Tsunami disaster - Focus: Nature's timebomb

[TeeYiYi]

January 02, 2005

Tsunami disaster
Focus: Nature's timebomb

_{Reporting team: Matthew Campbell and Keith Loveard, Indonesia, Michael Sheridan and James Pringle, Thailand, Jon Swain and Amrit Dhillon, Sri Lanka, Jonathan Leake, David Cracknell and John Elliot, London. Edited by Richard Woods}

It is the biggest natural disaster for decades. Yet scientists feared such a catastrophe was looming. So why were there no warnings? A special report into the Asian tsunami that claimed more than 120,000 lives

The birds were the first to react. With a great beating of wings, thousands of egrets and cormorants rose from the placid coastal water off Sri Lanka and hurried inland, although nothing seemed amiss.

The air was soft and the sun was warm. The sea was unusually calm. Having breakfast last Sunday in the Yala Safari Game Lodge overlooking a lagoon was Uditha Hettige.

“All of a sudden the birds started flying off in a big commotion. There were too many to have been disturbed by a crocodile, so I looked up,” he said.

Tourists, many of them British, were celebrating Christmas on the island, thronging Yala and other coastal resorts. Lovers were lying on the beaches, swimmers were splashing in the cobalt blue waters, divers were exploring the coral reefs and fishermen were repairing their nets.

“I looked up towards the sea 150 metres away,” said Hettige, “and saw water coming at great speed.”

Much much more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1422835,00.html

TYY

[malaise]

1. Birds always

give early warnings of impending trouble.

"Yet it could have been so different, and so many lives might have been saved, as the experience of Kenya shows.

By the time the tsunami had travelled 3,500 miles and was nearing the coast of east Africa, news of the dreadful toll in Asia had preceded it. The waves still wreaked death and destruction, especially in Somalia, but in Kenya the authorities had sufficient warning and initiative to act.

Local police evacuated the sandy tourist beaches of Mombasa and elsewhere, and by the time the wave struck the shore was empty. Only one person died".

Edit -quote added.

[bloom]

2. the island of Simeulue...

"On the island of Simeulue, reached by an aid flight late last week, they remember a tsunami of 1907 when the island, not far from the epicentre of last week’s quake, suffered thousands of deaths.

Locals never forgot the disaster and it helped them to survive when they felt the quake on Boxing Day.

“It became part of the folklore that as soon as we feel a quake we must run to high land,” said Darmili, a district administrative leader.

“It was clear that trouble was coming. The force of the quake was so strong we suspected a big tsunami would follow. Our local lore reminds us of the danger we live with every day.”

Although it was hard to judge the extent of the damage on Simeulue, Darmili said that the majority of the island’s 70,000 people had heeded the lore and escaped the waves that followed the quake."

[malaise]

3. In disaster-prone regions

collective memory is important for survival. That is why culture-specific education/socialization is key.
It also helps when we live in harmony with nature and don't see ourselves as superior to other living things. Observing the sea, sky, birds, animals, trees and so on are as important as development oriented science and technology.

Put simply those birds would have saved my life.

[bloom]

4. It's rather like

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x94673

"The Ends of the World..." Where people adapting, paying attenion are more likely to survive historically... It also why legends and myths are important.

I can see where tourists would be caught off guard - not being familiar with an area, the beach, what is normal etc. And some places there may not have been that much wildlife around - esp. in resort type populated areas.

This particular tragedy had everything going wrong as far as circumstances - a holiday weekend day at the beach. With a lot of people probably not paying a whole lot of attention or knowing what to look for even if they were.

I imagine if I had been at one of those resort areas - I may not have made it - without local people's warnings. If I had been at a less populated place - my chances would have been a lot better - I would have been more likely to notice what the wildlife were doing.

[progressivedancer]

5. okay

the island of Simeulue was 25 miles from the epicenter, so surely they felt a large shake. But all the other places around the Indian ocean not so close to the epicenter felt a mere rumble. I lived in the Philippines once, a mere rumble was nothing to go "let's flee for higher ground!" about.