Sumatra deaths push up count; difficult access, chaos hinder relief

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Pilots dropped food to Indonesian villagers stranded among bloating corpses Thursday, while police in a devastated provincial capital stripped looters of their clothing and forced them to sit on the street as a warning to others. The death toll topped 117,000, and officials warned that 5 million people lack clean water, shelter, food, sanitation and medicine.
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...A terrible...terrible event...

Quite agree.

Truly an international disaster.

....just imagine it, one minute you're sitting there on your lounger on a beach somewhere in Phuket. With suntan lotion in one hand and a bloody mary in the other, then the next minute...

Whammo! 30ft wave! No warning.

Just goes to show, you never know whats around the next corner...

It certainly couldn't cost much for someone to design a system to warn them of such incoming risks, could it? Of course, two problems then would be A) how such poor nations could afford it and B) How such poor nations could afford to do anything about it if they did know.

I mean, Florida gets hit by a few hurricanes, and by comparison they came out just fine, because they're in a firstworld contry which can afford to help, but those worst affected are those nations struggling to make it through just a regular day.

Quite True. I'm suprised something that big wasn't detected under satalite or something. Anyhow, disease is going to wipe out even more people. It might even end up taking 120,000 lives altogether.

Since I'm one of the few guys who actually paid attention to the movies in Science and all the other people copied off of, I know a little about tsunamis.

Tsunamis are caused by earthquakes that occur underwater, and because of this they are very hard to predict. There can be nothing one second and, like Vinda said, whammo! 30 foot wave tearing towards the coast. There are a few stations that predict tsunamis, but they are few and far between and its a big fucking ocean. Unfortunately, most governments do not seem to really care much about tsunamis and other natural disasters.

Also, sometimes warnings are issued and people don't take it seriously. They think 'Oh, a tsunami. Could be fun. Why don't I go out to the beach and watch it.' Thankfully, this terrible tragedy will probably put a stop to that, but its happened before.

Thats my two cents.

That area of the world is no stranger to tragedies. Tropical Cyclones hitting Bangladesh have killed 100,000-500,000 in several occasions, and the world's deadliest natural disaster ever recorded occured when a huge earthquake hit China, killing over 3 million people.

BTW, latest death toll estimates are 125,000+

Where I live underwater Earthquakes and ensuing tsunamies are a major risk, and we do have a warning system in place. I don't know what kind of system it is, but they say a similar system in Asia could have saved tens of thousands of lives.

Are those real estimates, or are we gambling deaths?

That was last night's latest estimates from the Red Cross. They say that 80,000+ people died in Sumatra alone, and where towns and villages once used to be have been transformed into new lagoons now. The latest home videos to come out show not waves hitting that area, but simply the sea it's self heaving up and engulfing everything on land.

Demo: You live in or near California eh?