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…

Last night I was talking with Keith Pleas. Keith is a developer that I’ve known for more than a decade now. He worked on the help system in Windows 95. He also owned a furniture shop where he imported from around the world, particularly in the Asian Pacific. So, he’s well connected in that part of the world.

Last night he told me that we haven’t even heard how bad the tsunami was. He told of one island where 20,000 people used to live. He said he heard that only 600 lived.

Today the death toll was increased to 116,000 (thanks to Memeorandum for the link). That’s a number that’s beyond my comprehension.

One of Keith’s friends, Susi, who lives in Bali and travels frequently to Indonesia, has started a blog: the Aceh Aid Bucket Brigade.

You know, I started out the week by being insensitive. A boor. I said that blogs had missed the initial story. They had. The mainstream press had gotten the original story first. But blogs, like Susi’s, are now helping build new kinds of relief networks and news networks.

By the way, Susi reports that Continental Airlines is opening its doors wide. Corporate giving is really important at times like these. It’s where corporations can show they are important parts of our society. Congrats to eBay, Google, Amazon, Apple for linking to relief efforts.

Microsoft is late to this party. B

…excerpt from: radio.weblogs.com…

GlobeLens – GlobeBlog
Here are some people blogging from the island of Sri Lanka off the Indian coast. It was arguably the worst hit country in the tsunami disaster.

Tsunami update: Microsoft responds, bloggers organize, video torrents
A quick roundup of items related to the tsunami disaster. Image: mannequin in pile of wreckage in Thailand, shot by blogger and NBC correspondent Kevin Sites who is on assignment in Asia covering the story. (Link)

*Following up on a previous BoingBoing post, an anonymous Microsoft employee says:

Responding to this: “Reader J. Hahn says, “I am particularly impressed with Amazon.com…‘s Red Cross donation counter that proves Americans are not ‘stingy.’ Also, as a Mac user, I was proud to go to the apple.com… site and see not one product ad on their front page – just links to aid and donation sites, and Microsoft had not one mention of the disaster.”

Most of Microsoft’s efforts regarding Tsunami relief is focused internally. MS offers a dollar for dollar charitable donation match to all FTE, and is doing everything it can to expidite the process of trying to get the money to where it will do the most good.

* Tsunami Outreach: Bloggers Without Borders’ first international project launched last night. Link (Thanks, Sean)

Boing Boing: Tsunami account from Burning Man gate manager
I don’t know who or what to acknowledge for my presence. That will take a lot of soul-searching. I am certainly among the luckiest people in Thailand right now. According to local news it looks like my town had a SURVIVAL rate of 60%. Please think of what you value. Look around, have you given a hug to someone recently? Anyone? If everything you had were taken away, who would you turn too? In the end it is each other, not the things, that make the world spin. I won’t ever forget that.

This morning I’ve been seeing photos and reading accounts of the terrible earthquake
that hit Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Thailand and others. The death toll is
up to 23,000 people. Here’s a round-up of what I’ve found (mostly through Scoble,
BoingBoing, WorldChanging
and Waxy):

• Photos
  of the after-effects of the tidal wave.
• Evelyn Rodriguez got
  slammed by the wave, but she’s okay.
• Michael Dobbs talks about being
  swept out to sea.
• More
  photos of the wave hitting Phuket and the
  aftermath%2

…excerpt from: www.darrenbarefoot.com…

Tsunami Relief
Like so many others around the world, we at Google are following the devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunami that has hit many parts of Asia and east Africa. Below are a few sites already set up to provide information and handle donations for victims throughout the region. Our thoughts are with everyone who has been affected.

Mark Frauenfelder:
The massive undersea earthquake that caused the tsunami gave a boost to our planet’s spin. As a result, days will be a fraction of a second shorter from now on.

Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass toward the Earth’s center during the quake on Sunday caused the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or 3 millionths of a second, faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis.

Link
…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…

Xeni Jardin:
Author and wireless geek Mike Outmesguine announces a disaster relief project aimed at bringing connectivity to tsunami victims cut off from communications services by the disaster.

I am working to organize a disaster relief effort to help those affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami. I’d like to send wireless equipment and expertise to damaged areas to help reconnect the people. I’m still working out the details and will update you as more develops. It will be organized with folks from the Southern California Wireless Users Group, SOCALWUG and other wireless groups that wish to participate. I started calling it the Post-Tsunami Reconnect.

Xeni Jardin mentioned the effort today on Fox News Channel during an interview about bloggers and the tsunami. I will have a video excerpt available soon. Here is a statement I sent to the Center for International Disaster Information about the effort:

“We are a Southern California based user community of experts and advocates of wireless data communications. Wireless community members supplied technical expertise and wireless equipment for the Florida hurricane relief efforts and to military personnel stationed in Iraq. We would like to organize, collect, and deliver wireless data equipment to disaster relief workers and others in the affected region to help maintain a high level of communication and internet access ability. We would also be able to send engineers into the area to help bring connections online.”

For more information or to discuss a donation of funds, equipment, or your expertise, contact Mike Outmesguine by email “mo at wifi-toys.com…” or voice:
+1-818-889-9445 ext. 102

www.boingboing.net…

Xeni Jardin:
The group responsible for tsunamihelp.blogspot.com… have launched two new collaborative blogs: tsunami enquiry, with numbers for emergency help services in affected areas, and tsunami missing persons, which aims to assist people in connecting with loved ones.
…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…

Xeni Jardin:
Strangely, amid massive loss of human life, there seems to be little or no dead wild animals in Sri Lanka. Snip:

Sri Lankan wildlife officials are stunned — the worst tsunami in memory has killed around 22,000 people along the Indian Ocean island’s coast, but they can’t find any dead animals.

Link
…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…

Xeni Jardin:

John Schwartz wrote an insightful piece for the New York Times this week about the role blogs play in covering and responding to the tsunami disaster. I was interviewed for the piece, but the people who really have something interesting and valuable to say are the ones over there, on the ground — and the folks rolling up their geek sleeves to assist.

From relaying first-person accounts (like Sanjay/Morquendi’s SMS reports in Sri Lanka), to kick-starting relief efforts (tsunamihelp.blogspot.com…, and the Post-Tsunami Reconnect project), to questioning media coverage (Ethan Zuckerman’s post about Myanmar), there’s a lot going on here The amateur-shot image shown here ran in the NYT story. Snip:

“At sumankumar.com…, Nanda Kishore, a contributor, offered photos and commentary from Chennai, India: ‘Some drenched till their hips, some till their chest, some all over and some of them were so drenched that they had already stopped breathing. Men and women, old and young, all were running for lives. It was a horrible site to see. The relief workers could not attend to all the dead and all the alive. The dead

…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…

Xeni Jardin:
Blogger and NBC combat correspondent Kevin Sites was in Southeast Asia on a break from reporting duties when the tsunami disaster took place. He’s now in Thailand, reporting — and back on the blog again, dispatching photos and first-person accounts. Snip:

One-hundred and fifty-nine pine coffins have been stacked in the garage — many of them big enough to hold refrigerators — built to accommodate the now bloated and rapidly decomposing bodies inside.

Thai soldiers, wearing surgical masks, race against time to arrest the process — before the bodies become impossible to identify.

In a well-choreographed drill — they use hammers to smash square blocks of dry ice, carrying the shards on sheets of plastic and dumping them inside the coffins with the remains. They work at a very high tempo — almost as if they were trying to rescue the living — rather than preserve the dead.

On the sides of the coffins are photographs of the deceased as they were found, special attention paid to jewelry or tattoos, anything that can help in identifying who they once were.

The pictures are grisly — bruised, blackened, bodies misshapen from the ferocious force of an angry ocean and all that travels with it. Old, young, small, large, South Africans, Australians, Canadians, English, Thais �- all victims of the earth’s unrest on a day when she seemed to have precious little mercy.

…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…

Xeni Jardin:
Waxy.org… has been collecting amateur video footage, here’s a roundup post: Link. Punditguy has more: Link

Chris Holland says,

I’ve used prodigem to create torrents for the South Asia tsunami videos. The more people use this torrent, the faster everyone else will be able to download the videos. See also this page to make it easy for people to put an amazon donation badge on their sites.

Link

…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…

Xeni Jardin:
The total number of dead is now believed to be more than 80,000, and rising. In some places, one in every four citizens have lost their lives. Many of the areas hit were extremely poor to begin with, and some 1/3 of the dead are children. Following up on previous BoingBoing posts about fundraising and relief efforts kick-started in the blogosphere:

Scott Hanselman proposes that Google allow bloggers that use AdSense to donate ad proceeds to tsunami relief. Link (Thanks, Peter Provost).

Andy Carvin at Digital Divide Network says, “In response to this week’s devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the Digital Divide Network has created an online community workspace on disaster relief and emergency preparedness: Link. The virtual community can be used for posting online resources, documents, news, and articles about tsunami relief efforts. Users also may take advantage of the site’s Web bulletin board and post their own blog entries.”

BoingBoing reader Andrew Falconer proposes that folks who’ve received holiday gift cards convert them into donations to a tsunami relief charity. “I’ve emailed Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Swapagift.com… regarding gift card donations directly to tsunami relief charities. Amazon.com… has already implement

…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…

Xeni Jardin:
Wikinews just launched a Tsunami Help page to collect links to relief effort resources including aid agencies, missing and found people, confirmed deaths, news updates, and helpline numbers. The emergency database was created by contributors to the SEA-EAT (Tsunami Help) blog. (Thanks, Rohit). Link to related BoingBoing posts.
…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…

Waxy.org…: Daily Log: Amateur Tsunami Video Footage
In addition to the extensive first-person coverage of the tsunami disaster on blogs, there have been several amateur recordings of the tsunami from camcorders. Unfortunately, the network websites aren’t making them easy to find and view. The videos are usually only available as poor-quality, streaming video like RealPlayer, and buried in popup windows and poor navigation.

Ben pointed me to downloadable versions of three clips. I’m hosting them here. (Unfortunately, I don’t have much information about the source of these videos.)

* phuket.wmv (11MB) – shot from inside a restaurant, waves engulf older couple clinging to railing before flooding entire room
* patong_beach.wmv (10MB) – rooftop view of two huge waves battering buildings along shore, then flooding of city streets
* sri_lanka.wmv (7MB) – upper balcony view of hotel swimming pool area getting flooded as observers run away; woman asks “how high will it go?” before retreating
* koh_lanta_thailand.avi (11MB) – shot on beach level; watch as first wave grows and crashes, before cameraman’s frantic retreat away from shore
* penang_beach.wmv (1MB) – shot from wall above beach, three men are caught in battering waves
* sri_lanka_resort.wmv (6MB) – upper level hotel balcony; restaurant, pools, and deck flooded as people cling to trees; two men narrate what they see

DigitalGlobe | Sample Imagery
Kalutara, Sri Lanka

“After” Image Collected December 26, 2004
Image © 2004 DigitalGlobe

“Before” Image Collected January 1, 2004
Image © 2004 DigitalGlobe

Description:

This is a natural color, 60-centimeter (2-foot) high-resolution QuickBird satellite image featuring the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka. Imagery was collected at 10:20 a.m. local time, slightly less than four hours after the 6:28 a.m. (local Sri Lanka time) earthquake and shortly after the moment of tsunami impact.

View more...

Xeni Jardin:

Rohit Gupta, Jon Lebkowsky, and Dina Mehta at the Worldchanging.com… blog have just published a roundup of first-person accounts, aid site urls, and news reports related to the tsunami disaster in Asia. They say this post will be updated regularly, so you can bookmark and return for fresh info as it comes.
Link. Joe Gandelman posts another comprehensive roundup here, on his “Moderate Voice” blog: Link.

Wikipedia is also maintaining coverage in a richly linked, well-organized web page with ongoing updates. Link. And Wikipedia Commons offers related media (photos, data animations, and the like): Link (Thanks, Nick Douglas)

Loic Le Meur tells BoingBoing, “A French blogger writes of having been alerted three hours before the tsunamis hit the coasts. An www.boingboing.net…

Xeni Jardin:
Earlier today, we posted a first-person account from tsunami eyewitness Sanjay (aka “Morquendi”). He’s a blogger and TV producer who lives and works in Sri Lanka, one of the areas hardest hit by the disaster. Throughout last night — as he participated in emergency rescue and relief efforts — Sanjay text-messaged live observations to his co-editors at the collaborative blog ChiensSansFronteres. Snip:

# I’m standing on the Galle road in Aluthgama and looking at 5 ton trawlers tossed onto the road. Scary shit.

# Found 5 of my friends, 2 dead. Of the 5, 4 are back in Colombo. The last one is stranded because of a broken bridge. Broken his leg. But he’s alive. Made…

# ..contact. He got swept away but swam ashore. Said he’s been burying people all day. Just dragging them off the beach and digging holes with his hands. Go..

#..ing with gear to get him tommorrow morning. He sounded disturbed. Guess grave digging does that to you.

ref=”http://www.writers.net/writers/rohitgupta”>Rohit Gupta)

UPDATE: Mumbai-based blogger Rohit Gupta from ChiensSansFronteres tells BoingBoing,

“We now have two bloggers on the gro

…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…

Phuket Tsunami Photo Gallery by hellmut issels at pbase.com…