torn by a decades-old war with Tamil separatists in the north. The mines now threatened aid workers and survivors, UNICEF (news - web sites) said.

The first international deliveries of food were being delivered to ravaged areas, as humanitarian agencies � accustomed to disasters in one or two countries at time � tried to organize to help on an unprecedented geographic scale, across 11 nations.

The disaster could be history's costliest, with "many billions of dollars" of damage, said U.N. Undersecretary Jan Egeland, who is in charge of emergency relief coordination.

A dozen trucks loaded with more than 160 tons of rice, lentils and sugar sent by the U.N. World Food Progam, left Tuesday from Colombo for Sri Lanka's southern and eastern coasts, and a second shipment was planned for overnight.

UNICEF officials said about 175 tons of rice arrived in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and six tons of medical supplies were to arrive by Thursday. Helicopters in India rushed medicine to stricken areas. In Sri Lanka, the Health Ministry dispatched 300 physicians to the disaster zone by helicopter.

Tsunami Death Toll Climbs to 52,000

34 minutes ago   Top Stories - AP


By ANDI DJATMIKO, Associated Press Writer

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Mourners in Sri Lanka used their bare hands to dig graves Tuesday while hungry islanders in Indonesia turned to looting in the aftermath of Asia's devastating tsunamis. Thousands more bodies were found in Indonesia, dramatically increasing the death toll across 11 nations to more than 52,000.


AP Photo


Reuters
Slideshow: Indonesia Quake Sparks Fatal Tidal Waves


   

Indonesia's Health Ministry said in a statement that 27,178 people were confirmed killed on Sumatra island, the territory closest to the epicenter of Sunday's earthquake, which sent a giant tsunami rolling across the Indian Ocean.


The ministry statement said this figure did not include data from districts on Sumatra's hard-hit western coast, including the town of Meulaboh � meaning that the final death toll will almost certainly rise significantly.


Earlier, the country's national disaster director, Purnomo Sidik, said 10,000 people were killed in Meulaboh alone.


There was no immediate explanation why the Health Ministry statement did not count the figure given by Sidik or figures from other parts of the west coast.

This is so horrible...

I just gave some money to the Red Cross. I think people should help if they can.

Tsunami Death Toll Soars Past 58,000

41 minutes ago   World - AP Asia


By LELY T. DJUHARI, Associated Press Writer

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Thousands of bodies lay rotting and unidentified on lawns and streets of battered Sumatra island Wednesday and authorities called out bulldozers to dig mass graves, as the number killed in a mammoth earthquake and tsunami soared above 58,000 with tens of thousands still missing. The U.N. health agency warned that disease could double the toll yet again.


AP Photo


AP Photo
Slideshow: Indonesia Quake Sparks Fatal Tidal Waves

Death toll from tidal waves mounts to around 44,
(AP Video)

   

Across a dozen countries, millions of people whose homes were swept away or wrecked by raging walls of water Sunday struggled to find shelter.


"My mother, no word! My sisters, brothers, aunt, uncle, grandmother, no word!" yelled a woman at a makeshift morgue in Lhokseumawe, Indonesia. "Where are they? Where are they? I don't know where to start looking."


Along India's southeastern coast, hospital teams stood by to help the injured, but three days after the disaster still spent most of their time tabulating the dead as ambulances hauled in more bodies. A French cultural center in Thailand's capital provided clothes and food for tourist families left with nothing when the sea battered southern beach resorts.


One of the most dramatic illustrations of nature's force came to light Tuesday when reporters reached the scene of a Sri Lankan train carrying beachgoers that was swept into a marsh by a wall of water Sunday, killing at least 802. Eight rust-colored cars lay in deep pools of water in a ravaged palm grove, torn off wheels and baggage scattered among the twisted rails.


"Is this the fate that we had planned for? My darling, you were the only hope for me," a young man cried for one of the train victims � his university sweetheart � as Buddhist monks prayed nearby.


Indonesia's Health Ministry said in a statement early Wednesday that thousands more bodies had been recovered, raising to more than 30,000 the number of confirmed deaths in parts of Sumatra island, the territory closest to the epicenter of the quake that sent tsunami waves rolling across the Indian Ocean. The count did not include a report of thousands more dead in the region around one coastal city.


Sri Lanka listed 21,700 people dead, India 4,400 and Thailand 1,500, with the toll expected to rise. A total of more than 300 were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania, Seychelles and Kenya.


Officials had not yet counted the dead in two zones that suffered the brunt of both the earthquake and the tsunami that followed: the west coast of Sumatra and India's remote Andaman and Nicobar archipelagos just north of Sumatra.


Purnomo Sidik, national disaster director at Indonesia's Social Affairs Ministry, said 10,000 people had been reported killed in and around Meulaboh, a poor Sumatran town where most people are fishermen or workers on palm oil plantations. In India, police said 8,000 people were missing and feared dead on the two island chains.


Television footage from overflights of Meulaboh and other parts of Sumatra's west coast showed thousands of homes underwater. Refugees fleeing the coast described surviving on little more than coconuts before reaching Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province on Sumatra's northern tip, which itself was largely flattened by the quake.


"The sea was full of bodies," said one refugee, Sukardi Kasdi, who sailed a small boat to Banda Aceh to seek help for his family in Surang.


He said his family had nothing to eat but coconuts. "I don't know how long everyone else will survive," he said.


With aid not arriving quickly enough, desperate people in Meulaboh and other towns in Aceh were stealing whatever food they could find, officials said.


"People are looting, but not because they are evil, but they are hungry," said Red Cross official Irman Rachmat in Banda Aceh.


Bulldozers stood ready Wednesday in Banda Aceh to bury the thousands of dead bodies that littered the streets and lined the front lawns of government offices. With the threat of disease on the rise and few ways to identify the dead, officials said they had no choice to but start burying them in mass graves, said Col. Achmad Yani Basuki. "We will start digging the mass graves today," he said.


Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, a military spokesman, said that naval ships were headed for the west coast with tons of food, water and medicine. He also said the convoy would include a portable hospital.

   



"We have very sketchy information about how many died there and the extent of the devastation. We're having extraordinary problems communicating there," Sjamsoeddin said.

The flooding uprooted land mines in Sri Lanka � torn for years by a civil war � threatening to kill or maim aid workers and survivors attempting to return to what's left of their homes.

Aid groups struggled to mount what they described as the largest relief operation the world has ever seen, and to head off the threat of cholera and malaria epidemics that could break out where water supplies are polluted with bodies and debris.

Dr. David Nabarro, head of crisis operations for the World Health Organization (news - web sites), warned that disease could take as many lives as Sunday's devastation.

"The initial terror associated with the tsunamis and the earthquake itself may be dwarfed by the longer term suffering of the affected communities," he told reporters at the U.N. agency's offices in Geneva.

A government official in India said Sunday's devastation had overwhelmed authorities, who were only now getting relief operations under control and starting to address health concerns.

"It was all sudden and unexpected. There were just too many bodies to recover," Veera Shanmuga Moni said. "Now that we are close to finishing that job, we will now take care of sanitation and supply of clean water."

The United States, Japan, Australia and other nations pledged millions of dollars to help the relief effort, and some sent military transport planes and helicopters to carry medical teams and emergency supplies.

In southern Thailand's Phang Nga province, where resorts had been packed with thousands of tourists from Europe and elsewhere when the tsunami hit, soldiers and volunteers were still finding bodies lying bloated and rotting in the tropical sun.

Survivors lined up at airports to leave the country, many without relatives or lovers they had come with.

"I saw many kids perish. I saw parents trying to hold them but it was impossible. It was hell," said Karl Kalteka of Munich, Germany, who lost his girlfriend in the torrent.

Amid the devastation, however, there were miraculous stories of survival. In Malaysia, a 20-day-old baby was found alive on a floating mattress and was reunited with her family.

In Thailand, 2-year-old Hannes Bergstroem, who was found dazed and alone after the waves hit, was claimed by an uncle after his photograph was posted on the Internet.

The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported that the boy's mother and grandmother were missing, but later media reports said he was reunited with his grandmother. His father and grandfather were believed to be in another hospital in Thailand, but their exact location and conditions were not immediately known.

A U.N. agency has said that one-third of the disaster's victims were children.

They are saying the death toll could be double that and at least a 1/3 to 1/2 of the death toll are children.

A generation lost.  How truly sad and tragic.

Death toll rises to 67,000 tsunami victims

1 hour, 17 minutes ago   Top Stories - AP


By LELY T. DJUHARI, Associated Press Writer

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Cargo planes touched down with promised aid Wednesday, bearing everything from lentils to water purifiers to help survivors facing the threat of epidemic after this week's quake-tsunami catastrophe. The first Indonesian military teams reached the devastated west coast of Sumatra island, finding thousands of bodies and hiking southern Asia's death toll to more than 67,000.


AP Photo


Reuters
Slideshow: Indonesia Quake Sparks Fatal Tidal Waves


   

Town after town along the Sumatran coast was covered with mud and sea water, with homes flattened or torn apart, an Associated Press reporter saw on a helicopter overflight with the military commander of the island's Aceh province. The only signs of life were a handful of villagers scavenging for food on the beach.


Western Sumatra suffered a double blow in Sunday's disaster, shattered both by the most powerful earthquake in 40 years and perhaps the deadliest tsunami in recorded history, which wreaked destruction across a dozen nations.


"The damage is truly devastating," Maj. Gen. Endang Suwarya said. "Seventy-five percent of the west coast is destroyed and some places it's 100 percent. These people are isolated and we will try and get them help."


The first military teams reached the devastated fishing town of Meulaboh on Sumatra's coast, finding some 3,700 bodies � bringing Indonesia's toll to more than 36,200. That toll was likely to rise as more bodies are found. One official on Tuesday estimated that as many as 10,000 people were dead in Meulaboh alone.


From East Africa to southern Asia, chances faded of finding more survivors of Sunday's massive, quake-driven walls of water. Tens of thousands of people were still missing. German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder said 1,000 Germans were unaccounted for.


"We have to fear that a number of Germans clearly in the three-digit numbers will be among the dead," Schroeder told reporters. Currently, 26 Germans have been confirmed dead.


"We have little hope, except for individual miracles," Chairman Jean-Marc Espalioux of the Accor hotel group said of the search for thousands of tourists and locals missing from beach resorts of southern Thailand � including more than 2,000 Scandinavians.


Sri Lanka on Wednesday listed more than 22,400 people dead, India close to 7,000 � with 8,000 missing and feared dead. Thailand put its toll at more than 1,600. A total of more than 300 were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya.


Millions were homeless in the disaster, contending with hunger and the threat of disease, which the U.N. health agency said could double the toll. Along India's southern coast, paramedics began vaccinating 65,000 tsunami survivors in Tamil Nadu state against cholera, typhoid, hepatitis A and dysentery, said Gagandeep Singh Bedi, a top government administrator.


"We have accelerated disposing of bodies to minimize the risk of an epidemic. Also, we have started spraying bleaching powder on the beaches from where the bodies have been recovered," said Veera Shanmuga Moni, a top administrator of Tamil Nadu's Nagappattinam district.


At Banda Aceh, the wrecked capital of Indonesia's Aceh province, bulldozers dug mass graves for thousands of corpses lining the streets and lawns as authorities hurried to get the dead in the ground.


Wildlife enthusiasts in Sri Lanka noted their surprise in seeing no evidence of large-scale deaths of animals, suggesting they had safely made it to high ground.


"Maybe what we think is true, that animals have a sixth sense," said Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne, whose Jetwing Eco Holidays runs a hotel in the Yala National Park.


Aid groups struggled to mount what they described as the largest relief operation the world has seen, and to head off the threat of cholera and malaria epidemics that could break out where water supplies are polluted with bodies and debris.


In Sri Lanka, four planes arrived in the capital bringing a surgical hospital from Finland, a water purification plant from Germany, doctors and medicine from Japan and aid workers from Britain, the Red Cross said.


Supplies that included 175 tons of rice and 100 doctors reached Sumatra's Banda Aceh. But with aid not arriving quickly enough, desperate people in towns across Sumatra stole whatever food they could find, officials said.

   



Widespread looting also was reported in Thailand's devastated resort islands of Phuket and Phi Phi, where European and Australian tourists left valuables behind in wrecked hotels when they fled � or were swept away by � the torrents.

An international airlift was under way to ferry critical aid and medicine to Phuket and to take home shellshocked travelers. Jets from France and Australia were among the first to touch down at the island's airport. Greece, Italy, Germany and Sweden planned similar flights.

The world's biggest reinsurer, Germany's Munich Re, estimated the damage to buildings and foundations in the affected regions would be at least $13.6 billion.

Donations for recovery efforts came in from all parts of the globe.

The governments of the United States, Australia and Japan pledged a combined $100 million while taxi drivers in Singapore put donation tins in their cars and volunteers in Thailand text-messaged aquaintances to give blood to the Red Cross.

In Thailand, rescuers combed the beaches and islands Wednesday for missing tourists and locals swept away by earthquake-powered tidal waves.

Some 30 rescue workers from Sweden, Germany and Taiwan were helping the Thais comb the worst-hit areas as bodies were still washing up on several beaches three days after the waves struck.

Although the toll was expected to soar, a total of 473 foreigners of 36 nationalities were confirmed killed, the Interior Ministry's Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said. Victims included 54 from Sweden, 43 from Britain and 20 Americans.

They were among thousands of Western and Asian holiday-makers packing hotels and bungalows during the height of the tourist season when killer waves struck Sunday.

Sweden's Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds said "we fear than many of (the missing Swedes) will not be found." Some 1,500 Swedes are missing, 200 Finns, 200 Danes and hundreds of Norwegians, according to reports from Scandinavian capitals.

There was an Earthquake in China a few centuries ago that killed just over a million, worst earthquake ever recorded in terms of human costs IIRC.

Originally posted by Mangudai The prime minister said that this was the worst catastroph of our time. The UN says it's one of the worst in history What other Tsunami-earthquake catastrophies have occured in history, comparable to this one?

from Wikipedia:

• 830,000 - Shansi earthquake (China, 1556)
• 400,000 - Tangshan earthquake (China, 1976)
• 200,000 - Xining earthquake (China, 1927)
• 200,000 - Gansu earthquake (China, 1920)
• 140,000 - Great Kanto earthquake (Japan, 1923)
• 100,000 - Messina earthquake (Italy, 1908)
• 100,000 - 1755 Lisbon earthquake (Portugal, 1755)
• 82,000 (ongoing) - Indian Ocean earthquake, (Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and other countries, 2004)
• 80,000 - Shemakha earthquake (Caucasus, 1667)
• 77,000 - Tabriz earthquake (Iran, 1727)
• 70,000 - Gansu earthquake (China, 1932)
• 66,000 - Peru earthquake (1970)
• 60,000 - Sicily earthquake (1693)
• 60,000 - Quetta earthquake (Pakistan, 1935)
• 50,000 - Calabria earthquake (Italy, 1783)
• 50,000 - Iran earthquake (1990)
• 32,700 - Erzincan earthquake (Turkey, 1939)
• 31,000 - Bam earthquake (Iran, 2003)
• 25,000 - Spitak earthquake (Armenia, 1988)
• 23,000 - Guatemala earthquake (1976)
• 20,000 - Gujarat earthquake (India, 2001)
• 20,000 - Valpara�so earthquake (Chile, 1960)

Up to over 80,000 according to CNN.com....