Tidal waves hit southern Asia

[JonnyBGood]

I know about a dozen people who went to Thailand for christmas


As a theoretical aside I wonder how well these countries can deal with the results of the tsunamis. Some Indian coastal villages have lost all of the fishermen who live there and seeing as these were the primary (often the only) bread-winners in many of the poorer communities there this will place a massive strain both as a short-term refugee crisis situation and on the longer-term economic recovery.

[JC]

A tsunami isnt quite the same as a tidal wave, but never mind.

As devastating as this is its a good job that 8.9 earthquake wasnt in a more populated region otherwise the death count could be in the 10s of thousands .

[JonnyBGood]

I know that you pedantic shit. And yeah, if it had hit singapore, for example, the death toll would be enormous.

[Kurashima]

Originally Posted by JC

A tsunami isnt quite the same as a tidal wave, but never mind.

As devastating as this is its a good job that 8.9 earthquake wasnt in a more populated region otherwise the death count could be in the 10s of thousands .

DISASTER TOLL
Sri Lanka: 1,500 dead
India: 1,000 dead
Thailand: 100 dead
Indonesia: 400 dead
Malaysia: 7 dead


Thats still a pretty ****ing large number of people dude. And those are "Government Estimates" which are invariably a lot smaller to prevent panic.

[Obliterate]

My family were due to fly out for a holiday in The Maldives next week. I guess they won't be going anymore - the airport is underwater :/ Just hope they get the money back on the insurance though - not sure how they cover so-called "Acts of God" though.

[Ste]

Originally Posted by Kurashima

Thats still a pretty ****ing large number of people dude. And those are "Government Estimates" which are invariably a lot smaller to prevent panic.

And it's still rising.
In Thailand especially there were a large amount of tourists.
And in some parts of the area no number is known at all.
The real amount of devestation won't be fully known for days i fear

[LHC]

Originally Posted by Kurashima

DISASTER TOLL
Sri Lanka: 1,500 dead
India: 1,000 dead
Thailand: 100 dead
Indonesia: 400 dead
Malaysia: 7 dead


Thats still a pretty ****ing large number of people dude.

Last years earthquake in Bam was around 30,000 dead, and the earthquake was much smaller at 6.6 on the richter scale.

If only 3000 people die in the biggest earthquake for forty years that's a very small number.

[JC]

Originally Posted by Kurashima

DISASTER TOLL
Sri Lanka: 1,500 dead
India: 1,000 dead
Thailand: 100 dead
Indonesia: 400 dead
Malaysia: 7 dead


Thats still a pretty ****ing large number of people dude. And those are "Government Estimates" which are invariably a lot smaller to prevent panic.

I wasnt meaning to sound cold hearted and say that this wasnt a disaster. All i was saying is that it could have been much much worse as LHC suggested. An earthquake measuring 8.9 would cause a city such as San Francisco, which is reasonably well prepared for earthquakes, a hell of a lot of damage, so some big city in Asia (other than in Japan) would be totally devastated.

[G.K Zhukov]

Just imagine 8.9 in Ruhr, London, New York, Shaghai, Beijing, even Tokyo. Or even worse, Mexico City.

[skiddy]

Like a Friday night with the size of the girls who go out in Newcastle

[Inferno]

The guy in the pic is wearing an Arsenal shirt! GO ON MY SON!

On a more serious note, the clips shown on news channels shows that the situation is VERY bad. I feel for all those suffering.

[Ice-Lady]

My Brother and his Girlfriend are in Thailand on holiday right now.. we couldn't get any news about them for hours, thankfully we eventually got through and they are both ok..

For more info..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_In...External_links

[Boogster]

23000 deaths and still 'spiralling upwards'.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asi...ic/4126971.stm

Awful stuff.

PS. Watched 'The Day after Tomorrow' yesterday. Makes you look at a pretty bad film in a different light.

[Sunday8pm]

I was kinda looking forward to this... however I was expecting it would be the 8.1 earthquake between australia and antartica that would cause this (that happened a day earlier) then bam this happens...

Nature's Damning judgement on those civilizations who live beyond their means with no respect for the power of nature.

GO NATURE!

[Stew]

Originally Posted by Sunday8pm

I was kinda looking forward to this...

Seriously, this needs explaining.

[Leshy]

Sunday8pm is trolling as per usual lately. Maybe his account needs to banned once every year to keep him from going into a "Look at me making the shittest posts ever" period every time.


Also, nu.nl reports the current death toll has risen to 36.000. And UK Radio 1 just reports that it's at 39.000.

[JC]

Originally Posted by Stew

Seriously, this needs explaining.

!

[Stew]

Sorry

SkyNews is now reporting "more than 45,000".

I know it's a terrible terrible catastrophe, but when numbers become like this it becomes just a statistic to me, I can't really comprehend the difference between so many deaths.

[Nadar]

Originally Posted by JC

As devastating as this is its a good job that 8.9 earthquake wasnt in a more populated region otherwise the death count could be in the 10s of thousands .

55k

[Sunday8pm]

I don't know about you, but if I was building near a fault line where there had been several quakes over the history and more recently a violent one locally to the area of the current one, yet insisted on trying to instigate a thriving tourism industry without any failsafe's with regards to earthquake disaster, then they just simply had it coming.

Just like how I would not sympathize with anyone who built their house on a flood plain and then drown...

etc etc.

As it goes there are no way to forecast earthquakes still, they are still working on it but they didn't forecast this one.

If you are setting up home in a danger zone then you are taking that risk, and deaths incurred, ignorance or not, are sympathy that doesn't strike any of my sympathy chords.

Let's face it the numbers that live there and the squalid living conditions they were living in and to be fair the standard of living in all places around there, are atrocious, yet we were never bothered about it, till this happens... even then most of the concern seems to be for holiday makers...

This kind of national sympathizing is a pathetic waste of time compared to the own problems we have closer to home that doesn't recieve the same attention.

I'll finish with this though... When I watch motor racing I like a good ole car crash, when I watch boxing I like a good thorough knockout, when I hear nature on the rampage I like to hear about the death toll figure of all who are foolsh enough to stand in her way when she's positively made her presence felt there in the area for centuries. These people take risks, and some people enjoy watching the odds coming out not in their favour. It's part of human nature, if we didn't prey on the risk of failure, then we'd never have gambling, and anyone who condone's gambling is in the same boat as me on this situation like it or not.

[Stew]

Repeat to self.
Thou shalt not feed the troll.
Thou shalt not feed the troll.
Thou shalt not feed the troll.

[Sunday8pm]

Originally Posted by Stew

Repeat to self.
Thou shalt not feed the troll.
Thou shalt not feed the troll.
Thou shalt not feed the troll.

Only because what you wanted to know sounded too good to argue with.

[Nadar]

Originally Posted by Sunday8pm

As it goes there are no way to forecast earthquakes still, they are still working on it but they didn't forecast this one.

They did 'forecast' it, but they didnt send out a warning because they were frightened to scare away tourists and ruin their tourist industry. Ofc, they didn't 100% know for sure it was coming, but the indications were pretty strong and thus they should have evacuated earlier...

[Zar]

Originally Posted by Sunday8pm

Let's face it the numbers that live there and the squalid living conditions they were living in and to be fair the standard of living in all places around there, are atrocious, yet we were never bothered about it, till this happens... even then most of the concern seems to be for holiday makers...

He has a point here. The only time people care about poor nations, is when massive disasters cause an X (>1000) amount of deaths. Its highly ironic that a country can expect to receive such large amounts of aid and support only after it has a bad disaster. You would think these countries would actually invite natural disasters so that they can get flushed with "sympathy" aid and more importantly "recognition" (sympathy recognition mind you).

People in the world (especially the west) only seem to care if 1000's of deaths happen very quickly. More people have died in probably all those countries over the year due to malnutrition, disease or other poverty stricken causes, yet no one gives a rat ass about those.

This "mass crying" society we live in is pathetic. The fact that millions mourned Diana, the WTC victims, those two kids who died up north due to paedophiles etc.. is just pathetic. It is not pathetic because its bad to mourn, it is pathetic because it reeks of sincere hypocrisy and subservience, that people only mourn who the media tells them to mourn while ignorantly ignoring the thousands, millions of deaths that occur worldwide due to other reasons (which of course the media does not ride upon)

[Stew]

Hang on a minute Zar, you really think the amount of aid, say Sri Lanka, will receive will help them to even restore to a point they were a week ago?

[Zar]

Originally Posted by Stew

Hang on a minute Zar, you really think the amount of aid, say Sri Lanka, will receive will help them to even restore to a point they were a week ago?

Perhaps not this event, but if it was a smaller scale disaster then yes. At least now sri lanka will recieve more aid and support in the future because it is now on the "sympathy" nation list of charities.

[Stew]

Originally Posted by Zar

Perhaps not this event, but if it was a smaller scale disaster then yes. At least now sri lanka will recieve more aid and support in the future because it is now on the "sympathy" nation list of charities.

I'm not sure this is true, even if it is, it won't be enough to cope with the huge decline in the tourist industry.

[Phang]

Originally Posted by Sunday8pm

This kind of national sympathizing is a pathetic waste of time compared to the own problems we have closer to home that doesn't recieve the same attention.

I'll finish with this though... When I watch motor racing I like a good ole car crash, when I watch boxing I like a good thorough knockout, when I hear nature on the rampage I like to hear about the death toll figure of all who are foolsh enough to stand in her way when she's positively made her presence felt there in the area for centuries. These people take risks, and some people enjoy watching the odds coming out not in their favour. It's part of human nature, if we didn't prey on the risk of failure, then we'd never have gambling, and anyone who condone's gambling is in the same boat as me on this situation like it or not.

i really struggle to tell when you're being serious sometimes.

[Sunday8pm]

Originally Posted by Nadar

Ofc, they didn't 100% know for sure it was coming...

Hence no safe way of forecasting earthquakes.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Leshy

Sunday8pm is trolling as per usual lately. Maybe his account needs to banned once every year to keep him from going into a "Look at me making the shittest posts ever" period every time.

[Sunday8pm]

How can not sharing the homogenised tv raised opinion of the masses be trolling ffs?

When it comes to free speech here a lot of you seem best suited to the patriotic version of it.

[meglamaniac]

I only heard about it this morning cos I've been at my auntie's house for xmas and she thinks TV and Radio are the devil, crazy woman.
Last I heard it was up to 60,000 dead with another 700 being confirmed at a single resort as the news report was ongoing.
It's just incredibly lucky the quake wasn't centred on land, or worse, on a city, or what is already a massive disaster could have been many times worse - no building can withstand 9 on the Richter scale. We've all seen what a 6.5 on the scale did to Bam in Iran, and as the scale is logarithmic that means a 9 is many hundreds of times more powerful.

[Nadar]

Originally Posted by Sunday8pm

Hence no safe way of forecasting earthquakes.

But still it's better to evacuate than not... You dont stay home because the mountain only MIGHT tip over your head (ie)

[Sarina_Joy]

The Foreign Office has set up a phone number - 0207 008 0000 - for those worried about friends and relatives. A spokesman urged people to only call that number for information about loved ones only, rather than for flight information or travel advice.

The Foreign Office has advised against any travel to the Maldives and to the affected parts of Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia, Thailand and Bangladeshall that number for information about loved ones only, rather than for flight information or travel advice.

Why would anyone in their right mind think that it might still be a good idea for them to travel to any of the affected areas?!

[Stew]

To try to help out?
If you had booked a holiday and weren't fully sure of the devestation?
If you're stupid?!

[Sarina_Joy]

The latter sounds about right.

[Raging.Retard]

Originally Posted by Nadar

But still it's better to evacuate than not... You dont stay home because the mountain only MIGHT tip over your head (ie)

You can't evacuate because something "might" happen. You need to be 99% sure that it will be happening. There are the obvious commercial implications for big business, but also a whole host of humanitarian problems that arise. You have chaos due to wide spread panic, xxx thousands of now homeless people that need sheltering and feeding. Significant numbers of people can't move anyway.

You know that attempting to evacuate an area normally results in people dieing right? Thats why you need to be pretty sure.

[Tactitus]

Earthquakes are (still) difficult to predict, but tsunamis are another matter. Tsunamis can take hours to propagate through the ocean (depending on location of the quake and size of ocean). They can be detected and tracked with networks of tidal gauges. Procedures to get tsunami warnings into the hands of local authorities can be established, Evacuation plans can be drawn up. Coastal dwellers can be taught to move inland when tremors are felt. Etc.

This infrastructure exists and is in place in the Pacific basin, where tsunamis are relatively frequent. Unfortunately, it does not exist in the Indian ocean where tsunamies are very rare.

[Kurashima]

Originally Posted by JC

A tsunami isnt quite the same as a tidal wave, but never mind.

As devastating as this is its a good job that 8.9 earthquake wasnt in a more populated region otherwise the death count could be in the 10s of thousands .

The official death toll is now nearing 60,000.

[Makhil]

If some of you have difficulties grabing the significance of 60K deads, try to compare the figure with the PA community, imagine all the players and their families dead tomorrow. Still this far from enough...
And if you need to put faces on numbers try this and STFU
http://203.151.217.23/picweb/patong.html

[demiGOD]

Originally Posted by Sunday8pm

Nature's Damning judgement on those civilizations who live beyond their means with no respect for the power of nature.
GO NATURE!

jeez.. i dont think anybody in south and southeast asia live beyond their means.. tens of thousands of people died without fault, and you're out there hollering "weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!" - tsk tsk tsk, UNSAT there bro...

[LHC]

Why do I keep hearing "women and children are among the dead!"? It's pretty obvious that women and children are among the dead, and I don't see why it's relevent.

[JonnyBGood]

The Red Cross has said that more than 100,00 might be dead (seeing as it's ~75,000 at the minute I wouldn't be surprised). As well as that apparently the thai authorities had three hours advance warning of the tidal wave but didn't bother telling anyone as they were afraid if it didn't hit they would have severely damaged their tourist industry. Well it did hit chaps, and I can tell you for certain that a lot of people won't be going to a country which withholds information that could have saved many lives.

Personally I'm really confused about how so many people were killed when there's video imagery of the waves taken from practically on the coastline no more than 80 feet away from the tsunami. My first thought was that some areas were just harder hit but that struck me as particularly random considering the devastation wreaked in most places. Does anyone who knows anything about tsunamis (don't a few people on here do geography?) have an explanation for why that happened?

Originally Posted by Sunday8pm

I don't know about you, but if I was building near a fault line where there had been several quakes over the history and more recently a violent one locally to the area of the current one, yet insisted on trying to instigate a thriving tourism industry without any failsafe's with regards to earthquake disaster, then they just simply had it coming.

Just like how I would not sympathize with anyone who built their house on a flood plain and then drown...

etc etc.

As it goes there are no way to forecast earthquakes still, they are still working on it but they didn't forecast this one.

If you are setting up home in a danger zone then you are taking that risk, and deaths incurred, ignorance or not, are sympathy that doesn't strike any of my sympathy chords.

Let's face it the numbers that live there and the squalid living conditions they were living in and to be fair the standard of living in all places around there, are atrocious, yet we were never bothered about it, till this happens... even then most of the concern seems to be for holiday makers...

This kind of national sympathizing is a pathetic waste of time compared to the own problems we have closer to home that doesn't recieve the same attention.

I'll finish with this though... When I watch motor racing I like a good ole car crash, when I watch boxing I like a good thorough knockout, when I hear nature on the rampage I like to hear about the death toll figure of all who are foolsh enough to stand in her way when she's positively made her presence felt there in the area for centuries. These people take risks, and some people enjoy watching the odds coming out not in their favour. It's part of human nature, if we didn't prey on the risk of failure, then we'd never have gambling, and anyone who condone's gambling is in the same boat as me on this situation like it or not.

Go get eaten by a polar bear.

[meglamaniac]

JBG:
From what I can understand, it's not so much the height of the wave (in this case, mostly not very high) that determines the damange, it's more it's speed and the volume of water behind it, which were both high in this instance.
I heard figures on the news of around 500mph as the initial speed of this thing, and you can see simply from how far inland it got that the volume of water behind it was immense.
It's not so much one short sharp hit from a high wave as a continuous pummelling from high speed water that has done the damange here - imagine being blasted wih a fire hose for 5-10 minutes.

Oh and Sunday, as entitled as you are to your opinion, I'm equally entitled to request you shove it up your ass.

[lokken]

this is quite scary

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by meglamaniac

JBG:
From what I can understand, it's not so much the height of the wave (in this case, mostly not very high) that determines the damange, it's more it's speed and the volume of water behind it, which were both high in this instance.
I heard figures on the news of around 500mph as the initial speed of this thing, and you can see simply from how far inland it got that the volume of water behind it was immense.
It's not so much one short sharp hit from a high wave as a continuous pummelling from high speed water that has done the damange here - imagine being blasted wih a fire hose for 5-10 minutes.

This doesn't really explain how someone was able to escape the wave with their video-camera intact though.

[Phang]

Originally Posted by lokken

this is quite scary

the guy with the first reply has taste in football teams

[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

Personally I'm really confused about how so many people were killed when there's video imagery of the waves taken from practically on the coastline no more than 80 feet away from the tsunami. My first thought was that some areas were just harder hit but that struck me as particularly random considering the devastation wreaked in most places. Does anyone who knows anything about tsunamis (don't a few people on here do geography?) have an explanation for why that happened?

The effects of tsunamis are influenced by the offshore underwater topography, coastal topography, orientation of the land with respect to the tsunami wave front, and local tidal conditions. Offshore features such as reefs and underwater channels can locally dissipate or magnify the effects of a tsunami. Onshore topography, such as hills or flatlands can limit the flood zone to a few hundred feet or allow it to extend inland for miles.

[JonnyBGood]

Thanks tact.


PS That sounds like you copied it out of an encyclopaedia, maybe I should have checked wiki before posting!

[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

PS That sounds like you copied it out of an encyclopaedia, maybe I should have checked wiki before posting!

It's an amalgam of information from about a dozen websites I've visited over the past few days--unfortunately, they were from my inlaws' computer so I don't have any links handy atm.