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Quake and Tsunami Devastate South Asia
pfb writes "From reuters, 'The world's fifth-largest quake in a century has hit southern Asia, triggering a speeding tsunami that crashed into Sri Lanka and India, drowning hundreds, and swamping tourist islands in Thailand and the Maldives.'"
Yes, he lives in Colombo. As you can see from the picture, he is on the coast. I hope he is all right. :(
A blog like any other.
I keep a list of earthquake related resources.
http://virtuelvis.com/
Yeah my brother and wife (John and Brigette) are currently in Thailand and were planning to dive today... unfortunatly I have no idea where in Thailand they are....
He hasn't cotacted me yet, but even if he wanted to I doubt he could.
Fingers crossed!
p.s. The British Foreign office have set up an emergency help line: 0207 008 0000, I havn't been able to get through yet, its really busy.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/12/26/asi
It seems that a displacement in the sea bottom ocurred, moving 10-30 metres up along a rupture of 1000 km, causing a wave of hundreds of cubic kilometres of ocean water.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
You can find the latest news at http://news.google.co.in (The Indian Version of Google News )
>> Techflock-flock onto the best bits of technology
You're beeing a bit harsh. These waves travel hundreds of kph/mph so any warning will only give you a few minutes, at most maybe an hour. All countries in the region are poor and not very well developed so they cant afford the types of systems you're talking about. Mostly they rely on western countries for warnings and the timings are very tight.
A warning system should really be installed along the american southeast coast. The mountains/ocean shelves on several islands of the european/north african coast are extremely close to colapsing into the atlantic which would send enormous tsunamis towards USA. USA, as opposed to the countries struck today, can afford the systems...
going back to hoping my neighbours made it... they're on vacation in Phuket
More on Tsunami at Wikipedia
>> Techflock-flock onto the best bits of technology
A 9.0 earthquake would release the equivalent of 1,800 Megatons, so it would be in the same ballpark.
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Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I live in Chennai(Madras),(Capital City of the State Tamil Nadu - the region worst affected by the Tsunami in India ). For us, this is the first time ever something like a Tsunami hits our coast. The earthquake itself was not deadly but the tides alone were responsible for the death of more than 1000 people according to some reports. Since this happened early in the morning and the day being a sunday, not many people were awake at that time. In my city alone almost 100 poor fishermen who live in the huts along the seashore were washed away. Coastal regions in the Southern parts of my state where even more affected - a lot many were drowned in the flash floods. The fact that I was sleeping unaware of the whole thing at that time, less than a kilometre away from the sea, sends a shiver down my spine.
You can find some pictures here.
There was ample time - the P-wave of the quake hit Madras, India at about 6.30 AM (local time), about 4 minutes after the quake occurred. However, the Tsunami reached only at about 9 - 9.30 AM (local time), giving a clear 2.5 to 3 hours after the quake.
Until 3 years ago the nation that gave most was Japan. They've cut back in the last few years though, and the US has given a lot of money recently to Pakistan, even though it has been selling its nuclear secrets to terrorists.
The country giving the largest proportion of aid per unit income is Norway, which gives about 6 times as much as the US per unit income.
I found some stats here if you're interested
Earthquakes over M8.0 are called 'great,' as in catastrophic, for a good reason...
There are several kinds of earthquake 'magnitude' measures, all of which yield similar numbers. Moment magnitude may be converted directly to energy:
Magnitude = log (energy in ergs)/1.5 - 10.7
For moment magnitude 8.9, this works out to 2.5 x 10^29 ergs, which is about 6 Million Megatons of TNT. The impact of 2004MN4 works out to an earthquake magnitude 6.2 to 6.6.
Quote from the article:
I'm a Japanese, and I feel I heard of the legend, but uncertain.
So I googled.
see the full story(Japanese page)
The story was known as one article of our very old language arts schoolbook of national elementary schools. It was published about from 1937 to 1947. I've never seen the text, of cource, but I think I heard this story from my teacher.
This is a story about a farmar and an earthquake which hitted Kishu (now, Wakayama Pref.), in 1854. Outline of the story is totally same as Rob Carr described above. In addition, he is not just a farmer, but a 7th meister of Yamasa soy sauce factory, a first chairman of council of Wakayama Pref., and a first minister of Post Office Dept. (It was a era of revolution...)
For foreign countries, Lafcadio Hearn (known as Yakumo Koizumi in Japan) introduced this story first, in his book 'Gleanings in Buddha-Fields (ISBN:1596050217 or other)'. One Japanese teacher rewrited this to a simple and dense text for children, and choosed as an article of textbook by the nation. This version is re-translated to English, and taken in textbook of Colorado state elementary school, titled 'The burning of the rice fields' (the page is saying so. I don't know it's true or not).
Actually, in Japan, everyone knows, I believe, that sea surface oftenly drawn off before a Tsunami. We live with earthquakes, typhoons, volcanos, and fires (because of densely build old wooden houses). We are so careful(even an exess sometimes) and preparing for such disasters, so we can imagine to some degree what is going on. It is terrible to have a great Tsunami without no warning and information. Systems and informations are required.
From Reuters ...
... to the west coast of Thailand and Malaysia," he said. "You can walk inland for 15 minutes to get to a safe area."
....p e=topN ews&storyID=7180384&pageNumber=1
NO WARNING SYSTEM
In Los Angeles, the head of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said U.S. officials who detected the undersea quake tried frantically to get a warning out about the tsunami.
But there was no official alert system in the region, said Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's center in Honolulu.
"It took an hour and a half for the wave to get from the earthquake to Sri Lanka and an hour for it to get
"We tried to do what we could," he said. "We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world."
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?ty
Basically, it says "THERE IS NO TSUNAMI WARNING OR WATCH IN EFFECT.".
Yes, of course, there was no tsunami in the region this warning center is responsible for. But who writes these reports? Is it sensible to just write "no tsunami warning", without specifying that it's a different story on the other side, in the Indian ocean? Wouldn't people writing these reports be supposed to be aware of it?
Anyway, that report, while it may be technically correct for it's region, sounds really weird to me.
Since the link is for the "latest report", and will change over time, here is the complete text of that page: