** Tuesday, December 28, 2004 __
Currently Feeling*
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28 December 2004 - CHANNEL NEWS ASIA
Massive relief effort gets underway as Asia's tsunami toll nears 24,000
COLOMBO : The biggest humanitarian relief operation ever mounted was underway Tuesday along Asia's devastated shores as the death toll from a massive earthquake and the tidal waves it unleashed was predicted to hit 45,000.
With the scale of the catastrophe still unfolding the confirmed death toll was approaching 25,000 in nine countries - but Indonesia warned that it alone could have suffered up to 20,000 more fatalities on top of its official figure of 4,725 deaths.
Indonesia's Vice President Yusuf Kalla, who is in charge of coordinating relief efforts, said he estimated that "21,000 to 25,000 people" had been killed.
The Indonesian toll keeps rising as contact is restored with devastated coastal areas.
The quake, the biggest in 40 years at 9.0 on the Richter scale, ruptured the Indian Ocean seabed off Indonesia's Sumatra island, sending huge waves of death thousands of kilometres to kill and destroy in countries around southern and southeast Asia and even in Africa.
More than one million people have been displaced in the disaster, the International Red Cross said, as hopes faded for many thousands more still missing and fears grew that disease could unleash more tragedy.
Horrific scenes of destruction met emergency teams as bodies piled up by the hour in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Maldives and Myanmar, while international aid agencies rushed food and clothing to hundreds of thousands left homeless.
As survivors were evacuated from stricken areas across Asia, the full horror of carnage wrought by the tidal waves emerged: babies torn from their parents' hands, children and the elderly hurled out to sea from their homes, entire villages swept away.
Hundreds of rescue ships, helicopters and planes were mobilised to evacuate tourists from wrecked resorts and airlift stricken victims to hospitals already overflowing with the injured and corpses.
UN disaster relief coordinator Jan Egeland told a press conference at UN headquarters in New York that relief operations would be the biggest ever as the destruction was not confined to one country or region.
"There are thousands of dead people, and there are tens of thousands of dead animals. The people should be buried and the animals should be destroyed and disposed of before they infect the drinking water. It's a massive operation."
"The cost of the devastation will be in the billions of dollars. It would probably be many billions of dollars," he said.
In Sri Lanka, where nearly 12,000 people were killed, the country is banking on 2,000 Indian medical workers and planeloads of other foreign relief to help it stave off disease from thousands of decomposing bodies.
Drinking water wells along the country's coastal regions were badly contaminated with sea water that left a massive trail of destruction on the island, government minister Susil Premajayantha said.
"We are asking mainly for medical supplies from our foreign friends," Premajayantha said. "We need things like water purification tablets and safe drinking water. We also need equipment to clean water wells."
Police along the hardest hit areas have begun mass burials of unidentified decomposed bodies as the government waived normal legal procedures to dispose of the thousands of bodies piling up at rural hospitals.
"We have about 375,000 families displaced," Agriculture Minister Anura Dissanayake said. "This means we have a serious challenge to ensure that diseases don't spread in place where we locate these refugees."
A spokeswoman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva said that there were one million people displaced in Sri Lanka alone and 29,000 more in Thailand.
Indonesia's Aceh province bore the brunt of the temblor, hit at point-blank range and then battered by a tsunami.
An AFP reporter among the first to reach the province's main city Banda Aceh, which has been in blackout since the quake struck, described a scene of death and ruin, with hundreds of bodies and pulverised buildings.
Bloodied corpses covered by plastic sheets lay rotting on the ground at an Indonesian Red Cross office in Lambaro on the northern outskirts of Banda Aceh.
Police said there were 500 bodies at the centre.
In southern India vultures gathered as survivors grimly buried or burnt their dead as the death toll rose to more than 6,800, with thousands more missing.
In the worst-hit Indian state Tamil Nadu, fisherman A. Ravi wept as he recalled watching his family, including four children, swept away as his village was flattened.
"We went fishing in the early morning and a few hours later the water started swirling around us and suddenly the level went down so sharply we could see the seabed," said Ravi.
"Then I saw a huge sheet of water going towards the shore...when I got back I found my village under water and my family gone," he said.
The Indian death toll included about 3,000 in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, close to the quake's epicentre where tens of thousands of people were still unaccounted for.
Thousands of people were fleeing the coasts of the islands after fresh tremors hit Monday and meteorologists warned aftershocks could trigger "big waves" until Tuesday afternoon.
In Thailand, more than 700 foreign tourists are believed to be among the total of 990 dead.
"The latest figure we have is more than 990 confirmed deaths. Of these some 200 were Thais and the rest were foreigners," Sutham Sangprathum told reporters before a cabinet meeting on the disaster.
"But from what I have witnessed more deaths will be reported."
Sutham estimated that the final death toll could surpass 2,000 in six
southern provinces.
Almost 29,000 people were evacuated from the worst affected areas, which included the resort islands of Phuket and Phi Phi where thousands of European tourists had been enjoying holidays.
Hardly a building was left standing on Phi Phi island east of Phuket, where bodies were seen strewn about the island, covered in white cloths before being taken away by emergency crews or Western tourist volunteers.
"I saw bodies almost everywhere on land, and in the water too, and I think there are many more bodies trapped under the bungalow debris," said rescuer Wirat Mansa-ad, estimating 300 died on the island alone.
As Thailand mobilised its army and navy in a huge rescue operation, dazed foreigners began flying home - still struggling to come to grips with what had happened.
Just before the first wave struck, "there was no water left in the ocean.
The fish were just flapping and dying on the beach," Danish tourist Svend Falk-Roenne, 52, told AFP in Bangkok on his way home from Phuket.
"Then the wave just came towards us. I've never seen anything like it."
Melina Heppell, a six-month-old baby girl from Australia, was swept from her father's arms on Patong Beach, Phuket, when a tsunami wave hit, her uncle Simon Illingworth said on Australian television.
"They were walking along Patong Beach yesterday...he thought he had the baby in his hands, but all he had was clothes," Illingworth said, tears streaming down his cheeks.
The waves triggered by the quake were so powerful that the destruction reached the shores of Africa about 7,000 kilometres (4,000 miles) away, killing more than 100 Somali fishermen. - AFP
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**NOTICE: A donation box for countries affected by Tsunami is opened for cash contribution from today onwards @ Singapore Soka Culture Centre(SSCC) (Tampines Street 81) by the Singapore Soka Association. Please support us! Contact me for details.
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New year is round the corner. Time flies isn't it? I don't have any plans on the new year eve yet. Not even set any new year resolution. No aim. No dreams. My life is dead. Everyday living in a perpetual prosaic life. Daily Routine - Wake up. Eat. Computer. Sleep. Wake up. Eat. Computer. Sleep. OR Wake up. Out. Come back. Sleep. Wake up. Come back. Sleep.
Damn. I need a life.
I will be going out to Geraldine place to do some souveniers. Going to International Plaza for some Post-Christmas gathering party in the night. :) I'm going off to bath now soon. Ciaos.
28 December 2004 - CHANNEL NEWS ASIA
Massive relief effort gets underway as Asia's tsunami toll nears 24,000
COLOMBO : The biggest humanitarian relief operation ever mounted was underway Tuesday along Asia's devastated shores as the death toll from a massive earthquake and the tidal waves it unleashed was predicted to hit 45,000.
With the scale of the catastrophe still unfolding the confirmed death toll was approaching 25,000 in nine countries - but Indonesia warned that it alone could have suffered up to 20,000 more fatalities on top of its official figure of 4,725 deaths.
Indonesia's Vice President Yusuf Kalla, who is in charge of coordinating relief efforts, said he estimated that "21,000 to 25,000 people" had been killed.
The Indonesian toll keeps rising as contact is restored with devastated coastal areas.
The quake, the biggest in 40 years at 9.0 on the Richter scale, ruptured the Indian Ocean seabed off Indonesia's Sumatra island, sending huge waves of death thousands of kilometres to kill and destroy in countries around southern and southeast Asia and even in Africa.
More than one million people have been displaced in the disaster, the International Red Cross said, as hopes faded for many thousands more still missing and fears grew that disease could unleash more tragedy.
Horrific scenes of destruction met emergency teams as bodies piled up by the hour in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Maldives and Myanmar, while international aid agencies rushed food and clothing to hundreds of thousands left homeless.
As survivors were evacuated from stricken areas across Asia, the full horror of carnage wrought by the tidal waves emerged: babies torn from their parents' hands, children and the elderly hurled out to sea from their homes, entire villages swept away.
Hundreds of rescue ships, helicopters and planes were mobilised to evacuate tourists from wrecked resorts and airlift stricken victims to hospitals already overflowing with the injured and corpses.
UN disaster relief coordinator Jan Egeland told a press conference at UN headquarters in New York that relief operations would be the biggest ever as the destruction was not confined to one country or region.
"There are thousands of dead people, and there are tens of thousands of dead animals. The people should be buried and the animals should be destroyed and disposed of before they infect the drinking water. It's a massive operation."
"The cost of the devastation will be in the billions of dollars. It would probably be many billions of dollars," he said.
In Sri Lanka, where nearly 12,000 people were killed, the country is banking on 2,000 Indian medical workers and planeloads of other foreign relief to help it stave off disease from thousands of decomposing bodies.
Drinking water wells along the country's coastal regions were badly contaminated with sea water that left a massive trail of destruction on the island, government minister Susil Premajayantha said.
"We are asking mainly for medical supplies from our foreign friends," Premajayantha said. "We need things like water purification tablets and safe drinking water. We also need equipment to clean water wells."
Police along the hardest hit areas have begun mass burials of unidentified decomposed bodies as the government waived normal legal procedures to dispose of the thousands of bodies piling up at rural hospitals.
"We have about 375,000 families displaced," Agriculture Minister Anura Dissanayake said. "This means we have a serious challenge to ensure that diseases don't spread in place where we locate these refugees."
A spokeswoman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva said that there were one million people displaced in Sri Lanka alone and 29,000 more in Thailand.
Indonesia's Aceh province bore the brunt of the temblor, hit at point-blank range and then battered by a tsunami.
An AFP reporter among the first to reach the province's main city Banda Aceh, which has been in blackout since the quake struck, described a scene of death and ruin, with hundreds of bodies and pulverised buildings.
Bloodied corpses covered by plastic sheets lay rotting on the ground at an Indonesian Red Cross office in Lambaro on the northern outskirts of Banda Aceh.
Police said there were 500 bodies at the centre.
In southern India vultures gathered as survivors grimly buried or burnt their dead as the death toll rose to more than 6,800, with thousands more missing.
In the worst-hit Indian state Tamil Nadu, fisherman A. Ravi wept as he recalled watching his family, including four children, swept away as his village was flattened.
"We went fishing in the early morning and a few hours later the water started swirling around us and suddenly the level went down so sharply we could see the seabed," said Ravi.
"Then I saw a huge sheet of water going towards the shore...when I got back I found my village under water and my family gone," he said.
The Indian death toll included about 3,000 in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, close to the quake's epicentre where tens of thousands of people were still unaccounted for.
Thousands of people were fleeing the coasts of the islands after fresh tremors hit Monday and meteorologists warned aftershocks could trigger "big waves" until Tuesday afternoon.
In Thailand, more than 700 foreign tourists are believed to be among the total of 990 dead.
"The latest figure we have is more than 990 confirmed deaths. Of these some 200 were Thais and the rest were foreigners," Sutham Sangprathum told reporters before a cabinet meeting on the disaster.
"But from what I have witnessed more deaths will be reported."
Sutham estimated that the final death toll could surpass 2,000 in six
southern provinces.
Almost 29,000 people were evacuated from the worst affected areas, which included the resort islands of Phuket and Phi Phi where thousands of European tourists had been enjoying holidays.
Hardly a building was left standing on Phi Phi island east of Phuket, where bodies were seen strewn about the island, covered in white cloths before being taken away by emergency crews or Western tourist volunteers.
"I saw bodies almost everywhere on land, and in the water too, and I think there are many more bodies trapped under the bungalow debris," said rescuer Wirat Mansa-ad, estimating 300 died on the island alone.
As Thailand mobilised its army and navy in a huge rescue operation, dazed foreigners began flying home - still struggling to come to grips with what had happened.
Just before the first wave struck, "there was no water left in the ocean.
The fish were just flapping and dying on the beach," Danish tourist Svend Falk-Roenne, 52, told AFP in Bangkok on his way home from Phuket.
"Then the wave just came towards us. I've never seen anything like it."
Melina Heppell, a six-month-old baby girl from Australia, was swept from her father's arms on Patong Beach, Phuket, when a tsunami wave hit, her uncle Simon Illingworth said on Australian television.
"They were walking along Patong Beach yesterday...he thought he had the baby in his hands, but all he had was clothes," Illingworth said, tears streaming down his cheeks.
The waves triggered by the quake were so powerful that the destruction reached the shores of Africa about 7,000 kilometres (4,000 miles) away, killing more than 100 Somali fishermen. - AFP
--------------------------------------------------------------------
**NOTICE: A donation box for countries affected by Tsunami is opened for cash contribution from today onwards @ Singapore Soka Culture Centre(SSCC) (Tampines Street 81) by the Singapore Soka Association. Please support us! Contact me for details.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
New year is round the corner. Time flies isn't it? I don't have any plans on the new year eve yet. Not even set any new year resolution. No aim. No dreams. My life is dead. Everyday living in a perpetual prosaic life. Daily Routine - Wake up. Eat. Computer. Sleep. Wake up. Eat. Computer. Sleep. OR Wake up. Out. Come back. Sleep. Wake up. Come back. Sleep.
Damn. I need a life.
I will be going out to Geraldine place to do some souveniers. Going to International Plaza for some Post-Christmas gathering party in the night. :) I'm going off to bath now soon. Ciaos.