JayDeee

Little update on Gero for you, Not sure if there were any fatalaties, nothing mentioned on the news but thats Aussie News for ya, there was a flag flying at half mast on the beach today, Not sure why so fingers crossed no one was killed. A few people were washed in here and down in Rockingham but they were all rescued. A cray boat was lost here, it got sunk in the fishermans harbour and quite a few jetties have been trashed.

We stayed up all night last night just watching the sea from the upstairs window, it was realy strange, the tide was just goin up and down a few meters every half hour or so, it was quite errie especially with the full moon. At 5am as soon as it was light me and another girl (Emma) went over to see the damage, about 100 meters down the road from us the water had come up over the beach and had flooded a car park and a cafe, there is a shed at the side of the car park where I think the sea scouts have there meets and the water line on the building was about 2 foot up the side. there was sea weed every where, huge logs that had been standing up in the water for boats to be mored to were up to 100 meters inland and all the bins had been tipped up and rubbish was all over the beach, dead fish were also on the beach and quite a few very scary looking purple jelly fish were scattered around. Emma and I decided to do our good deed for the day and got some black sacks, donned sone lovely rubber gloves and got cleaning, I think it cheered the man from the council up because by the time he arived to clean up at 7 am we had already done half the beach. We were really lucky because our building is right on the beach, if it the water had been another 6 inches higher or the building was 100 meters down the road it would have come straight over the beach and we would have been paddling round the ground floor.

Ther surges are still coming, there is a small boat jetty opposite us where you can launch small boats, Emma and I walked down it earlier and before we got on it there was about 2 ft below us to the water level, by the time we got to the end (15 meters or so) we looked down and noticed that it was rising fast, so we ran to get off it and by the time we got off the water was lapping over the top of the jetty, it just keeps coming then disapearing just as quickly makes you realize how much faster and powerfull it must have been in the badly affected areas.

I hope that anyone who knows any one who is in the badly affected areas hears some good news very soon.

Kala

Scossie

Jees Oh... Kala........
Worse than I thought. Hope everyone up there is OK!

Apparently, there's been another quake of slightly smaller magnitude in the last couple of hours!! (same area)...

Let's hope everyone has gone well inland this time, & it won't be as bad....

Cheers.... John....

CasG

Christ Kala, thats scary, hope things calm down where you are, so that you don't come to be too affected.

Last I heard there were over 21, 000 killed in SE Asia.

The power of nature is tremendous - and we have so little control

Take care, Cas

JayDeee

Fingers crossed they get some kind of warning to people this time and they do all get inland, It would be an absolute disgrace if they dont.

Kala

b.uk

[QUOTE=anya4oz]It is an unthinkable disaster on a terrible scale. If, like me, you feel that you want to do something to help, why not donate to the two excellent charities Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) who send immediate medical aid and trained medics to disaster areas, and the Red Cross.

Both are extremely reputable organisations who spend the huge majority of donated funds on relief work, not admin. Two of the doctors in my family regularly volunteer for MSF, and at least one of them will be headed to wherever they are needed in Asia within the next 12 hours.

Here's the link for MSF, with a 'Donations' button to click if you wish to help:

http://www.msf.org/countries/page.cf...75C0B6295D31DB

Here are links for the UK & Oz Red Cross:

http://www.redcross.org.uk/homepage.asp

http://www.redcross.org.au/howyoucanhelp_appeals.htm
(this page has not been updated with the Earthquake appeal yet, but it's a case of 'watch this space' for the Earthquake appeal to be added)

Anya

THANKS FOR THAT ANYA ....I was not familiar with MSF but looked up their website and have sent a donation to the London address. Will put it on a couple of UK sites, too, which I "subscribe" to. Best wishes to the doctors in your family.
Barbara

Amazulu

??, there was no warning of this, how could it be ignored?. This wasn't man made, it was a natural disaster.

Quinkana

After the 1998 July 17 Tsunami in Papua, the villages were moved to higher ground.

There is geological evidence of geologically recent tsunamis along the east coast of Aus and a recent history of tsunamis along the coast of WA. Tsunamis have killed people in SE Asia in many incidents in living memory. Plenty of places where tourist development has attracted people close to the shore regardless of the danger from tsunamis or cyclones. The indonesian archapeligo is a volcanic island arc overlying colliding plates and the Java trench is a well known source of large earthquakes.

johanne

We have really lovely neighbours, he is Sri Lankan and she is an Aussie. They are worried sick because they have relatives who still live over there and dont know whether they are dead or alive...
Hope all is ok for them as well as the thousands who are missing..

Pollyana

Don't know if this link will be of any help to anyone - lists people being treated in Thai hospitals.

http://www.phukethospital.com/

yinwong

50+ dead in my country.

Becs

Over 33,000 dead ! Anybody know what the quake measured?

-Becs

markeh

Now reported as a 9.

Bye
Mark

Scossie

9.0 on The Richter Scale.

sophia

OMG I am really struggling to get my head around the numbers involved in this awful disaster, it truly is devastating.

I know what you mean JD about the water levels here in WA. We drove around the rockingham coastline yesterday and I know what you mean about the ocean looking too full...it does!

I pray for the victims and their families and hope for more survivors, also to the people in there helping in whatever way they can. A friend of ours and his family are holidaying in Thailand but I think/hope they are in Bangkok, but we are still worried sick as they are not due home for a while yet.

I know that the most constructive thing that most of us can do is to donate as much as possible. I just read on the BBC website that the head of one of the large aid agencies said that it's unprecedented they don't know how to cope with a disaster where 10 countries are affected and resources are stretched.

God bless them all

love sophia xx

tonyk38

I heard that it was more powerful than every single earthquake since 1964 put together! Hundreds died in Somalia, several thousand miles away! I can't even begin to imagine the final death toll.....

Apparently 95% of tsunamis occur in the Pacific and systems are in place to detect them and give advance warning to coastal communities. The Indian Ocean has no such system.......

Thousands of lives may have been saved if such a system was in place.