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<FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>From:</B> vision2020-bounces@moscow.com on behalf of
Joan Opyr<BR><B>Sent:</B> Sun 12/26/2004 8:32 PM<BR><B>To:</B> Vision2020
Moscow<BR><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020] 12,000 dead in Southeast
Asia<BR></FONT><BR></DIV></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>If anyone out there has any information about where to send aid and/or what
might be needed, I hope that you'll forward it to Vision 2020. What a
terrible, terrible thing.<BR><BR>Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment<BR></DIV>
<DIV>Forwarding from The New York Times:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<H5>December 27, 2004</H5><FONT color=#666666
size=-1><STRONG>DISASTER</STRONG></FONT>
<H2>Untold Numbers Are Missing in 6 Countries</H2><FONT size=-1><STRONG>By AMY
WALDMAN </STRONG></FONT><BR>
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<TD></TD></TR></TABLE>
<P><IMG height=33 alt=M src="" width=37 align=left border=0>ADRAS, India,
Monday, Dec. 27 - The world's most powerful earthquake in 40 years erupted
underwater off the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Sunday and sent walls of
water barreling thousands of miles, killing an estimated 12,000 people in half a
dozen countries across South and Southeast Asia, with thousands more missing or
unreachable.</P>
<P>The earthquake, which measured 9.0 in magnitude, set off tsunamis that built
up speeds of as much as 500 miles per hour, then crashed into coastal areas of
Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Indonesia, the Maldives, and Malaysia as
40-foot-high walls of water, devouring everything and everyone in their
paths.</P>
<P>Its force was felt more than 3,000 miles away in Somalia on the eastern coast
of Africa, where nine people were reported killed. </P>
<P>Aid agencies were rushing staff and equipment to the region, warning that
rotting bodies were threatening health and water supplies.</P>
<P>It took several hours in some cases on Sunday for the waves to build and
reach their targets after the earthquake struck. But none of the most affected
countries had warning systems in place to detect the coming onslaught and alert
their citizens to move away from the coastline.</P>
<P>"I just couldn't believe what was happening before my eyes," Boree Carlsson,
45, of Sweden, told Reuters from a hotel in the Thai resort of Phuket. "As I was
standing there, a car actually floated into the lobby and overturned because the
current was so strong." </P>
<P>A tsunami - the term is Japanese - is a series of waves generated by
underwater seismic disturbances, in this case the interface of the India and
Burma tectonic plates. Seismologists with the United States Geological Survey
said the ocean west of Sumatra and the island chains to its north was a hot zone
for earthquakes because of a nonstop collision occurring there between the India
plate, beneath the Indian Ocean seabed, and the Burma plate under the islands
and that part of the continent. </P>
<P>The India plate is moving at about two inches a year to the northeast,
creating pressure that releases, sporadically, in seismic activity But this was
an especially devastating earthquake, the fourth most powerful in 100 years.
</P>
<P>Television images showed bodies floating in muddied waters. Cars went out to
sea; boats came onto land. Snorkelers were dragged onto the beach, and
sunbathers out to sea, Simon Clark, a photographer who was vacationing on Koh
Ngai Island in Thailand, told The Associated Press.</P>
<P>Indonesia reported nearly 4,500 dead, most in the Banda Aceh area of Sumatra,
an area that has been the site of a continuing civil war. In Sri Lanka, at least
4,500 were dead. In India, an estimated 3,200 died, with at least 1,700
confirmed dead in Tamil Nadu, the southern state that is home to this coastal
city of Madras, officially known as Chennai.</P>
<P>At least three American were reported killed, two in Sri Lanka and one in
Thailand, according to Noel Clay, a State Department spokesman.</P>
<P>The death toll is expected to climb, and world leaders, from President Bush
to Pope John Paul II, expressed grief and called for aid for the victims.</P>
<P>Many areas from the atolls of the Maldives to the Nicobar Islands of India
were simply out of reach, with communication lines snapped. Thousands more
people in those places are feared marooned or dead. India's home minister,
Shivraj Patil, said there was no communication with 45,000 residents of the
Nicobar Islands.</P>
<P>On Marina Beach here in Madras, women selling fish and children playing
cricket, morning walkers and tourists savoring the salt-scented air all died as
the sea suddenly turned enemy. The water came with no warning, said S.
Muttukumar, a fisherman.</P>
<P>"We see the sea come forward," he said, describing how he ran and then swam
from the 40-foot wave, grabbing onto catamarans for life support. "Everybody was
running, but God saves little." </P>
<P>In the lanes of his village across from Marina Beach, four middle-aged women,
all fish sellers who had been unable to outrun the waves, lay embalmed in
refrigerated glass cases, prepared for cremation on Tuesday.</P>
<P>Here, Mr. Muttukumar said, the water had come up off the beach an extra 500
yards to the main road, lingered for about 10 minutes, then receded as if it had
never been there at all, leaving the fishermen to fish for corpses. Early Monday
morning, the beach was still littered with fishing boats and upended hand
carts.</P>
<P>At the decrepit Madras General Hospital, a board listed 38 dead. Twelve were
unknown; the rest ranged in age from 4 to 87.</P>
<P>The waves struck tourist resorts from Phuket in Thailand to Bentota in Sri
Lanka at the peak of the tourist and holiday season, meaning that livelihoods
will be devastated long after the count of lost lives is done. </P>
<P>Whole fishing villages were washed away along coastlines, and thousands of
fisherman who unknowingly put out to sea in the morning are missing. An Indian
Air Force base on Car Nicobar Island was virtually washed away, according to
television reports, and late reports suggested that at least 1,000 could be dead
on the Nicobar Islands.</P>
<P>The airport in Male, the capital of the Maldives, was closed, stranding
foreign tourists overnight at the airport in Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital, after
much of Male was submerged.</P>
<P>The casualties spread across southern India: at least 200 dead in Andhra
Pradesh state, 80 in Kerala, and 280 in Pondicherry.</P>
<P>Sri Lanka, the island nation to India's south, was battered on both its east
and west coasts. . </P>
<P>The Sri Lankan government declared a national disaster, and the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the rebel group that controls swaths of northern and
eastern Sri Lanka, said it would declare its own national emergency.</P>
<P>The Tamilnet Web site cited reports from the Tamil Relief Organization that
1,000 bodies had been brought to hospitals in the north and east, with the toll
expected to rise. </P>
<P>Reuters reported looting in Sri Lanka, and officials said that at least 200
prisoners had escaped from a prison in Matara, about 100 miles south of Colombo,
after it was damaged by the tsunami.</P>
<P>In southern Thailand, at least 300 people were dead, according to wire
reports. Among them were foreign tourists who had come to vacation at the area's
popular beach resorts. Emergency workers rescued about 70 Thai and foreign
divers from the famed Emeral Cave, and dozens were evacuated from around other
islands, Reuters reported. Two Thais were killed at Emeral cave.</P>
<P>India, reeling from its own casualties, found itself trying to assist its
smaller neighbors. It sent five naval warships to Sri Lanka loaded with relief
supplies and fielded an offer for similar help from the Maldives. </P>
<P>The Indian government also issued a warning that residents should stay at
least one kilometer, or six-tenths of a mile, away from the sea for the next two
days for fear of aftershocks and more tidal waves.</P>
<P>But even without further calamity, the devastation will take weeks to unfold
and years to repair. Officials in some areas expressed concern that saline water
could contaminate drinking water and ruin arable land. Hundreds of thousands of
people are homeless, crowded into unsanitary temporary shelters, and bodies are
likely to wash up for days.</P></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML><br clear=all><hr>Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : <a href='http://explorer.msn.com'>http://explorer.msn.com</a><br></p>