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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.
Even Cisco has posted Earthquake and Tsunami Relief on their main page. I guess a good chunk of their CCIEs are affected by this :)
This is simply amazing. I think that every so often Mother Nature decides she needs to show everyone who's boss, a sort of bitchslap to bring the nations of the world together; if only for a little while.
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...
Yep.
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...
It's almost disgusting to see how much the color of the water changed... it's bad enough they have hundred upon hundreds of bodies lying around rotting, but the water looks disgusting even from the sky... just imagine the smell. I wonder how long it will take, with all the flooding and then the following withdrawl of the water, before it's a nice, clean blue ocean beach again?
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.
I agree; I was idly pointing out the implications of two common beliefs: 1: that there is no such thing as free will, which implies that human actions are no different from "natural" actions or disasters, and 2: that there is a god, in which case there again is no difference becase in both the human and natural cases god is equally culpable for letting it happen.
Personally I believe in free will and not in gods, so it really was idle speculation and "Philosophy 101". Given what I belive, I agree totally with your post but it did occur to me that ours is simply one view point and there are others. I'm not quite sure why that wound you up so much but I wasn't trolling.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
The indian ocean tectonic plates are historically very active. Look at the major earthquakes and a lot are in/round Java. Ditto volcano eruptions: Tambora 1813?? and Krakatau 1883 Just one of those things - it will happen again in due course when the plates move again. There were apparently three plate shifts - one of them almost immediately off the Andaman isalnds, but the first was down near Aceh.
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.)
Speaking as an Indian, a big heartfelt THANKS for all of you who've empathised with the tragedy and have helped the rescue efforts. It's in trying times like these that one's faith in humanity is restored.
Thankfully, in spite of Indian bureacracy being well Indian bureaucracy, rescue and rehabilitation efforts are going on VERY effectively. An enormous number of people in India, be it the government, armed forces, or even the common woman/man is pitching in. Most companies here have setup collection boxes and at the very least, we're donating medicines, soaps, toothbrushes, disinfectants, clothes, utensils, non-perishable food items etc. There's also an army of volunteers who's landed in the disaster struck areas with truckloads of donated stuff and are distributing it to the needy.
Strangely enough, it seems that too many clothes are being donated! A friend of mine is physically helping out with the rescue efforts and he tells me that there's piles and piles of clothes lying around but of little use to anybody. Well, i guess too much help is always better than too little help.
Another thing that amazes me is the resilience of the common man or woman. Here are people living on the edge of poverty, getting hammered everyday with issues like eking out an existence. Perhaps they've scrounged and saved enough to get their daughters married, hidden a few hundred rupees in a hole in the wall. Perhaps they've just bought a shiny new radio or a bicycle. What do they wake up to? A tsunami that takes away their children, their friends, and everything they own. What do they do? Shrug it off eventually and mark it off as karma, god's will, or god's punishment depending on their religion (no, most poor Indians cannot afford the luxuries of athesim or agnosticism). Then, they take it one day at a time and slowly start rebuilding their lives.
You want to see miracles, mental strength, and the answer to life, the universe, and everything? You don't have to look far in times like these.
...President Bush and his International coalition (of which the next largest nation is contributing half of what we are) has just added Mother Nature to his axis of evil, saying that she is helping terrorists, as well as committing terrorist acts herself. Bush has given Mother Nature an ultimatum, telling her to leave this planet within the next 24 hours or we will declare war on her. It is expected that Mother Nature will stay and fight, but looks as if this will be another victory by the Bush administration.
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
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.
You sir, Mr.Grandparent poster, are a moron. Why are all the forums on the internet filled with fucking asshats like you? Why do you think it matters whether more people died now or in 2001? Can you not see that regardless of how many people died in which disaster, sympathy and help is required now, as it was required then? Will you fucking grow up and be human?
There is no sense in comparing disasters.
PS. I do not mean to insult you personally, just the idea you are putting forward.
Most (all?) of the official New Year celebrations and fireworks have been cancelled. The money will be given to aid helping those who suffered from the tsunami.
At the moment there are more than 200 Finns and over 2000 Swedes missing and most likely all of them are dead. To see things in perspective: Finland has a population of 5.2 million, Sweden around 9 million. Everyone with basic math skills can calculate what that would mean if it had happened for tourists from US.
40,000+ people die in car accidents every year. Thousands are killed in floods every few years. Millions die every year from famine.
Death, and to a lesser extent, death from natural disasters, is pretty common. A lot of death from a natural disaster is less newsworthy than a little death from a terrorist attack.
There's also an information problem - it was a lot easier to get information out of new york on 9/11 than it is to get information out of a devastated remote area in Thailand.
paintball
WWI: 16-18 million.
WWII: 40 million.
On a single day in the American Civil War, approximately 30,000 men were killed.
Feel free to dispute those figures, they vary from source to source. You'll not escape the orders of magnitude.
That's what war is like in the age of modern machinery. 9/11 was murder, not war.
...or make poor tsunami jokes when there were no pictures that showed the magnitude of the tragedy.
Seeing the BBC report that showed the young coupld silently carrying their two dead children and seeing the picture of the beach covered with debris -- and then realizing the "debris" consisted of human bodies -- brings the point home that real humans suffered a real tragedy halfway across the world.
Damn, I'm getting tears in my eyes just remembering those pictures.
Because if God overrules free will, even once, he's made the entire thing meaningless. If he, even once, says "Hey, humans, I'll save you from the consequences of your collective choices", he's just made free will meaningless, because its no longer free - its free 'to a point'. By giving us free will, God inherently relinquishes both his right and his duty to overrule our actions.
Trying to make a valid philosophical argument by comparing police to God is bunk, man. The police aren't omnipotent, omniscient, and they aren't the ones who have the ability to decide whether or not we get free will. Of course, anyone who stands by is partly culpable. However, if God intervenes, he destroys the idea of free will. The only way to maintain free will is to stay out of it; as such, by rigorously asserting free will, God becomes non-culpable - he has, in essence, said "I will not interfere, because the consequence of interfering once is to mean that I must take responsibility for all of your actions that I allow to occur." It is, in an odd sort of way, similar to the search engine DMCA exemption - software that indexes material is legal and non-culpable, even if it indexes illegal material, except if it ever filters out some undesirable material on basis of copyright or legality, at which point it immediately becomes culpable for all such infringing material found on the service.
This is just one more reason why God is a bunch of crap. Study the origin of ethics and look into hard vs. soft command, and you'll begin to come towards my point of view, which is that ethics in and of themselves point to the non-existence of God via contradiction.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
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
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.
Lots of images and video of the tsunami and aftermath at http://www.waveofdestruction.org/.
Speak truth to power.
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.
mod me down as flamebait/troll if you want, but I would like to compare the media's attitude now and during 9/11. When 9/11 happened, western media refrained from showing gory scenes out of respect for the dead. But when it came to this disaster, they had no-holds-barred coverage - showing people's arms and legs and devastation. Is it not double standards? According to an article in Indian Express, a CNN executive Chris Cramer justified by saying that they showed no images of 9/11 because there were no images to show. The bodies had been incinerated. Lame excuse, if there ever was one, don't you think? PS: I have submitted an article to slashdot on the same, but it was rejected.
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
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.
But apparently that video was shot in a place where the tsunami wave wasn't that severe. According to this MSNBC article, entire towns were completely wiped out in some parts of Indonesia. An Indonesian ambassador says that the death toll in just one Indonesian province could exceed 400,000.
That's just.... unbelievable. This is probably going to be the biggest natural disaster in human history.
An American life is worth more that Sri Lankian life or any other life in the eyes of the US Government and Media.
Not an aerial map, but still related to tsunami event. link.
Warning: Very gross and disturbing!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Well - I live in Europe and my guess is that the media will soon find a way to blame:
0. Bush (he's gotta have something to do with this, right?)
1. Global warming (since its clearly happening much more often now compared to last year; 1 tsunami compared to 0 during last year).
The images look a lot more powerful when you stack two in layers and set the top layer transparency to around 80%. You can really see all the homes under water. I put some together here
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
The amount of money donanted after 9/11 was large in relation to the need. That seems to be less likely with this disaster.
Hard to imagine that too many people living in tin-roofed cardboard shacks, and worrying about where their next meals is going to come from, are going to have property insurance. Now I understand why they are teaching critical thinking in public schools.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
You're probably used to car insurance, which indeed are run by going-to-hell jerks. That's mainly because there's so much fraud in car insurance.
Home insurance is a whole different animal. When I had to file a home insurance claim, dude was offering to give me more money than I actually wanted. I actually turned down a full replacement of wallpaper in our kitchen -- he offered to replace it because one little corner had been damaged.
It might just be my insurance company, but I doubt it. It's just a different deal.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Then, of course, there are those who vehemently believe you need shock and gore to get aid pouring in.
More than mere navel gazing.
I'm not a huge fan of Bush by any stretch of the imagination (I voted against him in November), but I can't fault the US government's behavior so far. They authorized a small amount of money to begin with, to help with the most urgent needs (sending food, clearing bodies, and so forth), and over the next few weeks and months will continue to increase the commitment as the specific needs of the countries who have been hurt are ascertained.
The world rallied around the US after 9/11, irrespective of past tensions and difficulties, and I don't think anyone here has forgotten that. We'll do everything within our power to help rebuild those countries devastated by the tsunami, just give us time to get through the bureaucracy, and to make sure our money is going to the right place (someone earlier posted about how in India, so many donations of clothing have been recieved that there are piles of stuff no one wants to wear just lying around. Imagine if the US sent over $100 MILLION of unnecessary clothing).
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
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
Why can't we get these images from Fallujah?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
As a Christian Libertarian... I half agree with you and halfway don't.
My faith says that yes, we should help our brother in time of need, however my political philosophy says the government shouldn't be the ones to do it.
Legally, internationally, politically we are under NO obligation or responsibility to do such - nor should we be. However since we do have an abundence of wealth, I don't see a problem with the government having am emergency aid fund, or even low interest loans for foreign countries in times of crisis. But this should be used rarely and saved for large scale disasters such as this.
I don't think that the US Gov should dispense money to anyone out there who has a papercut however. The country shouldn't be overly philantropic.
As a Christian, yes I feel obligated to help anyone who needs help when they do - it is just the right thing to do. I would rather give my money to a private fund that I know, respect, and trust to properly distribute my donations. The government is usually the LAST place to trust in terms of spreading goodwill.
Libertas in infinitum
AFTER being chastized by the world, AFTER it became known that Bush's 2nd inaugural party was going to cost $40 million (yes, 2nd party). Raising the amount isn't being done out of true charity for the hundreds of thousands of people who died or for the millions who lost everything, it's being done as damage control. That's whats so sad about it.
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.
Once again, the rush to post by the Slashdot community has revealed that geeks can be just as irrational as others.
The images presented here are nearly useless for before/after analysis. Here are some of the things that are necessary for proper analysis:
(1) Images for comparison should be taken with the sun in approximately the same position. Changes in shadow and illumination can exaggerate or obscure local effects. A brightly reflecting roof in the before image can appear so dark in the after image that is looks like the building has been destroyed. This is the case in many of these image sets, since they have been obtained up to twelve hours apart. Compare the shadows to see this effect.
(2) Ideally, satellite images for comparison shall be obtained from approximately the same angle. Many of these are not, with the result that walls exposed by the lower angle of the before image and shining brightly in the sun appear to be missing entirely in the after image. In fact, they are missing, but not because of destruction; these walls are simply covered by roof overhangs. Their absence does make the difference between before and after seem more extreme, however.
(3) Satellite images for comparison should ideally be cropped identically. These images are cropped in such a way that a casual comparison between them would suggest that entire coastal areas have been inundated when, in fact, they are not. In most cases, the coastlines remain, but because of the cropping it looks like they are under water.
(4) Georeferencing is not essential, but it is highly desireable. The absence of latitute, longitude or scale markers on these images makes them unfit for serious analysis. At the very least, Slashdotters should perform their own georeferencing with a GIS program before commenting, lest they be mislead.
Naturally, no one will read this post since it was the result of sober reflection rather than a foaming, irrational outburst written within minutes of the appearance of the article.
AstroDab, nice concept. I've corrected the allignment and posted results here.
You're welcome to post these to your own site, crediting DigitalGlobe (as you should your own work) and myself.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
I've converted the videos to Flash Video (FLV) (my blog).