- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 210
8.9 on the richter scale, worlds largest in 40 years, 5th largest since 1900.
Story from CTV.ca
Tidal waves kill more than 3,300 in Asia
Associated Press
JAKARTA, Indonesia â †The world's most powerful earthquake in 40 years triggered massive waves that slammed into villages and seaside resorts across Asia on Sunday, killing more than 3,200 people in five countries.
Tourists, fishermen, homes and cars were swept away by walls of water up to six metres high unleashed by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake, centred off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
A police spokesman in Sri Lanka said 1,677 people were killed in that country. Officials in India reported 1,000 dead. More than 400 were reported killed in Indonesia, 158 in Thailand and 25 in Malaysia. Hundreds were reported missing, and the death toll was expected to rise.
The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake at a magnitude of 8.9. Geophysicist Julie Martinez said it was the world's fifth-largest since 1900 and the largest since a 9.2 temblor hit Prince William Sound Alaska in 1964.
The effects of Sunday's quake rippled across the region, as towns were crushed by floodwater from tsunamis -- seismic waves that are commonly known as tidal waves -- and helpless fishermen were swept out to sea.
In Sri Lanka -- some 1,600 kilometres west of the quake's epicentre -- police spokesman Rienzie Perera said 1,677 had died. Some one million others were displaced by the waters.
"The death toll is going up all the time. Two hours back it was 1,000, one hour back it was 1,300 and now I am told it is climbing to 1,500,'' said Lalith Weerathunga, secretary to the prime minister.
An Associated Press photographer near Colombo, Sri Lanka, counted 24 bodies in a stretch of six kilometres. Rows of men and women stood on the road asking whether anyone had seen their family members.
Monster waves in southern India killed about 1,000 people, mostly in Tamil Nadu state, Home Minister Shivraj Patil said. Beaches were turned into virtual open-air mortuaries, with bodies of people caught in the waves being washed ashore.
"I was shocked to see innumerable fishing boats flying on the shoulder of the waves, going back and forth into the sea, as if made of paper,'' said P. Ramanamurthy, 40, who lives in Andra Pradesh's Kakinada town. "I had never imagined anything like this could happen.''
Cabinet Secretary B. K. Chaturvedi told reporters that the Indian air force would drop food packets, medicines and diesel generating sets in the affected areas.
Near the quake's epicentre, in Indonesia, officials said the death toll was 400.
Communications were down in several coastal towns nearest to the undersea quake off the western coast of the island's Aceh Province, raising fears of widespread and as yet unreported damage.
"The ground was shaking for a long time,'' resident Yayan Zamzani told Jakarta's el-Shinta radio station.
Thousands of people abandoned their homes and headed for higher ground after the earthquake. At least one Indonesian village, Lancuk, was nearly destroyed, witnesses said. An Associated Press reporter in the village saw several bodies wedged in trees.
Some 158 people died in popular southern Thailand resorts, the Narenthorn Centre of the Public Health Ministry reported. The centre said people were swept away in Phuket by a tsunami with five-metre waves.
More than 1,900 were injured and many others were missing.
Huge waves crashed into beaches, where thousands of tourists were lazing on the country's renowned white sand beaches when the earthquake struck. Hundreds of bungalows, boats and cars were carried out to sea.
Police and rescue workers in Malaysia said 15 people were killed. Tens of thousands of people were temporarily evacuated from high-rise hotels and apartments in Penang, Kuala Lumpur and other cities after most of peninsular Malaysia felt tremors caused by the quake.
Foreign Affairs officials in Ottawa said they have not received any word of Canadian casualties, but added Canadian diplomats in the region were still trying to gather information on the disaster.
Indonesia, a country of 17,000 islands, is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on the margins of tectonic plates that make up the so-called the "Ring of Fire'' around the Pacific Ocean basin.
The Indonesian quake struck just three days after an 8.1 quake struck the ocean floor between Australia and Antarctica, causing buildings to shake hundreds of kilometres away but no serious damage or injury.
Quakes reaching a magnitude 8 are very rare. A quake registering magnitude 8 rocked Japan's northern island of Hokkaido on Sept. 25, 2003, injuring nearly 600 people. An 8.4 magnitude tremor that stuck off the coast of Peru on June 23, 2001, killed 74.
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Story from CTV.ca
Tidal waves kill more than 3,300 in Asia
Associated Press
JAKARTA, Indonesia â †The world's most powerful earthquake in 40 years triggered massive waves that slammed into villages and seaside resorts across Asia on Sunday, killing more than 3,200 people in five countries.
Tourists, fishermen, homes and cars were swept away by walls of water up to six metres high unleashed by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake, centred off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
A police spokesman in Sri Lanka said 1,677 people were killed in that country. Officials in India reported 1,000 dead. More than 400 were reported killed in Indonesia, 158 in Thailand and 25 in Malaysia. Hundreds were reported missing, and the death toll was expected to rise.
The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake at a magnitude of 8.9. Geophysicist Julie Martinez said it was the world's fifth-largest since 1900 and the largest since a 9.2 temblor hit Prince William Sound Alaska in 1964.
The effects of Sunday's quake rippled across the region, as towns were crushed by floodwater from tsunamis -- seismic waves that are commonly known as tidal waves -- and helpless fishermen were swept out to sea.
In Sri Lanka -- some 1,600 kilometres west of the quake's epicentre -- police spokesman Rienzie Perera said 1,677 had died. Some one million others were displaced by the waters.
"The death toll is going up all the time. Two hours back it was 1,000, one hour back it was 1,300 and now I am told it is climbing to 1,500,'' said Lalith Weerathunga, secretary to the prime minister.
An Associated Press photographer near Colombo, Sri Lanka, counted 24 bodies in a stretch of six kilometres. Rows of men and women stood on the road asking whether anyone had seen their family members.
Monster waves in southern India killed about 1,000 people, mostly in Tamil Nadu state, Home Minister Shivraj Patil said. Beaches were turned into virtual open-air mortuaries, with bodies of people caught in the waves being washed ashore.
"I was shocked to see innumerable fishing boats flying on the shoulder of the waves, going back and forth into the sea, as if made of paper,'' said P. Ramanamurthy, 40, who lives in Andra Pradesh's Kakinada town. "I had never imagined anything like this could happen.''
Cabinet Secretary B. K. Chaturvedi told reporters that the Indian air force would drop food packets, medicines and diesel generating sets in the affected areas.
Near the quake's epicentre, in Indonesia, officials said the death toll was 400.
Communications were down in several coastal towns nearest to the undersea quake off the western coast of the island's Aceh Province, raising fears of widespread and as yet unreported damage.
"The ground was shaking for a long time,'' resident Yayan Zamzani told Jakarta's el-Shinta radio station.
Thousands of people abandoned their homes and headed for higher ground after the earthquake. At least one Indonesian village, Lancuk, was nearly destroyed, witnesses said. An Associated Press reporter in the village saw several bodies wedged in trees.
Some 158 people died in popular southern Thailand resorts, the Narenthorn Centre of the Public Health Ministry reported. The centre said people were swept away in Phuket by a tsunami with five-metre waves.
More than 1,900 were injured and many others were missing.
Huge waves crashed into beaches, where thousands of tourists were lazing on the country's renowned white sand beaches when the earthquake struck. Hundreds of bungalows, boats and cars were carried out to sea.
Police and rescue workers in Malaysia said 15 people were killed. Tens of thousands of people were temporarily evacuated from high-rise hotels and apartments in Penang, Kuala Lumpur and other cities after most of peninsular Malaysia felt tremors caused by the quake.
Foreign Affairs officials in Ottawa said they have not received any word of Canadian casualties, but added Canadian diplomats in the region were still trying to gather information on the disaster.
Indonesia, a country of 17,000 islands, is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on the margins of tectonic plates that make up the so-called the "Ring of Fire'' around the Pacific Ocean basin.
The Indonesian quake struck just three days after an 8.1 quake struck the ocean floor between Australia and Antarctica, causing buildings to shake hundreds of kilometres away but no serious damage or injury.
Quakes reaching a magnitude 8 are very rare. A quake registering magnitude 8 rocked Japan's northern island of Hokkaido on Sept. 25, 2003, injuring nearly 600 people. An 8.4 magnitude tremor that stuck off the coast of Peru on June 23, 2001, killed 74.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1104066217280_57/?hub=TopStories
Hopefully the international aid arrives quickly, so they can save as many people as possible.
