This is amazing and overwhelming. We havent seen anything like this in the entire scope of recorded history. Its truely amazing. God bless the dead and their loved ones.

My cousin was with his family in Khao Lak resort (in Thailand), which was totally ruined. Luckily they were not badly hurt, my cousin just got some minor injuries but they are coming home soon. We were a bit worried anyway as his wife and kids were not reached right away.

edited
[Edited 12/28/04 8:07am]

I haven't watched the news in aaaages. This had completely passed me by.

Kayleigh said:

Wow, they are extremely lucky. It looks like Khao Lak really copped it, with 800 people killed there

sabaisabai said:

Yes, they were very lucky. I don't know why but looks like there wasn't many Finns dead or disappeared. Of course the numbers can still grow.

Kayleigh said:[quote]

sabaisabai said:

Unfortunately, it seems that at least one Finn has died: http://asia.news.yahoo.co...nrcg0.html

Damn.

Many swedes are missing

Teacher said:

I think a lot are missing from Khao Lak

The latest total figures for the tsunami are 55,000 deaths, and it's still increasing. Such a figure is dwarfed by the injuries and destruction of whole communities, and over such a huge area.
[Edited 12/28/04 9:30am]

sabaisabai said:

Yes, it's a very popular place for swedes to go to, that and Phuket. I know a girl who was in Thailand when the tsunamis hit but we don't know if she's ok yet

Teacher said:

I don't know how, but in all the time I've spent in Thailand I've never heard of Khao Lak..
I hope that your friend's alright. Do you know where she was in particular?

An article about Aceh (Indonesia) from theage.com.au:

City torn apart in 25 savage minutes
By Lindsay Murdoch
Banda Aceh
December 29, 2004

They have blank stares and don't speak. We walked together, among black and bloated bodies still lying in the streets of Banda Aceh three days after 25 minutes of terror tore apart a sunny holiday morning.

"We thought it was the end of the world," said Sofyan Halim, 37, who has lost 15 members of his family.

Banda Aceh's 40,000 people have suffered greatly over decades as rebels fought for independence from Jakarta and the Indonesian military brutally hit back.

But nothing like this; never before such death and utter devastation.

Nobody's talking here about recovery, just survival.

Shocked men and boys pick through the rubble of what was the city's thriving downtown market, ignoring dozens, perhaps hundreds of rotting bodies.

When the stink is too bad, they just cover their faces and keep looking for anything that will keep their families alive. Food is desperately scarce throughout the city. People are standing for hours in the sun in the hope that the few undamaged shops will open and sell them food.

Banda Aceh is the capital of the province of Aceh at the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, just 250 kilometres from the epicentre of the worst earthquake in 40 years.

Taufiq Urahman, head of Banda Aceh's military hospital, said yesterday there were grave fears of outbreak of diseases such as cholera and typhoid. "Banda Aceh is paralysed," he said. "This is a very grim situation."

Scores of badly injured people are lying in the corridors and on verandas at the hospital, the only one of six of Banda Aceh's hospitals still operating. Patients have no water and have only dry packed noodles to eat.

Saripah, 60, who couldn't hang onto her six-year-old granddaughter in the tsunami, came to the hospital yesterday for medicine because she was unwell. She was turned away.

Sitting outside was a 16-year-old girl who has lost her entire family of five. She has a bad leg wound but nowhere to go to be treated. Nurses said there were thousands like her.

Survivors tell how the city was hit by two earthquakes, five minutes apart, then the first of three tsunamis hit 25 minutes later.

"The water was as high as a coconut palm," said Mr Halim, an artist.

"All the debris came with it. People were screaming. Some got away, many didn't. The water went 15 kilometres inland in some places."

Mr Halim said the water was dirty black. "It was all over in 25 minutes," he said. "That's all."

A fishing boat, the Flying Fish, sits in the street outside the abandoned multi-storey Medan Hotel, bodies strewn under it.

It's difficult to imagine how Banda Aceh can rebuild. Trees were uprooted and dumped kilometres away. Cars have been twisted like toys. The symbol of Aceh, the Baiturrahman Mosque, has been badly damaged.

Stinking mud covers everything. Several of the city's biggest shopping centres have collapsed.

The three-storey Doctor Zainal Abidin Hospital is destroyed and empty. Nurse Citra Nurhayati said many of the hundreds of patients were killed when the water hit. "Children in emergency wards were killed," she said.

Families sit in shock in the street or in the grounds of mosques. Only the children seem to cry; the parents seem numb with disbelief.

Bodies are taken to Lambaro, a village a few kilometres outside the city, and laid under plastic sheets near a roundabout in the hope that relatives will come and identify them. But the threat of disease from rapidly decomposing bodies and Muslim tradition that the dead be buried within 24 hours have prompted mass burials.

About 1500 victims, many of them children, were buried after a funeral on Monday night.

There are so many bodies that an excavator is digging graves on a two-hectare plot near the village. Indonesian officials fear that communities and islands off the west coast of Sumatra may have been even harder hit.

Djoko Sumaryono, a government official in Medan, the capital of Sumatra, said yesterday that no contact had yet been made in Simeuluie, one of the islands closest to the earthquake's epicentre.

About 100,000 villagers live there. "We just don't know about them," he said. "No contact makes us fearful."

Officials in Medan now fear Indonesia's death toll from Sunday's catastrophe could be as high as 20,000.

After visiting Banda Aceh, Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla described what had happened as the country's worst natural disaster since the country won independence 50 years ago.

In Banda Aceh, shortages of food, water and medicines are already causing some anger among Acehnese.

Indra Utama, a community leader in the city, told The Age that the military must provide more urgent aid. "Where is the military? They're just taking care of their families. There is no war in Aceh now; why don't they help pick up the bodies in the street?"

However, the Indonesian military has started flying medical crews and badly needed emergency supplies in Hercules and any other available aircraft from Medan.
[Edited 12/28/04 10:04am]

See sticky thread folks