Reply #62: THANK YOU ALL

[chadk]

You people are just wonderful! Thanks for ALL the sympathy said in the postings under this heading.

When I mentioned the Indonesian authorities wouldn't be surprised if the total casualties locally could be around 25,000, with the discoveries of thousands more dead bodies yesterday and today, the total could well reach 100,000 directly or indirectly (e.g. from the ensuing diseases) for Indonesia alone! Now I don't know if this was exaggerated or not but looking at the local and regional news, that number for Indonesia is not impossible. Indonesia and Sri Lanka have each had over 20,000 casualties now. The FAR reaching catastrophe has managed to make suffering for the people in some east cost African nations, too, with "only" a couple of hundreds deaths so far reported.

Being an Indonesian I can only imagine the only reliable organizations for donation are the churches. I hope and pray that my and you guys' donations will physically get to these poor people that need them most, and not being brutally corrupted!

With hundreds of, or even a thousand foreign tourists still unaccounted for -- it is now confirmed that at least 8 Americans dead -- this catastrophe is actually an INTERNATIONAL disaster. I hate to see the reports that Dumbya has initially agreed to donate ONLY US$15 million for such a monumental disaster and later reluctantly increased the amount by US$20 million only after being harshly criticized internationally of being stingy!

My appreciation goes to all of you DUers and particularly to ExclamationPoint, Kineneb, SpaceCatMeetsMars, UltraDem, Calimary, and of course to quaoar who cared to start this thread. God bless you all good people!