Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
...set off by the 8.9 magnitude earthquake...
Windows in JAKARTA, Indonesia, were rattling, and some even broke. And that is a 2-3 hour flight away from the epicenter!
Tsunamis are notoriously difficult to detect, as they remain underwater until approaching the shore; also, the wavelength is in the order of kilometers, so it's very hard to track. However, I'm surprised earthquake detectors could were not used to evacuate people along the coast. A devastating loss of life is the result of such incompetence/inability.
A blog like any other.
Wikipedia
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/
I guess the news here are supposed to be stuff that matters. This matters.
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.
Geeks who were online found out about it pretty quickly. I heard about it on Fark. :P People in fishing villages and vacation sites my have missed the info, to their peril.
If you need a tech discussion, here's one, "How can you get the info to the people who needed it?"
Once the earthquake hit with a sea floor epicenter, everyone with a web browser knew a tsunami was going to hit somewhere. Again, no way to tell the people who needed the information. Seemed like the only thing we could do was just wait for news of further death.
Actually only the preceeding earthquake is unpredictable. When you know where the epicenter of the earthquake is and the topography and makeup of the ocean floor, you can see where the resulting tsunamis (if any are created) will hit hardest.
Unfortunately, you don't have much time between the quake and the tsunami hitting. I hear if Canary Island (The one ready to fall into the sea and wipe out the east coast) would cause a tsunami that could travel across the Atlantic Ocean in 45 minutes, and I read on the BBC that this most recent tsunami was going 2,000km/h, which seems to be roughly the same speed. Mind boggling though.
Also hurting any warning effort is how do you get a mass warning out to places like Sri Lanka? There's no mass media infrastructure and only the minimum of transport infrastructure. I suppose part of this tragedy is how unavoidable it was in these nations' current states. Only Japan has invested any significant amount of money in Tsunami warning systems.
Yup...
What kind of time delay are we talking about between when the earthquake strikes and when the tsunami forms/hits the coast? I always imagined it was something very short, somewhere near a few minutes.
What could be done in that short amount of time, exactly?
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/12/26/asi
Check out the BBC News site. There is a link that says "Live Video", given that the earthquake is top news ATM.
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
A good friend of mine, and fellow slashdotter (Viduliya (39839)) is currently in Sri Lanka getting married. If he's OK, I'll joke with him about his earth shaking honeymoon when he gets back.
More on Tsunami at Wikipedia
>> Techflock-flock onto the best bits of technology
Of course, this all happening at full moon will probably fuel the people who study whether the gravitational pull of the sun and moon impacts the occurrence of earthquakes like it does tides.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Can anyone put some kind of comparision between the energy release here and the energy release of the prospective planet impactor 2004MN4 ? It would help to put things into scale, if not perspective.
If MN4 were to hit, estimated release is 450-2000 MT of TNT, so how does a Richter 8.9 compare.
Steve
I'm on an island right next to Sumatra (relatively), and there were huge tsunami's hitting us too. The last I heard 15 people died in the floods. It's not as bad as what people in Sri Lanka and India experienced, but still...
My mom felt the quake at around 9, I didn't notice anything though. I'm very thankful Malaysia is relatively safe from quakes, but I feel so sorry for all who were affected.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
I live quiet close to the shore in Besant Nagar- we got off easy - but it was awesome (not as in exciting but leave your mouth open gaping awesome) to see the sea swell up and eat up the shoreline. I was just driving past and saw a boat go up and down about 20-30 feet from the road!! I parked the car, grabbed the camera - but by then the sea had receded - but that was enough to cause serious damage to the hutments close to the sea. We had mild tremor to start the day - barely noticeable at around 6.30 AM - i looked up the internet and found Tibet post of USGS registering a 8.9 quake at Sumatra -looking at the map I thought to myself - all thats in the line between Sumatra and Chennai is the sea (and of course teeny weeny Andaman). Went out for Breakfast and on my return - this. Its unforgettable and cannot be described. Most of India's coast is devastated - I hear Sri Lanka, Maldives etc are pretty bad too. The Quake here was nothing - a mild shake at best - but the Tsunami that followed was something else Apologies for the verbose post - but I am struggling for words to tell what happened.
Hey, you're either with us or you're with the tsunamis.
You can watch live Indian News at http://www.ddinews.com. I hope they can handle the Slashdot effect :(
>> Techflock-flock onto the best bits of technology
According to this bbc picture Colombo, Sri Lanka also saw some destruction.r es/4125643.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictu
goto picture 10.
Me too, I hope he is all right, along with the several hundred millions of other people who live in that region.
My site has been following this story since I first felt the temor in Bangkok this morning: http://2bangkok.com/quakes.shtml#quake
Or maybe it's just plate tectonics moving around under our feet. I know it's human nature to think a higher power is standing ready to punish the wicked and reward the good, but when a rock this large cools over billions of years, you have to expect it will jiggle a little.
3000 people died in 9/11 and people were outraged. 6000+ people die in Asia and nobody cares?
I heard about it late last night on a net radio feed (my time EST 0 dark thirty am sometime, I was half asleep) right after it happened, but a tsunami wave travelling roughly the speed of a commercial jetliner doesn't give a lot of leeway even if the people in the soon to be affected areas hear about it.
And this one follows that 8. something quake that hit between tasmania and antarctica just the other day.
I think this story should be taken into consideration along with the asteroid stories, as this wave was only roughly 40-50 feet high, yet by some reports it traveled up to half a mile inland in some places. Just imagine one ten times higher (something like that) from a large asteroid oceanic strike.
But ya, you would think that their would be some sort of emergency alert tied to seismographs, that would automatically get posted to various radio and television and internet sources if it was of sufficient strength, ie, danger. I know we have this alleged emergency alert system in the US that will over ride the TV and radio stations OTA broadcasts, but no idea in other nations what they have for that. Civil defense is always lesser funded than military offense in most nations it appears. What would it really cost to develop a radio based alert system for these various nations? Cost of one jet fighter or tank? And it could be tied to cellphones for that matter through the various national carriers, say, in a true natural disaster (impending or otherwise) scenario, your phone might ring with a pre recorded short message.
I realise in the poorer areas it might be problematic, but surely someone in most areas has a phone or a radio or whatever, you don't have to get the message to every single human directly, just to enough of them in any given area for word of mouth to help out a lot. Wake up and alert one dude per poor village, he can go running outside yelling his head off for that matter, like "dang evac! Tsunami coming! Move it people!" something like that anyway. The old church bells ringing hard and fast deal.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Yeah. Mother Nature.
Punishment for non believers and 9/11 I think?
Please. If you really believe that God's responsible, then you believe in a sick God: He punishes people (including innocent children) via tsunamis just because he doesn't have enough fans? I seriously doubt other Christians would share your view.
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.
Dude, you are fucking nuts. Make a favor to mankind and just shut up, its because people like you that we are heading again to the Dark Ages. People like you spread hate and fear between humans disguised in the form of religion, people like you make war and kill in the name of some kind of god that you never saw or feeled. you represent the worst of mankind
Does it show the same stories over and over and over again?
Are the adverts intrusive and increasing?
You may wish to reconsider your statement.
At the bottom of the
I've heard no word in the news about Arthur C. Clark. While thousands are dead, he likely has a sturdy structure to live in, and it would be unlikely statistically he perished. Has as been posted though, he lives on the coast so really stating any odds would be hard. I hope he is alive, but only to the extent I wish anyone life and happiness. He has lived a full life, and should he be gone our concern should be with the living. Ironically should he have perished, it would probably inspire more aid for those left alive.
Hopefully the now approximately 6000 estimate wont climb much higher, but if the past is any guide expect this to grow at least past 20,000.
BTW is it just me, or does it seem in poor taste for News outlets like FOX and CNN to focus on possible American casualties when these kind of natural disasters happen? I can understand this in the case of Attacks and Bombings, since Americans could be the targets. But with thousands dead, the news agencies are scrambling to find out if one or two Americans snuffed it.
Letter To Iran
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
What is interesting is that there was another quake on the 24th of 8.1 off the coast of Tasmania, the other side of the continential plate that caused this one ( AFAIK). That end of the plate gave way and that affected this one? A warning? I don't know, but it might have been related.
Massive earthquake felt in Tasmania
December 24, 2004 - 7:55AM
The world's biggest earthquake in almost four years has struck 800 km
off the coast of Tasmania, Australian seismological officials said.
Geoscience Australia said the quake, measuring 8.1 on the Richter Scale
hit the Macquarie Rise, in the Pacific Ocean, at 1.59am. [...]
It's a Bagel.
a) Disaster management techniques: We in India need better processes in managing relief work after disaster has struck; compared to first-world standards, we're woefully under-equipped in terms of emergency medicine and an infrastructure that can rescue people within, say, two hours of something striking. Perhaps a volunteer force or something; we really can't be falling back on the Army each time shit happens.
b) (My personal favourite) A redundant communication network: More ham radios/VSAT terminals/whatever throughout the nation. Cheap and requires more of a community participation than governmental intervention (which (a) would need).
More than mere navel gazing.
Are you from the US? Probably more people have just died than died in 9/11 ... did you see *anyone* say anything as crass and insensitive then? Whether it affects you directly or not it affects a lot of slashdot readers.
You, matey, are an arsehole.
This is an astounding loss of life, and a healthy fraction of the posts are just evil. If this is what slashdot has come to, prejudice, intolerance and ill-will for those that have suffered, I'm outta here. These are your brethren. Mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, uncles and aunts that have been hit by an unannounced, unpreventable, and unknowable tragedy. I'm appalled.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
You can see some pictures here. They're from a Norwegian newspaper.
http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=260157
Last I heard is that he lives at Barnes Place(a street) in Colombo. This is quite far from the coast, and Colombo itself hasn't been affected. So he probably should be safe.
The eastern,southern and south western coasts of Sri Lanka bore the brunt of the tsunamis. This includes a suburb of Colombo.
Sri Lanka is not a place where quakes and tsunamis happen. There were a few tremors, but not strong.There are no major faultlines near sri lanka.So the country is not prepared for this sort of thing.
clarke is probably safe (unless he had a heart attack or something.) one of is houses is near mine, and the other is in the heart of the city. long story short .. he's gonna be ok.
the most affected are the squatters living in improvised huts near the beach. call me cold hearted, but they went there, they grabbed the land, refused all attempts to base them elsewhere.
atb
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
I'm curious as to why a similar magnitude earthquake, also in the ocean, occurring off the coast of Australia shortly before this earthquake didn't cause a tsunami as well?
News about this earthquake here: http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11 778537%255E3462,00.html
Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but I'm curious as to what the differentiating factor is between these two earthquakes which means one creates a tsunami and the other doesn't.
Indeed, the last tsunami we had was in 1977, which came with a cyclone; my grandpa was involved in some heroics [which he loves to narrate whenever we go to his place in rural India ;-) ]. I don't know if this is how it is in, say, Hawaii or someplace, but the morning that tsunami hit the coast, everyone apparently went to work normally. It was only by 10AM or so that word spread that the sea was coming in (to use a vernacular phrase for 'tidal wave') and by then, all they could do was to climb onto rooftops and wait for the waters to recede.
More than mere navel gazing.
Interestingly enough, the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation was working in a project to provide early warnings / relief support in the event of tsunamis. From the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation's website (see here):
Note that the test was scheduled for 2005... unfortunately a little too late. Also, they were focusing on the Pacific instead of the Indian Ocean. Given that Clarke himself lives in Sri Lanka, I wonder how the current events would affect the project. It is clear to me that the Indian Ocean has been somewhat neglected.
You're bound to be unhappy if you optimize everything. --Donald Knuth
It's not like the punishment was meted out by man. They chose to live there, they die. Welcome to real life.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Dr Clarke used to live in Barne's Place (quite far from the coast), and I don't think he has shifted. I traveled by a road closeby this evening, and there was zero damage to that neighbourbood.
However, as far as health is concerned, Dr Clarke is not fareing very well. I saw him on a wheelchair at a recent convention where he was a (the?) guest of honour.
Various bits of the net are hard to get at right now (from Oz, that is ...).
... anyone heard any reports?
Wondering if the quake has caused any probs
Uh, you do also realize that there were a large number of Christian tourists at these beaches, correct? I was reading articles about people snorkelling/sunbathing being swept away. If God's after the "non-believers", he shouldn't wave his hand and wipe away hundreds/thousands of his own disciples.
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.
The island is called Los Gigantos, the one that Mt Teide is located on. The volcano itself isn't the real threat, it's the cliffs that rise almost a mile above the shore, with a fault line less than a mile offshore.
Yup...
Did they really have the choice?
Before you click "Troll," please hear me out:
On each anniversary of September 11th, I've consistently encountered people who asserted that our grief was selfish and unjustified because "worse disasters had happened elsewhere" - that is, had a higher bodycount.
Here's just one example: This seems to be the prevailing attitude among many: the scale of a human tragedy is directly proportional to it's bodycount. It's an attitude I've encountered multiple times in Real Life as well as on
Well, I'd like to write now what I wrote then, over two years ago...someting to keep in mind while you're reading this coverage:
The very notion that the relative significance of human tragedies can be "ranked" by their respective bodycounts is itself sickening.
The stereotypical Slashdot computer geek is an amoral dork who rarely wanders away from his computer, which is probably located in his parents' basement. There are exceptions, but that's the stereotype. Enjoy.
There was a huge earthquake (8.1 on Richter) south of Tasmania 3 days before. It made headlines http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000081&si d=aUIanL7wC_m8&refer=australia/ but fortunately no victims. However if you look at a map of tectonic plates http://geology.about.com/library/bl/maps/blplatesw topoehem.htm/ and compare it with the location of the earthquake http://www.iris.edu/seismon/ you can see it happened at the southern tip of the Indian plate. Now 3 days later on the middle of the eastern edge of the same plate another huge earthquake...looks like plate movement to me.
To get the latest info on the Earthquake, try monitoring this feed from PubSub.com:
2 bd5f.xml
http://rss.pubsub.com/ef/c3/b9173332d3d1011651b6f
Content will be updated every 15 minutes and will contain the most recent 32 blog entries that mention the event.
bob wyman
This is truly a sad day for all of humanity. 11,000 people is a huge incredible loss of life. We can talk about the science behind tsunamis all day long, but let's all take a moment to pray for the victims of this catastrophe. Keep in mind that it's not just 11,000 dead, but it's millions homeless, without clean water or food, or a place to live.
If you can, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give some money to one of the many relief organizations that is working to help feed and shelter people in the affected zones. I am sure the International Red Cross would be a good place to start.
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:
I first heard about it close to 12:00M PST while surfing.
What was interesting was the news coverage the next morning (disclaimer: I woke up at @ 9:00). Wolf Blitzer was going off about the 10 top news-worthy things in 04 (of course 9 of them had to do with the US), Paula Zahn went off about some reverend making boatloads of money off of G and there wasnt even an obligatory mention (screen-bottom tickers don't count) of an event that resulted in (unofficial) a deathtoll close to 11,500 (last BBC estimate). The only place I got to see anything about it on TV was an obscure (to me at least) channel called News World Intl. (366 on DirectTV) where CBC and then something called the German Journal talked about this most of the time. Of course the BBC was kind enough to provide a lo-rez video feed, but I still dont understand the complete glossing over of such an incident. Is it that unless americans die, the american media wont cover it? Seems foolhardy... but then it is the US. Nothing's unexpected. And of course I still dont know why the BBC World service is not available in the US.
--
Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous? -- Calvin (Bill Watterson)
"One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic."
too bad you weren't right in the path of the tsunami. it would have considerably improved the IQ of both the world and your country. you might want to check out the predominant religions in the hardest hit countries
In a reply to both siblings. You are probably right, this is not specifically geek news. Maybe we should alter the story tital to "Tidal waves seek out and kills hundreds of computer users and destroy thousands of computers. Oh and 20000 poor people died." No that would be too cynical.
My main point though is wether or not the incident is natural or man made the story matters. The geek side comes in all over. This will probably see major tech spending on new facilities and warning systems. New research into quake prediction (if the Indian scientist was correctly predicting to within a short distance and less than a half hour then someone is about to throw money at him). There was likely a number of readers of slashdot killed by this ( with a million+ readers, someone was almst certainly in the area ). Geeks also dig, big natural disasters like volcanoes earthquakes etc, so that makes it geeky as well. Good grief the ultimate geek bit is the fact a worker from the special effects team of the LOTR's was in the area and unheard from so far.
Now as to the apple and oranges excuse as to why 911 was news for geeks (with numerous articles spread over weeks) and this isn't. I personally think it is pretty close to nationalist relativism or possibly even racism. Complaining about one story on a big disaster (which is at least 8 times worse in lives lost and 500 times worse in people directly effected and probably 5 times worse in monetary damage) while trying to justify the stories about a smaller disaster ( with just as little geekiness) appears simply wrong, and suggests ulterior motives.
Here is a home video of the wave crashing into the beach of Patong.
...what if there were no rhetorical questions?