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I'm sure we all know of the terrible tragedy of the Christmas weekend tsunamis resulting from the 8.9 quake centered off the coast of Sumatra. This is probably the single biggest natural disater in history. But have you thought about actually being there? Here's a post from a guy on another audio forum, that I ran across a few minutes ago: "Some people on the forum may know that I am from India, but may not be aware that I live in a place called Madras, now known as Chennai in a southern state called Tamilnadu. I was reading all about the Xmas greetings on the forum, and thought I should write this note. On 26th morning, at 6.40 am, I woke on my bed shaking due to the earthquake that happened off the Indonesian coast. India is far away from there and we felt the tremors. Many have read about the earthquake and many may have experienced one during their lifetime, but this was different. About 2 hrs after the quake, tidal waves “Tsunamis” hit our beach, which had a lot of people jogging, playing sports etc. The waves were traveling at 500 miles an hour and slowing as they reached the coast, but were still traveling very fast. Within minutes all who were there at the beach vanished, and what remained is what some may have seen on TV. But that was not all. The worst was yet to come. As the sea stabilized, the water started going back. (I stay 1 kilometer from the beach called Marina, which is the 2nd longest in the world and water reached up to half a kilometer from my place) Again people were caught unaware, as strong currents pulled every thing in sight, including trucks into sea. More people died. They estimated 6300 people in the entire region from Indonesia to India at about 10 pm on BBC, but let me tell you the on our beaches itself at least 3000 were missing from all walks of life. The countries hit were Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Srilanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and other. We have people on the forum from those countries, our friends who have contributed, by sharing knowledge with us. I hope all is well with all of them. For those who have never experienced this kind of mayhem, I pray to God that it does not happen to any of you."
Wow, I had heard about that and this post does indeed personalize it. Sometimes it's easy to walk on by, and not really think about the news unless it's within a 100 miles of you. But when you visualize the scene, it's just terrible.
sorry to say, the recent Sumatra quake is only a 'medium-size' loss of life. Here is info on some greater disasters. http://mnw.eas.slu.edu/hazards.html http://books.guardian.co.uk/firstchapters/story/0,6761,673878,00.html http://www.arthurhu.com/index/genocide.htm http://www.maxeiner-miersch.de/life_on_a_risky_planet_e.htm
And there's always the Guinness website.... http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/content_pages/record_subcategory.asp?subcategoryid=30 http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/content_pages/record_subcategory.asp?subcategoryid=30
As always, the worst happened to the poor people and children (one third of all victims). IMO - when we can spend so much money on some stupid Christmas gifts and our hobby, then we can donate something to the "Red Cross" or other supportive organization...