 |
|
Lankans take shelter in schools, temples
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tourists return to Malaysia; tsunami toll 44
When tsunami snatched son from father
Warnings could have saved thousands: US geologists
‘Thank God, I was upstairs’
|
|
Lankans take shelter in schools, temples
Payagala (Sri Lanka), December 27 In the southern coastal town of Galle, a major industrial hub submerged by a 9-metre wave, some residents spent the night on the roofs of office buildings and the local bus station. Many could only watch in horror from balconies yesterday as men, women and children were swept away by waves of water that poured through the historic city. Floods triggered by the
tsunami have stranded an estimated 7,50,000 people along the southern, eastern and
northern shores. “A wave up to 10 ft (3 m) in height hit this area and everything was swept away, including my three-wheeler taxi,’’ said 40-year-old Piyasoma, a resident of Payagala, a town 60 km south of Colombo. Government officials estimate more than 5,00,000 people have been left homeless, and said the final death toll could rise much higher because hundreds of people washed out to sea have not yet been accounted for. Giant waves crashed into the island yesterday morning after a powerful earthquake off distant Indonesia, sending a deluge of seawater into towns and villages, witnesses said. President Chandrika Kumaratunga declared a national disaster. ‘’We are not well equipped to deal with a disaster of this magnitude because we have never known a disaster like this,’’ President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who has declared a national disaster and appealed for donor aid, said while on holiday in Britain. In the seaside town of Kalutara, holidaymakers staying at a luxury hotel on the seafront described a 2.5 m wall of water crashing onto the coast. ‘’We were sitting by the water when people started shouting a wave was coming in,’’ said visiting British car salesman Richard Freeman. ‘’We left everything behind and ran inside. I just feel very sorry for the Sri Lankan people.’’ Many hotels along the southern coastal belt — jampacked at the height of a bumper tourist season — were flooded. Railway tracks were broken, buildings demolished and vehicles tossed around like plastic toys as the flood waters surged. The capital, Colombo, emerged largely unscathed, but slum areas close to rivers and waterways that criss-cross the city were badly flooded. The neighbouring Maldives holiday island chain was also swamped, but the waves were much smaller and just 10 persons were feared dead. Tamil Tiger rebels, whose two-decade war for autonomy killed more than 64,000 people, said hundreds of Tamils living in the northern and eastern strongholds had been stranded and thousands more had lost their homes. ‘’The human disaster and the tragedy the survivors face are unprecedented and need immediate and effective humanitarian intervention,’’ the rebels, who the USA has placed on a list of banned terror groups alongside Al-Qaida, said in a statement posted on pro-Tamil website Tamilnet. It was the latest in a string of natural disasters to pummel the island, which is heavily dependent on tourist dollar earnings and agriculture.
— Reuters |
|
Search for victims on in Indonesia
Banda Aceh (Indonesia), December 27 At a market on the outskirts of this provincial capital, troops unloaded piles of bodies from military trucks as weeping and dazed survivors tried to identify victims. Hundreds of swollen bodies were covered with bright orange plastic sheets. “I’m tired. I’m looking for my father. Please help me,’’ wailed Maimori (22). She said her father was a fish seller and last spoke to her on Sunday before going to the market. Many of the dead in Aceh province were youngsters and elderly who drowned in waters churning with huge rocks, logs and the remnants of homes uprooted by earthquake-triggered waves that slammed into the northern tip of Sumatra island yesterday. The United Nations said it had offered to send disaster response teams into restive Aceh, currently off-limits to foreign aid workers because of a long-running insurgency. A government official said Aceh would be open from Wednesday. Thousands huddled in mosques, tents and larger buildings across Aceh a day after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake, the world’s biggest in 40 years, struck off the coast of Sumatra. The main hotel in the stunned city, where the Health Ministry said 3,000 persons died, was half-collapsed. Wrecked cars and uncollected bodies lay outside.
— Reuters |
|
Tourists return to Malaysia; tsunami toll 44
Penang (Malaysia), December 27 At the resort of Batu Ferringhi, on the northern tip of Penang, where several people were swept away on Sunday, many returned to the beach to sit in the sunshine in deck chairs or sip cocktails. Just a few yards away, rescue workers plunged repeatedly into the sea to pull out bodies as knots of worried families gathered for news of missing loved ones. ‘’At least I hope to see her remains and give her a proper burial,’’ said Fauziah
Bidim, as she waited for news of her 8-year-old daughter, who was swept away by Sunday’s wave. Fauziah (37) from the neighbouring state of
Kedah, was having a picnic on the sand with her daughter and three-year-old son when the wave struck. She clung to a tree and clasped hold of the boy, but lost hold of the girl, Siti Nazirah Mohamad
Salleh.
— Reuters |
|
|
When tsunami snatched son from father
Sydney, December 27 “At this stage we understand ... six Australians are of concern, but these numbers are likely to change around hour by hour as we get information,’’ Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told reporters in Adelaide. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesman Justin Lee said 4,100 Australians had been in areas hit by the quake and
tsunami waves, which killed more than 17,000 people in coastal areas of Asia around the Indian Ocean. Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) radio reported that a 16-year-old Australian boy with Down Syndrome went missing after a
tsunami wave hit a crowded stretch of Patong Beach in Thailand’s Phuket. Paul Giardina became separated from his parents when a wave hit the Patong restaurant as they ate breakfast. ‘’I couldn’t get to my son because I had the tables from outside and the chairs had gone in between us but my husband Joe had Paul ... then they just went.”
— Reuters |
|
Warnings could have saved thousands: US geologists
Los Angeles, December 27 But there was no official alert system in the region because such catastrophes only happen there about once every 700 years, said Mr Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's centre in Honolulu. "We tried to do what we could," he said. "We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world." Within moments of detecting the quake, McCreery and his staff were on the phone to Australia, then to US Naval officials, various US embassies and finally the US State Department. They were unable to reach the thousands in the countries most severely affected, including India, Thailand and Sri Lanka, because none had a
tsunami warning mechanism or tidal gauges to alert people, he said. A warning centre such as those used around the Pacific could have saved thousands of lives, Mr Waverly Person of the US Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Centre, said. "Most of those people could have been saved if they had had a
tsunami warning system in place or tide gauges," he said. "And I think this will be a lesson to them," he said, referring to the governments of the devastated countries. He also said because large tsunamis or seismic sea waves were extremely rare in the Indian Ocean, people were never taught to flee inland after they felt the tremors of an earthquake. tsunami warning systems and tide gauges exist around the Pacific Ocean, for the Pacific Rim as well as South America. The United States has such warning centres in Hawaii and Alaska operated by the US Geological Survey and NOAA.
— Reuters |
|
‘Thank God, I was upstairs’
Tokyo, December 27 Information was scarce on the fate of tens of thousands of holidaying foreigners caught by walls of water that swept across the Indian Ocean, slamming into coastal areas of Thailand, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, India and the Maldives, killing more than 17,000 people. Television pictures showed terrified people taking refuge on roof tops as cars and other debris were swept along streets by the force of the water. Sri Lankan authorities said rescue workers had found the bodies of 22 people believed to be Japanese on safari at Yala national park. Japanese officials had little information. “I was sitting on the first floor of a bar, not far from the beach, watching cricket,” said Australian tourist, Stephen Dicks, 42, visiting Phuket, Thailand. “And suddenly all these people came screaming from the beach. I looked around and saw a massive wall of water rushing down the street. It completely wiped out the ground floor of my bar, and thank God I was upstairs.” “I tried to run, but my children were so scared they couldn’t move. I couldn’t get away,” another man told the station. Mr Lothar Boese, a German jewellery shop owner in Phuket, was surveying his gutted shop. His goods had been swept away, leaving a covering of mud on the floor. “I am devastated by what has happened. I have never seen anything like this before. We lost everything,” Mr Boese said.
— Reuters |
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
