This is pretty f*cked-up. So it surprises me that there weren’t any Americans mentioned, such tourists generally being pretty arrogant in foreign countries.

Insensitivity to the worst disaster in history takes on a new meaning as European visitors to Phuket complain about their surroundings…
…excerpt from: www.dcthornton.com…

Chaminda writes with this announcement of a local candlelight vigil and memorial service, organized by Vancouver’s Sri Lankan community:

Date: Sunday 2nd January 2005
Time: 3:30PM
Place: Vancouver Art Gallery, West Georgia Street, Vancouver.

The Sri Lankan community in the Greater Vancouver area is getting together at this time of national tragedy. Religious leaders from the Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Muslim communities will be conducting services and leading prayers in the memory of all those who perished as a result of the massive ocean waves which washed ashore in so many countries in the South East Asian region.

…excerpt from: feeds.feedburner.com…

Keith Pleas Blog – Friday, December 31, 2004 Entries
Susi’s NGO (non-gorvenmental organization) on Bali – IDEP – was resonsible for much of the recovery work from the Bali bombing and the irony is that much of the organization around that disaster is being put to use immediately to bring relief to the Aceh victims. Lee Downey – one of the lead volunteers on the trucks taking in the aid was in fact the volunteer who managed the morgue from the bombing. He’s got a digital camera and 2GB of media, so there should be some “on the ground” images available soon.

Surfacing from the deluge of news reports about the devastation of coastal Thailand fishing towns, political sniping at the amount of aid pledged by the United States, and frustrated Western seismologists staring at flashing instruments without the phone numbers of anybody in Sumatra, one realizes that only certain details of the tragedy seem to linger — all of them being small, individual acts of heroism.
…excerpt from: www.salon.com…

Read. This. Page. It will upset you, disgust you, hopefully piss you off, but it will also tell at least part of the real story of what’s going on five days after the tsunami.

Excerpt from:
India Uncut
It’s five kilometres of hell, and it’s right here at Nagapattinum.

Kaviarsi studies — make that studied — in the sixth standard. Her schoolbooks lie a short distance away, and besides them lies a doll. The girl herself lies on a makeshift pyre on what used to be her home, her face totally blackened, her neck twisted upwards, the skin peeling off her legs like torn stockings. There is a large empty container of Pepsi lying just besides her, and four other bodies. And besides the pyre, towards the sunset, are five long kilometers of slushy wasteland strewn with dead bodies.

It wasn’t like this five days ago. We — me and two companions — are at a part of Nagapattinum called Akkarakadai, where a prosperous fishing community lived. This five-kilometre-long stretch of land was filled with houses, and had at its heart a bustling Sunday marketplace. The people here were well off — some of them had expensive fishing launches costing many lakhs of rupees. Then the tsunami came.

These settlements begin half a kilometre from the sea, across the road, but the tsunami swept everything away. Every single house was flooded away, all the way till the end of the stretch, and when I went there, I just saw one long expanse of slush. In the distance, there were pyres burning.

Dr Narasimhan, a man I’d wanted to meet, who heads a team of relief workers that has come down from Salem, told me when I called him that we had to walk into that expanse, beyond the pyres. “Walk towards the sunset till you find me,” he said, and we did.

It took us half-an-hour to traverse the half-kilometre or so until we reached him. The ground was like quicksand in parts, and our shoes would sink in with each step and resist our attempts to lift our feet again. We came across dead bodies on the way: a young girl in a basket, her limbs akimbo, and her face, with some dried blood on it, contorted in an expression that even Damien Hirst would have found too macabre. Three feet away from her lay a woman, with a frozen look of horror on her face, etched into an eerie permanence.

“In an unprecedented situation, you need an unprecedented response”

“For the next five kilometres,” Dr Narsimhan motion towards the setting sun, “you will find bodies everywhere. Only the distance you have walked so far — around half a kilometre — has been cleared of corpses. This is the furthest point till which bodies have been cleared. There is so much work to be done.”

“It’s five days since the tsunami happened,” I say. “Why is this place so deserted, why hasn’t all this been sorted?”

Dr Narasimhan sighs. “Sorted,” he asks. “All that the government has been doing is lining the streets outside with bleaching powder. They are not interested in coming here, they left this to the NGOs. And look at this.” He extends his hands towards me. “We’re doing all the work of moving bodies with surgical gloves made of latex, which are no protection against cuts and bruises.”

My girlfriend, who doesn’t read this blog nearly as often as she should, is Canadian so I post this here mostly for her benefit. :)

The Canadian government, until January 11th, will match any donation to major relief operations working from Canada.

In other words, you double the size of your donation if you send money this way, rather than by sending it directly to an affected country or donating in your own country.

Donations to Oxfam Canada, the Canadian Red Cross, World Vision Canada, UNICEF Canada, Care Canada, Doctors Without Borders, World University Service of Canada , Salvation Army, Canadian Food for the Hungry International, Save the Children Canada, and SOS Children’s Villages will all be doubled by the Canadian government — but only until January 11th.

Best wishes to everyone for the new year.
…excerpt from: www.williamgibsonbooks.com…

Xeni Jardin:
Comprehensive collection of materials related to the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, including animations, charts, links, and seismograph recordings, and helful explanations on how to read them. Link (thanks, Ben)
…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…

Xeni Jardin:

Choire Sicha deconstructs wildly contradictory headlines related to the Asian disaster. “I’m all for opinionated reporting and interpretation, but this I find this actually quite disturbing and very sad, particularly when one gets a whiff of agenda in the headlines.” Link
…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…

Xeni Jardin:
BoingBoing pal Mike Outmesguine gives us an update on the blog-driven project to provide free wireless communication services to areas cut off by the disaster:

Here’s a rough update. Smartbridges located in Singapore has pledged 5 access points to begin with and more as specific needs arise. They can be used to connect remote locales over a distance or to create coverage in a local area.

Individuals have pledged spare antennas and radio bridges. Several people have volunteered their time and expertise, including volunteers from the US and Europe prepared to travel to the area to help set up the equipment.

I have been asked specifically to help rebuild communications from people in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and an island near the epicenter without any telecom connection to nearby Sumatra.

We are now working in coordination with the efforts of the Wireless Comm Association International, and I will be attending the Jan. 13th disaster relief meeting in san jose. Other wireless activists and group leaders have contacted me about working together, which I am thrilled to do. I am in touch with companies that want to help, but are working with us to determine what specific models we could put in use.

Bloggers without Borders has pledged 10% of current donations will go to so

…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…

Yahoo! News – Asian Tsunami Disaster
Photo of a full warehouse
Aid Arrives in Asia; Deaths Pass 121,000
AP – 48 minutes ago

The United States upped its tsunami relief aid tenfold Friday as the world’s ships and planes converged on devastated shores. Bottlenecks of supplies built up, fears of epidemics grew, and in an echo of 9/11′s aftermath, people at a Thai resort scoured a bulletin board of 4,000 photos in search of the dead and missing

Indonesia Needs Help, Death Toll Expected To Exceed 400,000 :: Bernama.com…
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 30 (Bernama) — The death toll in Acheh, the region worst hit by last Sunday’s tsunami, may exceed 400,000 as many affected areas could still not be reached for search and rescue operations, Indonesia’s Ambassador to Malaysia Drs H. Rusdihardjo said Thursday.

He said the estimate was based on air surveillance by Indonesian authorities who found no signs of life in places like Meulaboh, Pulau Simeulue and Tapak Tuan while several islands off the west coast of Sumatera had “disappeared”.

He said the latest death toll of more than 40,000 in Acheh and northern Sumatera did not take into account the figures from the other areas, especially in the west of the region.

“Aerial surveillance found the town of Meulaboh completely destroyed with only one buiding standing. The building, which belonged to the military, happens to be on a hill,” he told reporters after receiving RM1 million in aid for Indonesia’s Tsunami Disaster Relief Fund here Thursday.

Rusdihardjo said there were about 150,000 residents in Meulaboh, which was located 150km from the epicentre of the earthquake while Pulau Simeuleu had a population of 76,000.

Excerpt. For the entire story, go to the link.

So much for my vacation. | Metafilter
E-mail from a friend’s friend.

———–

Hello sarah,

I’ve been getting literally hundreds of emails from people asking me and about my experience during the Indian Ocean tsunami. Long story short, lucky to be alive. I’ve been evaced to Male, after the experience…Here’s my account:

I was in my office at the narrowest part of the island (20 meters across) at the northern end with the sand bank, when I heard a strange bump against the wall outside my office, I ran down the hall to find water streaming in under the door and I could barely open it. As I got it open my eyes popped out of my head when I saw the sea was not only level with our island, there was a wall of water coming, frothing, boiling, and fucking angry as hell, bearing down on us. In the distance, I watched as the 50 water bungalows that lined the reef edge were disintegrating like matchwood dumping guests and furniture into the sea. Eddies and vortexes whirled round and there was a strange mist everywhere, smelled like death, as this wave moved towards us in slow motion. I remember turning to run towards someplace safe. But how can you be safe, 1 meter above the sea, water on all sides, with just flimsy thatch buildings made of coconut wood all around, and a wall of water bearing down? I literally stopped breathing, and ran. I didn’t get very far, as a wave smashed me against the wall of the executive offices and instantly my cell phone, keys, watch, ID and wallet were sucked out of my pockets. As I struggled to stand up I heard screams as children and guests were washed past me through reception straight out to sea… I grabbed the ones I could and screamed at them to hang onto my arm, and we inched our way along the wall that was now breaking up from the pressure of the water….in front of us were guests running like crazy from the disintegrating water bungalows and water restaurant that had now collapsed….

So much for my vacation. | Metafilter
December 29, 2004

Yes, I know the Tsunami is old news. We’ve seen it on tv ad nauseum, the same videos on a loop.
Ok, so now? Stop for a second and imagine BEING there.

A little visual aid to help one’s brain wrap around the scale of the devastation in Bandeh Aceh (Sumatra).

QuickBird Images of Tsunami Sites .. from their website

digitalglobe.com…
track this site | 4 links

…excerpt from: blogdex.net…

Tsunami Tragedy Blog

asiantsunami.blogspot.com…
track this site | 3 links

…excerpt from: blogdex.net…