Yahoo! News – Science Photos – AFP
Graphic explaining the Richter Scale measuring the force of earthquakes.(AFP)

BuzzMachine… by Jeff Jarvis
The tsunami

: The Independent has a helpful if horrifying country-by-country report on the impact of the earthquake and destruction. Here’s a map from The Age in Australia.

: The Age asks readers to send in their stories and this comes from an Australian near Phuket:

We came to Koh Tao on a two week holiday to relax in the sun……
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I was standing on the beach about 30 meters from the shoreline at a dive shop when I heard raised voices and looked around. The deck chairs that were lining the beach were floating toward me. It was a bit confusing at first as nobody had any idea what was going on. There was no loud noise or wind, just all of a sudden the sea had risen a good 10 meters.

Then the wave sucked out away from the shore a few hundred meters, exposing the coral reef that I had dived on a few days earlier. That’s when people really realised something was terribly wrong. All of a sudden all the dive instructors and staff of the nearby restaraunt ran down the beach to see if anyone was pulled out, only to find themselves faced with a surging ocean at least 15 meters high. At this point I was standing on a small cement wall at the top of the beach and watched as they scrambled up the beach and up the steep hillside on the edge of the bay.

When the second wave came in it simply tore apart the wooden buildings that sat at the top of the beach, the water came up to my knees and very neally took me off the wall. When the second wave sucked out, everyone who could bolted for the slopes on the sides of the bay.

The third and probably largest wave came surging forward and simply ripped apart the cement buildings like they were made of balsa wood. I saw a friend of mine scramble onto a roof about 5 meters from me as the water reached its peak – only to hear a loud crack and see the roof lurch badly. I couldn’t believe my eyes when the entire roof – with my friend on top, floated to the side and was sucked out into the bay and out of sight.

It just seemed so impossible, 10 minutes earlier we had been sitting down on the beach drinking a coffee, and now the entire beach had been ripped apart and my friend and all the buildings were simply gone.

The waves continued for a good hour after, gradually getting smaller only to reveal the complete devastation left behind. There was complete confusion as people were running around trying to find each other – or simply sitting in the wreckage with vacant looks on their faces. Later I found out that my friend had been rescued by boat with a mild concussion and lacerations from all the wreckage in the water and is at this moment in Phuket hospital….

Read the rest of the post at the link at the top of this post.

Yahoo! News – Tsunami Waves Kill Over 19,930 in Asia
10 minutes ago

World – AP Asia

By DILIP GANGULY, Associated Press Writer

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Rescuers scoured Asia’s coastlines for survivors of devastating tidal waves that obliterated seaside towns in nine countries, killing more than 19,930 people. Aid poured into the region, but morgues and hospitals struggled to cope with the tragedy.

2004 Indian Ocean earthquake – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Current event This article or section is about a current event. Information may change rapidly.

The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea earthquake of moment magnitude 9.0 that struck the Indian Ocean off the western coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia on December 26, 2004 at 00:58:50 UTC (or 07:58:50 local time in Jakarta and Bangkok). It was the largest earthquake in the world since the 9.2-magnitude Good Friday Earthquake which struck Alaska, USA, in 1964, and the fourth largest since 1900. Thousands were killed by the resulting tsunamis, which were as high as 10 m (approx. 33 ft) in some locations and struck within three hours of the quake.

The multiple tsunamis struck and ravaged coastal regions all over the Indian Ocean, devastating regions including the resort island of Phuket, Thailand, the Indonesian province of Aceh, the eastern coast of Sri Lanka, coastal areas of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and even as far away as Somalia, 4,100 km west of the epicenter.