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Tsunami Satellite Images
JakeisBland writes "Here is a collection of before/after satellite pictures of the devastation in Asia due to the tsunami/earthquake."
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This really puts the disaster into perspective, im shocked.
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch.
it's worth noting that the pictures show Kalutara, a town about 25 miles south of Colombo, and situated on the west coast of Sri Lanka, which pretty much escaped major damage and loss of life compared to the the south and eastern coastlines.
Flooding caused at least 40 deaths in Kalutara, though...
http://eobglossary.gsfc.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImage s/images.php3?img_id=16774Verye s/images.php3Devastating
http://eobglossary.gsfc.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImag
If you donated to lokitorrent but not this, I don't know what to say to you...
Forgive a bit of humor in the midst of tragedy, but it seems that Apple has led the pack yet again, only to be copied by Microsoft.
Seriously though, I think donating a little bit of money is the least one of us can do. It really puts things in perspective when something like this happens.
From the CIA world book on Sri Lanka;
Buddhist 70%, Hindu 15%, Christian 8%, Muslim 7% (1999)
I can see why you wouldn't, but continue to play your banjo...
Here you can find videos of the tsunami captured by tourists.
Here you can find torrents of said videos in case the original site dies under the load.
The Canadian one, at least, is a fast online credit-card donation. You can print out your tax receipt right away. (hey, before midnight gets it in for this tax year, right?)
Or, there are plenty of other organizations that would be happy to receive a donation.
Currently the UK goverments contribution is at £50 million, which is about USD$90 million. The public has given more that £30 million at last count. And we have about a 5th of the US population.
The story seems quite similar accross Europe.
Have you thought that perhaps most of that discolouration is no more than just sediment such as top soil? It isn't necessarily related to human activity at all.
If I were there, smell would be the least of my worries. I'd be more concerned about things such as cholera, and other miscellaneous tropical diseases and the general environment that means even a simple scratch can become life threatening.
I couldn't find any figures for even a rough total of US private donations, but, as of 12/29, American donations to the Red Cross *alone* stood at USD18 million. That does not count donations to other charities or the last day and a half of donations. Pfizer alone (corporations count as private to me) donated 10 million, plus an additional 25 million in medical supplies.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
While there there has been an International Tsunami Warning system in place since 1965, the affected countries were not part of that system and had no mechanism in place to allow for early warning.
NPR has a few good reports on the problem.
Cringely has a rather interesting solution that does not rely on governmental action, though with a serious flaw. It only relies on earthquake data, which isn't necessarily conclusive, nor the only cause of Tsunami's.
The sattelite images show the extent of damage, but remains impersonal. This picture graphically shows the actual devastation and number of deaths..
i ita4ft.jpg
http://img145.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img145&image=ruum
Meanwhile, Bush is planning to spend $30-$40 million in lavish inaguration festivities.
Denmark: 300M DKR (USD$55M) at a population of 5.4M .. that's $10,14 per capita .. .. that's $0,15 per capita
USA: USD$45M at a population of 293M
both theese sets of numbers are what the Government provides, not what is collected privately. (no taxreductions are given for donations in Denmark)
I guess that every country will give what it can.
As the image formed on the top of my screen, you first notice the smashed buildings. As as I scrolled down I though 'are those bodies ?' and I scrolled further I realised yes there are bodies in there. Eventually you reach the bottom of the screen and the true horror of the situation is shown.
here
"Economic losses will be in the tens of billions of dollars, if not more, and the scale of human suffering is enormous," the Insurance Information Institute said in a report. ... relatively little insurance is sold in the affected countries, meaning that insured losses are likely to be modest relative to the scale of the disaster."
"However
"Acts of God" are generally what insurance is FOR. The term covers most weather-related incidents (as opposed to acts of war, or other human-caused events), so their label is quite correct, and not an effort to evade paying claims.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 22:04:31 -0200
From: Futurepower [futurepower_usa (-AT-) yahoo.com.br]
To: "U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center" [sedas (-AT-) neis.cr.usgs.gov]
Subject: NEIC: Why didn't you warn about the Tsunamis?
Question:
I haven't seen this discussed anywhere.
Why didn't the NEIC call the U.S. State Department, so that they could warn people about the Tsunamis?
The earthquake position and magnitude was known 6 hours before the waves arrived in Thailand, I understand. Wouldn't almost every person's life have been saved if Thailand, for example, had had warning?
Michael
_____________
Reply:
Michael,
Phone calls were placed to the State Department operations center, the White House situation room, the U.N. Department of Humanitarian Affairs, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, as well as several other organizations within 90 minutes of the occurrance of this earthquake.
The problem is the absence of local warning systems in the countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. There were no systems or response plans in place to warn the local populace.
Stuart Sipkin
USGS/NEIC
_____________
Stuart,
I have a suggestion for a local tsunami warning system. There continues to be an enormous amount of earthquake activity in the area around Indonesia. It seems likely that there will be another big earthquake. Next time there is an earthquake that is likely to cause a tsunami, call me, any time of night or day. I will promise to call at least 30 hotels within 2 hours. I will promise to get 10 friends involved. They will promise to call 30 hotels each, also. We would each take a different country.
My suggestion is that we would use Google to find hotels, for example in Sri Lanka. This is one of the hotels I found there, a 5-star hotel with more than 400 rooms:
Galadari Hotel
The Businessman's Home in Sri Lanka
64, Lotus Road,
Colombo 1.
Sri Lanka.
Tel: 94-1-544544
Fax: 94-1-449875
E-Mail: galadari (-AT-) sri.lanka.net
"The Galadari Hotel is in the heart of the city in Colombo, over looking the beautiful Indian ocean."
Big hotels answer their phones 24 hours a day. Presumably there is a staff of at least 200 at that hotel, for three shifts. I think if one person were told, everyone else would know soon. They don't want their family and friends and neighbors near the water to die, and they know how to reach them, even if they have to ride a motorbike to those who don't have phones.
There are two easy ways to prove that a call about an earthquake is not a hoax. I would tell the person who answered the phone that it is an emergency and I need to talk to a manager. I would tell the manager to check the USGS web site at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/. Any 5-Star hotel, and most others of any size, have internet access. I would also tell the manager that, if the water at the beach receded, people had only a few minutes to get to safety. I would ask the manager to get staff members to call radio and TV stations in their area.
You said in your message, "The problem is the absence of local warning systems in the countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. There were no systems or response plans in place to warn the local populace."
It seems to me that this is a workable plan for a local tsunami warning system. It wouldn't cost much. Using Skype, a two minute call to any land line phone in Sri Lanka is about 40 U.S. cents, for example. Using iConnectHere's most expensive service, a two minute call is 80 cents.
in the last seven days here. The Andaman and Nicobar islands has experienced more than 60 aftershocks ! ..
In related news, the tsunami split one of the islands in Andaman & Nicobar into two. Here is what one of the officials say
Another island, Trinkat, appears to have been split in two, said S.B. Deol, inspector-general of Andaman and Nicobar. "Part of the island has been submerged, while one half is visible," he said.
>> Techflock-flock onto the best bits of technology
By your own statistics,
Foreign aid
The USA comes bottom of the graph in terms of giving as a percentage of GNI/GDP. (page 25)
And considering the percentage of this aid going to Israel, let alone Iraq. Your generosity does not seem so shiny.
Nope.
Far From Stingy
December 31, 2004; Page A10
Across the world, the reaction to Asia's tsunami is bringing out the best in human nature. Fund-raising appeals, disaster-relief teams, military assets -- all are being marshaled for the victims of this tragedy.
Which makes it all the more outrageous that a top United Nations official chose this week to accuse the U.S. and other Western nations of being stingy with assistance to poorer nations. "We were more generous when we were less rich," Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland lectured on Monday. "And it is beyond me why we are so stingy, really."
Now, complaints about U.S. miserliness are more routine than the earthquakes and floods that strike the globe. A favorite "fact" of international critics is that while the U.S. government nearly always ranks first in absolute amounts of foreign aid, it tends to fall last among industrial countries in aid as a percentage of gross national product. The one-tenth of one percent that Washington devotes to foreign assistance, they say, is nothing compared with what the U.S. could afford.
The problem is that, as with so many questions of accounting (say, Oil for Food), the U.N. and other international bodies rely on unreliable ledgers. Groups like the Development Assistance Committee (part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) tend to look only at "official" government aid. What this misses is that Americans have never trusted government institutions to dole out assistance. Instead, we open our wallets for private groups that are better at targeting money where it's needed, tracking projects, cutting waste -- and getting results.
When it comes to this sort of giving, nobody beats Americans. According to a 2003 report from the U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. international assistance to developing countries in 2000 was $56 billion. Yet just 18% of that was "official" government assistance. Some $33.6 billion -- or 60% -- came from the private sector. Corporations shelled out nearly $3 billion. Religious groups weighed in with $3.4 billion. Individuals provided $18 billion. To say nothing of funds from foundations, private and voluntary organizations, or universities.
Cynics mark this generosity down to a U.S. tax code that encourages giving. Yet most research shows that Americans view donations as a duty. Philanthropy magazine reports a study showing the average U.S. contribution outweighs the average German or French one seven- or eight-fold. This sense of responsibility is often motivated by faith; some 60% of American donations go to religious groups or causes.
None of this sits well with the U.N., whose own budget relies on state dollars. A chastened Mr. Egeland was forced later this week to claim he'd been misinterpreted and to acknowledge U.S. generosity. But behind this apology is the U.N.'s longstanding belief that what's really needed is for the U.S. and others to raise taxes to pay for more public foreign aid.
That approach reigns in Western Europe and explains what's wrong with so much of current foreign aid. Europeans have come to view private donations as a failure of the state and expect their governments to collect billions in taxes to shuffle along to slow-moving and unaccountable international bureaucracies. The result is a lose-lose situation. Giving countries see their own economies depressed by higher taxes and receiving countries find the aid too often enabling strongmen or perpetuating poor policies.
A far better approach, at least in the public sphere, are initiatives such as President Bush's Millennium Challenge Account. By tying long-term assistance to improvements in specific economic and political goals -- such as cracking down on corruption or establishing rules of law -- foreign aid brings about real reform. This approach drives U.N. bureaucrats nuts,
You should go read some books.
Iraq: Not a democracy
Afghanistan: Not a democracy. It's de facto ruled by warlords at the moment.
I take it you mean Somalia by "Somolia"? It's not anywhere near a democracy, or even a functioning country, for that matter. Total warlord rule.
Kosovo isn't even a country. It's a semi-independent region of Yugoslavia. And the USA had nothing to do with Yugoslav democracy, they did that on their own.
(In fact, most Serbs I know think that the NATO bombings were damaging to the democracy movement there.)
Yes, the USA did put the democratic leader back in power in Haiti. But only years after he had been kicked out by a dictator. It was only when Haitian refugees started showing up in Florida that the USA did something.
The USA supported coups bringing down working democratic governments (not "no viable alternative") such as the Allende government in Chile and similar things in Guatemala and Grenada.
Most recently, the CIA helped out in a failed coup against Venezuelas president Hugo Chavez.
The Cold War has nothing to do with it. The USA currently supports undemocratic governments in Pakistan (a government the USA itself denounced as a dictatorship until 9/11), Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan. To name but a few.
".... they looked similar to footage from the big Mississipi flood of '95 (or what that 94).
Try the Great Flood of '93, which created what appeared to be a sixth great lake. Of course, the damage caused by this tsunami will most definately exceed the damage caused by the Great Flood.
"This is probably going to be the biggest natural disaster in human history."
Unlikely, as I am willing to bet that there have been incidents where more humans were killed than this one. This is going to rank up amongst the top though, and is certainly going to be memorable for the reason that it is recent.
Ah, you found me!
Not likely.
On November 12, 1970, a cyclone struck Bangladesh and killed 300,000 people. In the year 1991, 139,000 died on April 30 (another cyclone). And just over a month later another cyclone struck killing another 126,000. See here
There are mostly unverifiable records that 830,000 people died in the earthquake which struck Shaanzi (in China) in 1556. And again in China, the Tangshan earthquake of 1976 killed (officially) 255,000 but some estimates placed the toll closer to 655,000.
This planet is dangerous, and huge numbers of people die en mass on a regular basis. We need to express sympathy and provide help, but being horrified isn't necessary. This is the normal way of things.
There are of course more, but I just wanted to mention one: Congo. They managed to finally wrest their freedom from Belgium, and the CIA shows up trying to put poison in the president's toothpaste (seriously). It's unclear as to whether the US or Belgium actually were responsible for killing him, but the US has certainly admitted it was going to.
Lea
The amount of money donanted after 9/11 was large in relation to the need. That seems to be less likely with this disaster.
Then, of course, there are those who vehemently believe you need shock and gore to get aid pouring in.
More than mere navel gazing.
This report, backs up the factual statement that Israel has been the biggest recipiant of US $ than any nation since 1976, and has recived, by far, the largest total amount of any nation.
Oh, and also that Jews are planning to take over the world via Hollywood.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Not exactly. The RedCross responds to ALL disasters and many more places where relief is needed. The only error was that many people expected their donations to go directly to 9/11 only.
5 -02.html 0 5dsfunds.html
In response the Red Cross changed their donation policies and guidelines to better reflect what actually happens with the money.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/redcross_06-0
http://www.redcross.org/press/disaster/ds_pr/0206
Basically now, if you give to the "Disaster Relief Fund" they use it wherever they see fit, and if you give to the "International Response Fund" if you want the funds to go exclusively to the tsunami relief efforts.
In addition they have all sorts of other areas you can "designate" such as Military efforts, Local chapters, Vaccination efforts, etc etc.
When it comes to charities - the Red Cross and Red Crescent(American and International) are about as real and helpful as you get. They help everyone everywhere.
If you are worried that your donations won't reach the right people then consider donating to CARE. They seem to have some of the lowest administration costs among relief agencies. Over 90% goes to affected victims.