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Arthur C. Clarke Reports From Sri Lanka
Jeff Patterson writes "Sir Arthur C. Clarke has filed a damage report from his home in Sri Lanka on the Clarke Foundation page. He is fine, however 'among those affected are my staff based at our diving station in Hikkaduwa and holiday bungalow in Kahawa -- both beachfront properties located in areas worst hit. We still don't know the full extent of damage as both roads and phones have been damaged. Early reports indicate that we have lost most of our diving equipment and boats. Not all our staff members are accounted for -- yet.'"
Diving stuff and boats were the major disaster area.. I think Sri Lanka is a bit more exposed than Kerala was.
...
... East coast was not so lucky.
The wave in kerala went nearly 4 kms inland (though it's through the backwaters) and I'm still having painful memories of seeing a white mercedes floating around in the basement of a building
The Marine Drive is around 6-7 feet above sea level and is the major business/market area in Cochin - thankfully we're on the right side of India to be compared to the earthquake.
Thanks to a timely news on radio and TV , only a few hundreds were caught unawares
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Wikipedia has two articles churning out information about things as they happen besides info about the disaster that have already happened and they contain plenty of links to other news sources. See, 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake in India
DG is fine, asshole.
Just heard on the radio: at least some of the finnish tourists who are not injured (and thus are not among the first to leave) are helping out the locals in Thailand.
Wouldn't be surprised if others did too.
in the pacific the UN countries have set up a system out of hawaii. what happens is seismometers (sp?) read every earthquake, if they are above ~6 then tidal tracking stations are alerted. the stations report any tsunamis to the Hawaiian coordination station which phones all the ocuntries possibly effected. In fact, while there are no stations in the indian ocean the stations did pick up this tsunami/the strong likelihood of one occurring and attempted to warn the countries, however the major handicap was that they did know who to contact and therefore never got a warning out to anyone who could od anything about it.
Some south asian bloggers have created a blog tsunamihelp.blogspot.com blogging about the latest news and information about the tsunami, agencies suppoting the victims and involved in relief, places where donations can be made, volunteering information and much more.
Yeah, 2001, satellites, all pretty minor and inconsequential stuff.
No, the disruption isn't big enough. The rotation sped up by a 10,000th of a second. It's hardly worth mentioning in the news. Earth's orbit changed, too, according to this article.
while true;do echo -e -n "\033[s\n\033[u\134_\033[B";done
I haven't seen anything else on CNN in 2 days...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
I still hope that it will soon be gone. Not through some horrible disaster, because that's not a very nice thing to wish on anybody, but through continued political pressure. The military base on Diego Garcia was made possible by the forced removal of the local population. And for what? To make it easier to bomb people. The continued existence of the military base at Diego Garcia really makes me wonder at what humanity can inflict upon itself.
Santa's suicide mission go!
We used to enjoy walking and relaxing on those beaches regularly. I don't think we will ever be able to do that again in a free state of mind. :-(
Video here high bandwidth server, no worries. 4 different videos. Amazing footage.
Story here. Since that didn't work, they called the State Department, who ALSO tried to find out who to contact, but again, due to lack of adequate warning systems/organizations, they failed as well.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Any of you planning to donate some money? Dollar may be losing ground but it still has 44 times more value than Indian Rupees. So if you donate 100 dollars that means 4400 Indian Rupees (INR). And to give you an idea what this could mean.. a normal meal in India is around 40 INR while cheap clothing is around 100-200 INR. And medicines per day per person won't be more than 100-200 INR. Taking some conservative estimates, your 100 dollars can save an Indian for 10 days till things get under control and one can start living on one's own. Kindly consider donating... Visit my blog http://ritesh.blogspot.com/ and this blog http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/ for some info on how/where to donate. Redcross and UNICEF are also accepting donations now.
Regards, Ritesh
Short of a major loss or gain of mass, or impulse from a massive impact, the Earth just keeps trucking along in it's rut. While the energy is tremendous in an Earthquake, the energy just moves mass around within the same system.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
This really dwarfs 9/11, very sad indeed.
It's very sad, yes. I don't quite see what it has to do with 9/11, since this is a natural disaster, not a crime.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
its not that easy...
a) the indian-ocean area has no tsunami warning system
b) the people in control of the system in the pacific area tried to sent out warnings. but without a clear recipient thats a little tricky.
c) you need a working warning system -> needs money. the area is poor.
d) you need a working civil defense
e) you need to know how to conduct evacuations.
(based on the stuff the correspondent said on TV here yesterday evening)
The sea retreats just before the tsunami hits because the wave is symmetrical. When the wave is out at sea, it is very deep. When the bottom of the wave hits the shallows, there is nowhere for the water to go but up. This pulls the water away from the shore as the wave builds up.
A lot of people got swept away (or dragged over the coral) because they were naturally curious when they saw the sea suddenly retreat and walked out to see what was going on, only to get hammered when the wave arrived.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Maybe some people should have remembered Krakatoa cataclism or just simply should have seen Clarke book. Damn, some people should just read to help prevent disasters.
If you look on the ACF website, you'll find this tidbit: (in the projects section)
PROJECT WARN in Partnership with the Japan US Science Technology and Space Applications Program (JUSTSAP)
The purpose of Project Warn is combine enhanced communications and IT systems to provide warning of impending natural or man-made disasters and to provide on-going communications and remote sensing and GIS support during disaster relief operations. The Clarke Foundation is working with the Pacific Disaster Center, the Asian Disaster Mitigation Organization, the United Nations, and the US and Japanese Governments as coordinated through the JUSTSAP organization to carry out a suitable test and demonstration in this area. In particular a simulation and test is being planned in the Pacific Region in 2005 to determine to how to use the latest information and sensing technology more effectively in the advent of that a major Tsunami might impact an Asian country or island. Clarke Foundation personnel are providing technical advice and support on a volunteer basis to this project.
Oddly enough, the Arthur C Clarke Foundation is actually working on just that. Setting up an alert system for Tsunamis:
http://www.clarkefoundation.org/projects
PROJECT WARN in Partnership with the Japan US Science Technology and Space Applications Program (JUSTSAP)
The purpose of Project Warn is combine enhanced communications and IT systems to provide warning of impending natural or man-made disasters and to provide on-going communications and remote sensing and GIS support during disaster relief operations. The Clarke Foundation is working with the Pacific Disaster Center, the Asian Disaster Mitigation Organization, the United Nations, and the US and Japanese Governments as coordinated through the JUSTSAP organization to carry out a suitable test and demonstration in this area. In particular a simulation and test is being planned in the Pacific Region in 2005 to determine to how to use the latest information and sensing technology more effectively in the advent of that a major Tsunami might impact an Asian country or island. Clarke Foundation personnel are providing technical advice and support on a volunteer basis to this project.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2001/08/29/nwave29.xml
s la nds+mountain+landslide+tsunami&spell=1
BRITAIN faces a natural disaster that will flatten the Atlantic coastline for several miles inland, a scientist predicted yesterday.
A massive landslide caused by a volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands would create a giant wave that would hit the coast at up to 500mph.
The largest mega-tsunami ever seen would be generated when an eruption of Cumbre Vieja on the island of La Palma caused a part of a mountain twice the size of the Isle of Man to plunge into the Atlantic.
"The first impact will be when 330ft waves crash into the west Saharan coast of Morocco," said Simon Day, of the Benfield Greig hazard research centre at University College London.
"It is not a question of if it will happen, only when it will happen. It could be in the next few decades; it could be hundreds of years hence."
Devastation from the tsunami was also highly likely in Florida, Brazil and the Caribbean. There the wave would reach heights of 130ft to 164ft - higher than Nelson's column - and could sweep four and a half miles inland.
Dr Day said: "It is a geologically definite process, a bit like a pressure cooker, with the volcano heating up the ground water and pressure building up inside the mountain."
In 1949 the mountain moved 12ft in two days, but the disaster waiting to happen would be much greater, according to Dr Day's report, published in Geophysical Research Letters.
The collapse of the mountain on the west of Cumbre Vieja would release enough energy, equivalent to the electricity consumption of America in six months, to generate a wave more than half a mile high and tens of miles long.
This would collapse and rebound on the Canaries. As the landslide continued to move underwater, a series of waves would develop, creating enormous surges all over the Atlantic.
"After only 10 minutes, the tsunami will have moved more than 150 miles," Dr Day said. It would reach America in little more than six hours.
There have been at least 11 tsunamis in the past 200,000 years, one of which wiped out Minoan civilisation on Crete.
The largest recorded wave to hit Britain was the Lisbo tsunami of 1755, when 12ft seas pounded Cornwall.
About 7,000 years ago, the Storegga tsunami, caused by a landslide off Norway, deposited silt several miles inland in northern Scotland.
"When the wave from the Canaries reaches Britain, it could be as high as the Storegga, which may have been up to 60ft," Dr Day said.
"It is difficult to know how far the ramifications will go. We should be looking at the doomed civilisation of Crete when assessing the effects."
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=canary+i
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
There is a good chance that after an event like that that disease can breakout in the chaos due to dodgy water supplies and lack of services. I gave a bunch of the money I got for Christmas to help these people who have had their lives destroyed so suddenly and you can do the same and not waste it on things you don't need at after Christmas sales!= 40238 .
Go to www.redcross.org.au or http://www.redcross.org.uk/news_subsection.asp?id
It seems the American Red Cross hasn't yet started an appeal.
Just to add to the political fray, some reports have UN officials already complaining that the US and other western nations are being "stingy" with their aid packages... and even suggesting that those countries raise taxes on their citizens to pay for more aid (if you believe the Wash. Times).
That particular official is from Norway. Norway, with less than 1/60th of the US population, has already donated 50 million NOK (a bit more than 8 million US dollars), mostly through NGOs. The US has donated 15 million US dollars.
In both countries, people are also donating themselves.
I'll probably lose a lot of karma for this, but just like the past summer's hurricane disasters in Florida, people have to realise that there is a price to pay when you choose to live in a natural disaster zone.
A couple of issues:
Your points definitely apply to Florida (hurricanes) and California (earth quakes), though.
There is a reference to this theory in a CNN article, talking about "a wall of water more than 164 feet high" hitting the U.S. east coast.
Don't panic.
But other researchers in Britain discounted the prediction as the product of a speculative computer model. They said that over the last 200,000 years there had been only two huge landslides on the flanks of the Canary Islands and that there was geologic evidence indicating the slides broke up and fell into the sea in bits instead of one big whoosh.
From http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3934945
... have been swept away or destroyed."
Land Mines Add to Sri Lanka's Misery
Tidal waves that hammered Sri Lanka have uprooted land mines that threaten to kill or maim survivors trying to return home while endangering relief workers, a Unicef official said today.
The tsunami have scattered mines and destroyed warning signs, said Ted Chaiban, the aid agency's Sri Lanka chief.
"Land mines are posing a new risk to Sri Lankans, and to relief efforts," he said. "Mines were floated by the floods and washed out of known mine fields, so now we don't know where they are and the warning signs
The greatest danger will come when survivors begin to return to their homes, not knowing where the mines are, Chaiban said.
More than 1.5 million mines have been planted across Sri Lanka by the army and Tamil Tiger rebels have been fighting for a separate homeland since 1983.
CNN europe and CNBC are barely touching on it
Right? I don't receive CNBC here, but CNN europe is 95% about the tsunamis now, and has been nearly 100% over the last days. I don't know what the fuck you are talking about. The US CNN's are quite bad from a world perspective but the international one is in general faster and more accurate than BBC.
The US is also moving naval assets in the region -- which often have helicopters -- into place to assist with operations, and is deploying P-3 Orion reconnaissance aircraft to take pictures of the coastlines to assist in planning recovery operations.
I expect US donations from private citizens and aid groups are ramping up fairly quickly.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Everyone should check out http://www.usgs.gov and see alot of the data collected on this. I know this seems kind of cold to look at the data, but the thing that impressed me the most was the animation they have that shows just how large of an area that this has affected. It's staggering. BILLIONS of dollars will have to be spent over many years to get things back to the way they were on Christmas day. Lives of MILLIONS will be affected in one way or another. The most disturbing thing that I have heard has been the greens blaming this on global warming....um..ok....whatever dudes.
Gorkman
It is true that tsunamis travel really fast, but only when in deep water. When the tsunami enters more shallow water, the speed goes down to about 40-50mph, while the wave itself starts to grow in height because of the higher-speed water pushing from behind. This is also the reason that the tsunami is more or less invisible when traveling across deep water.
I'm not sure where these weird claims are coming from that the U.S. media is not giving this story enough coverage.
The first day there was not much but I think that's because the initial damage reports sounded outlandish.
By the second day it was the top story of every newscast I've seen, both national and local and that persists to today.
I don't watch Fox news so I can't tell you if their coverage is weak. I'm watching CNN/headline news, NBC and ABC national and local news.
I heared in the news that in the US, people living near the coast are informed/learn at school that when the sea retreats suddenly, it's time to find out how fast you can run.. Not a bad idea, imho.
True. I lived in California for three years. When I got there the first thing I was told was watch the ocean after a quake. If the water starts to recede, run for the hills.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.