Tsunami-Info.org

Yahoo! News: Tsunamis Devastate South Asia

Indonesia Raises Tsunami Death Toll to 166,320 (Reuters)

Reuters - Indonesia's Health Ministry raised the country's death toll from the Dec. 26 tsunami to 166,320 Wednesday, pushing the total number of people killed in the disaster around the region above 225,000.

AP - India plans a tsunami-warning system that its neighbors could join, while Indonesia envisions one run by southeast Asian countries. The Germans are pitching their own high-tech network, but the United Nations says it should set up the system — and then extend it globally.

AP - The undersea earthquake that caused a tsunami in the Indian Ocean last month also permanently changed landscapes up to 930 miles away from the epicenter off the coast of Indonesia, Dutch researchers said Wednesday.

Reuters - Indonesia offered on Wednesday to hold talks with rebels in tsunami-hit Aceh, hoping to ease security fears in a stricken province where the president said 40,000 people were still missing after the Dec. 26 disaster.

AFP - Japan flashed a tsunami warning following a quake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale in the Pacific Ocean, which came as world experts gathered at a UN conference on disaster prevention.

IPS Inter Press Service - Asia Pacific

TSUNAMI IMPACT: China Defends 'Nominal' Role in Global Relief Effort

BEIJING, Jan 19 (IPS) - While China's media and academics are defending the country's conspicuously small aid donations to the tsunami-battered countries, they also denounced major donors as engaging in ''political chess play'' -- as these countries doled out huge sums of money in emergency aid packages.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 19 (IPS) - With the Muslim festival of sacrifice or 'Eidul Azha' just around the corner on Friday, the region is seeing a huge increase in the movement of smuggled cattle -- across the border from Pakistan to Afghanistan - to be slaughtered in sacrificial offerings.

BANGKOK, Jan 18 (IPS) - Although small, Singapore's response to aid fellow South-east Asian neighbour Indonesia in the aftermath of the devastating tsunami is being hailed by a regional development expert as a pivotal step in the global race to rid the world of poverty.

KOBE, Jan 18 (IPS) - While the occurrence of natural events is largely beyond human control, the consequences are not. And this was the message brought forth at the opening of an international conference on natural disasters with a global reminder to heed the lessons of last month's tsunami that killed over 160,000 in South and South-east Asia.

NEW DELHI, Jan 18 (IPS) - While a new trilateral deal for Burma to export natural gas to India through Bangladesh augurs well economically for New Delhi, activists warned that the Burmese military regime could implement the project using forced labour.

The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog

Sri Lanka: Rebuilding houses for Tsunami Victims

Ken Faris, wrote to us about The SEAChange Initiative through which they are helping tsunami victims to rebuild their houses.

My colleagues and I have created a collective of existing, and new foundations that have the express goal of providing semi-permanent, clean, modern, and dignified housing to those effected by the tsunami. We are working closely with IcosaVillage and are in touch with the staff of the Sewalanka Foundation to coordinate and execute this effort. Further we are working with All-In-Vision and DomeLife productions to ensure through daily broadcast that those who donate will have live updates on exactly how their dollars are being spent.

You can visit our website at seaci.org to find out more about this effort.

Vast expanses of once-green rice fields now turned brown from salty ocean water carried far inland only hint at the environmental damage caused by last month's mighty tsunami, environmental experts say.

They say the wave sparked by a powerful earthquake on Dec. 26 has destroyed beaches, damaged coral reefs, polluted ground water, put animal species in danger of extinction, changed the contours of land and rivers and rendered much farm land useless.

"The environmental damage has been huge, from the obvious and visible destruction along the coastal areas to the possibility of extinction of certain species," said Ridha Saleh, deputy of director at Walhi, a leading Indonesian environmental group.

Read the Full Article from Reuters AlertNet

Tsunami Rehabilitation Corpus Fund

GiveIndia set up a Tsunami Rehabilitation Fund to support immediate initiatives undertaken by partner NGOs to help those affected by the Tsunami waves that washed over southern India on December 26, 2004. The money raised through this fund will also support the long-term plans for rehabilitation of the affected people and will be disbursed according to the specific needs of projects undertaken by partner NGOs in the affected areas.

Some of the relief work initiated by our partner NGOs since December 26, 2004 have helped nearly 120 fishermen from the villages of Thippalavalsa, Thammayyapalam and Barripeta of Vizianagaram district in Andhra Pradesh in repairing their boats and resuming fishing, provided medical relief to over 2000 people in relief camps at Mahabalipuram and Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu and met the daily needs of around 5000 families in Tirukollam, Cuddalore and Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu. Overall, our partner NGOs has assisted over 24,000 people since the disaster.

GiveIndia is a professionally governed and managed online charity portal dedicated to promote "giving". 100% of the donation given to the Tsunami Rehabilitation Fund through the click2donate channel on rediff.com will be disbursed towards the Tsunami cause.

Every individual contribution will be acknowledged by GiveIndia, and details of how every rupee is used will also be provided online at click2donate. All donations are tax deductible under section 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961.

The partner NGOs currently working with GiveIndia on the Tsunami disaster in the states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh are Amar Seva Sangam, Hindu Mission Hospital, The Banyan, Jeevan Blood Bank and Research Centre, Association for Sustainable Community Development (ASSCOD), ASSIST, HELP, Association for Rural Development and Action Research (ARDAR) and Centre of Environment and Development (CEAD).

Your generous contribution towards this effort will go a long way in rebuilding lives of the affected.

[Please check the following source: http://giveindia.rediff.com]

The story below was generously shared by Harini, who was in Sri Lanka during and after. You can see her associated pictures here. Her comments on the pictures: "It's just a sample of the devastation caused...the pix of the boys in the orphanage are pre-tsunami on Christmas day we spent the day with them...everything else is aftermath of post-tsunami..."



The Tsunami disaster and the politics of international aid

Going back home, to the northeast of Sri Lanka, over the December holidays was an opportunity for me to learn about my homeland and discover my roots. I was born and raised in Canada, and the last time I had visited my homeland was as a small child in 1983.

When I stepped on the plane to begin my personal journey I never expected that it would end up being such a life-altering experience. I knew that this would be a profound experience for me, but never did I imagine the extent to which this trip would change my life. The tsunami that devastated 11 Asian countries hit the eastern coastline of Sri Lanka on the morning of December 26, 2004. The northeastern coastline of Sri Lanka was one of the hardest hit areas in the region. The group of almost 30 Canadian Tamil students that I was traveling with was only kilometers from the shorelines when the tsunami struck.

I remember hearing the sirens of numerous ambulances racing by the bus that was carrying us to our next location. I remember thinking, what in the world is going on? I looked over at the person sitting next to me and asked if the flooding was really that bad (recently there had been severe flooding in the area). We passed a small coastal town and saw the townspeople standing and sitting on the side of the road with somber expressions on their face. We asked what had happened, and they said that the waves from the ocean had claimed some lives. Neither they nor us knew the extent of this humanitarian tragedy. It would be one of the worst the world has ever seen.

We got off the bus to take some pictures of the landscape. After snapping some shots, I returned to the road to get back on the bus. To my unbelievable horror I saw a tractor carrying the bodies of several small children. At that point, I was standing, frozen, on the side of the road. Time stood still. I was in shock. I had never seen dead bodies in that state before. I felt as if I was in a dream. Someone helped me cross the road and get into the bus. I sat in the bus in silence. I kept seeing those tiny faces. To this day, when I close my eyes, I can still see those small faces.

As soon as we heard about the extent of the devastation we were dumbstruck. I could not believe this was happening. How could the ocean – such a beautiful and majestic force of nature – turn into a violent and destructive storm of death? I used to love the ocean. It was one of my favorite things in the world. The smell of the seawater, the feel of the wind, the sound of the crashing waves. Now, those sights, sounds, and smells terrify me.

I wondered what could we do to help the people who lost so much. We collected money and our own clothing to donate to people who were displaced and temporarily housed in schools. However, this didn’t seem like enough. That night a small group of students traveling with us went to the affected areas. They reported back with horrific stories. We saw video footage of grieving families, still in their wet clothes, wailing in horror. The bodies of their loved ones laying in rows; some were stacked one on top of each other. There was so much death.

The next day we went to the communities on the northeast coast that were hardest hit. We visited a village called Mullattivu, which has been devastated. We were completely overwhelmed by what we saw. The entire village had been washed away. The stench of death hung in the air. The waves had ripped children from their mothers’ arms. Fishing boats had tossed and turned on top of the waves and were thrown miles inland. Belongings and precious family mementos were scattered on the ground. I saw a photo album left on the ground. I flipped through the pictures and saw smiling happy faces. At that moment I prayed that the family was safe and would soon return to retrieve their belongings.

We went to visit the schools that housed the hundreds of people left homeless and displaced. There were no toilet facilities and supplies were limited. A few medical students cared for the injured, who formed long lines to get medical attention. Hundreds of children roamed around, some crying uncontrollably, others oblivious to the devastation and distress. In the background was the constant wailing of grief-stricken survivors. We had to choke back our own tears when we spoke with the survivors and heard their stories.

The relief efforts were coordinated by the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization, an NGO that operates in the north and east of Sri Lanka. They were the only organization present in the Tamil Tiger-controlled areas. Other NGO’s such as Oxfam and UNICEF had only briefly drove by in their air-conditioned jeeps to drop of a few dozen mats (UNICEF had their mats embedded with their logo). We were saddened to see that there was no international aid coming into the Tiger-controlled areas. The Tamil areas in the north and east were some of the worst-affected areas, yet none of the international aid pledged was getting to these hardest hit areas. We were there continuously for three days, but we failed to see any international aid in these areas. It was truly unfortunate that politics had come before humanitarian need. The Sri Lankan government was refusing to allow relief aid to enter Tiger-controlled areas. As a result, some people – those who had lost everything and everyone they loved – were left in shelters with limited supplies and no help from outside sources. They only had each other to count on.

We spoke with survivors and heard incredible stories of how they saw this giant black cloud of water over 40-feet high coming towards them. They told us how they had no time to think or gather any belongings. They just ran for their lives. They did not know where they were running to. They only knew what they were running from. They told us how they saw their neighbors and members of their own family be carried away by the giant waves and the receding sea. Most of the lives lost were those of women and children. So many children have been lost.

Senthalir Illam, an orphanage for children who lost their parents due to the civil war in Sri Lanka, lost hundreds of children – only 30 survived. We visited the site, and as we walked to the grounds we saw school desks and chairs scattered on the ground. There was a mangled crib in front of the damaged building where the children used to sleep and dream about their futures. I can’t describe how powerful a moment it was to stand on the ground upon which laughing children had played, knowing that most had been carried away by the raging waves. Only days earlier a friend of mine who had visited that orphanage had shown me video clips of those very children. I kept imagining those laughing children playing in the field. At that moment I broke down. I cried uncontrollably, along with my fellow students, at the loss of such innocent and young lives.

Children have also been left orphaned by this tragedy. Many villages and families have only a few survivors. One of the stories I heard from a survivor I will never forget as long as I live. It was the story of an 84-year-old grandmother. This story was very powerful to me because I recently lost my own grandmother. At one of the schools I visited there were two elderly women sitting on the ground alone. I walked up to them to hear their stories. One of the grandmothers told me how she had heard from neighbors about the waves coming. They told her to run and so she ran. While she was running she was thinking about her other family members. They lived in nearby houses. She tried desperately to find out about her family. She found out that none had survived. All of her children and all of her grandchildren had been taken by the waves. I wiped away her tears as she told me that she was alone in the world. She then said to me, “Why did I survive? I am an old lady. Why hadn’t my children or grandchildren survived? They had a future.” These words would haunt me for the rest of my trip. So many children were lost. In some villages no children survived. A whole generation has been lost.

The trip has changed my life forever. I am no longer the person I was a month ago. Being home in Toronto feels surreal. It is hard to reconcile the person that I am today with the life that I used to have. I have learned so much from this experience. I have seen devastation and destruction, but I have also see generosity and hope for the future. This tsunami has brought together people from all over the world in an unprecedented way.

I made a promise to those grandmothers that evening. I told them that I would go back to Canada and share their stories. I promised them that the international community would hear their stories and help alleviate the suffering of the survivors, that we would help them to rebuild their communities and their lives. Most of the people we spoke to had only one request for us: not to forget them.

There is so much work to be done. The long-term needs of these communities are enormous. Fishermen need boats to regain their livelihood. Schools need books, desks and chairs. Orphanages need to be repaired. Houses need to be reconstructed. People need to deal with the emotional scars of loosing their entire family. Let us not forget them!

For information about tsunami relief in the North and East of Sri Lanka please visit:
Tamil Rehabilitation Organization: http://www.troonline.org/ (416) 751-8777
Tamil Children’s Endowment Fund: http://www.tcefund.org/ (416) 451-3125

Thousands of panicking people in southern Chile have fled their homes after a false tsunami alarm.

One woman died of a heart attack and others were wounded as they tried to flee coastal areas near the towns of Concepcion and Talcahuano.

The exodus began as reports that fishermen had spotted apparent signs of an impending tsunami spread through the densely populated area.

Read the Full Article at BBC News

Southeast Asia Tsunami-MISSING PERSONS Photo Pool

tim_leger

Daria_O has added a photo to the pool:



Tim Leger, 5.2, from Germany; missing in Khao Lak.

anita maas has added a photo to the pool:

anita maas has added a photo to the pool:

anita maas has added a photo to the pool:

misshalfway has added a photo to the pool:



*COUNTRY: Sweden
*LOCATION WHEN LAST SEEN: Khao Lak, Thailand (Guest at Blue Village Pakarang Resort)

Google News Search: tsunami

Aceh rebels won't attack aid workers, leader says

Contra Costa Times (subscription), CA - 4 minutes ago
ACEH BESAR, Indonesia - Rebels in tsunami-battered Aceh province will not attack foreign relief workers, an insurgent commander said Monday, amid a warning of ...

Independent Online, South Africa - 5 minutes ago
... Muslim pilgrims began streaming out of Mecca towards Mena on Tuesday, the first day of a haj pilgrimage marked by grief over the Asian tsunami disaster and ...

Business Wire (press release), CA - 5 minutes ago
... The recent Asia tsunami cataclysm and subsequent international relief efforts have also sharply driven Internet traffic in general and Speedera's network ...

CBC News, Canada - 5 minutes ago
The quake struck shortly after 11 pm There is no danger of tsunami, or waves caused by seismic activity, the Japanese Meteorological Agency said. ...

Al-Bawaba, Jordan - 5 minutes ago
... s beaches and the prosperous prostitution industry there have prompted the earthquake that shattered the Asian shores last month and caused the tsunami waves. ...

ICSF

US professor puts knowledge to good use in tsunami-ravaged Thailand

Robert Pomeroy of Mystic is applying what he has learned over the last 20 years about the fishing communities of Asia to some unique and tragic circumstances. At the request of the U.S. State Department, the assistant professor of agricultural and resource economics traveled from an area in Malaysia, where he was working with local fishermen, to Thailand to lend his expertise to areas devastated by the tsunami that struck Dec. 26. Pomeroy has been asked to help the Thai government set a course for the recovery of the affected coastal and fishing communities. He is working with the Asian regional environment officer for the State Department, meeting with Thai officials at the national, provincial and local levels as well as local fishermen to assess their needs and recommend to the U.S. government how it can help. Pomeroy had last been in that area of Thailand in 2004, when he worked with the fishing communities on developing cooperative fisheries management plans. "The impact has been in six provinces and 490 villages along the Andaman Sea coast," he wrote via e-mail Tuesday from Bangkok as he prepared to travel south to the affected areas. "The impacts range from broken fishing equipment to utter devastation with great loss of life. The worst affected village is Ban am Kem in Takua Pa district, Phangna province, where half the population of 6,000 was lost, 80 percent of the infrastructure was damaged." Most of the fishing boats and gear were lost, added Pomeroy, who teaches at the University of Connecticut's Avery Point campus in Groton. The region's economy, based on fishing, shrimp aquaculture, farming and tourism, employed a large number of undocumented illegal migrant workers from Myanmar, hundreds of whom are believed to have died in the tsunami but will probably never be accounted for, he said. Pomeroy, who has conducted research in Africa, the Caribbean and South America as well as Asia, was familiar with some of the fishing communities he is visiting this week from previous trips. The destruction caused by the tsunami, he said, was made much worse by the extremely crowded settlements that have grown up in these areas during a tourism-industry boom that brought with it helter-skelter development. "We can change disaster into opportunity now," he wrote. "The fishing and coastal development before the tsunami was unsustainable. We can now start from zero in many communities to work with them to help develop sustainable fishing practices and coastal development that will make their lives better. There are many lessons we have learned through the years which can be applied now." Coral reefs and mangrove thickets are important natural features of many low-lying tropical and subtropical coastal areas such as the Thai communities because they are critical habitats for fish. Left intact, Pomeroy said, these could have lessened the force of the tsunami, but much has fallen victim to development pressures. The reefs and mangroves that remain, he said, have been further damaged. Pomeroy said that in one of the first steps toward recovery, he is asking the U.S. government to help fund a Thai government effort to survey local fishermen. The survey would determine how many want to return to fishing, how many want to find a new occupation and how many want to return to their villages. It would also assess the psychological impacts of the tsunami.

Associate Immigration Minister Damien O'Connor is today reviewing a decision to allow a Christchurch fishing company that recently laid off about 40 fishermen to recruit 24 foreigners to crew its New Zealand ship. It is the second time in eight months Mr O'Connor has ordered immigration officials to revisit an approval for foreign fishermen to work aboard domestically-owned vessels, the other being an application by Nelson-based company, Amaltal, in May last year. The latest approval, issued last week, allowed Independent Fisheries to recruit 24 foreigners at minimum wage to fill factory hand positions on its sole New Zealand deep sea factory trawler, Independent 1. The company lodged its application in December, citing a shortage of New Zealand fishermen willing to go to sea. But just six weeks earlier, Independent Fisheries handed redundancy notices to the ship's 50 crew members, saying poor fishing catches and sky-rocketing fuel prices meant it was unable to continue fishing profitability year-round. Mr O'Connor today said he was not aware the foreign crew application that immigration officials signed off was for the same vessel that recently laid off New Zealand workers. Mr O'Connor had asked Immigration Service officials to check all its approvals "given our focus on ensuring that wages and conditions in the fishing industry are not dumbed down". One of the redundant crew said that the new terms of employment meant crew would earn less than half what they previously had. Mr Bishop acknowledged an adverse effect on crew pay packets, but said it was financially not feasible to pay bonuses when hoki prices were so low. "The reality is that it is not our fault." Immigration Minister Paul Swain is considering a report into the conditions of foreign crew on New Zealand fishing vessels, having received it just before Christmas.

A large number of fishermen have been caught red-handed violating fishing rules and regulations in Bahrain's territorial waters, it was announced yesterday. "Those violators have been referred to the General Prosecutor after being caught using banned nylon nets, which catch large amounts of fish and destroy fish breeding areas," said Coastguard director Lieutenant Colonel Yousif Al Ghatam. "Their equipment and boats have been confiscated right on the spot," he said. "This a lesson to all those who think they can break fishing rules and regulations and a call for fishermen to abide to directives by the Public Commission for the Protection of Marine Life, Wildlife and the Environment." Lt Col Al Ghatam said fishermen should always bear in mind that protecting marine resources means protecting their industry and ensuring that resources continue for future generations. "We hope that fishermen co-ordinate with us by contacting us whenever they see any violation committed by those going to the sea," he said. "Coastguard patrols are present 24-hours-a-day in Bahrain's territorial waters, especially the northern and southern parts of Bahrain, to ensure that there are no violations being committed."

Twenty days after the tsunami disaster, Chokchai Sermsirimanont has returned to survey the damage to his shrimp hatchery operation in Takua Pa district. The manager of AA Ocean Farm said the tsunami killed seven of his workers, destroyed 300 of his cement hatchery ponds and washed away equipment and shrimp. Total property damage was around 20 mn baht (US$516,034), not including the lost profit potential of his 3,000 breeding stock, which could have produced some 50-60 mn larvae a month. His operation is just one of some 1,300 hatchery farms along the Andaman coast. Some 60-70% of all shrimp farms in six provinces suffered damage in the 26 December tsunami. The Andaman coastline's calm and clear waters formerly boasted some of the country's best shrimp hatchery farms. Post-larval shrimp are sold to shrimp feeder farms in other provinces such as Surat Thani, Nakhon Sri Thammarat, Trat and Chanthaburi. ''We won't be resuming business anytime soon. We won't be ready until at least the end of the year as the damage is enormous,'' Mr Chokchai said. ''The tsunami took our workers' lives. You can't put a price on that,'' said Mr Somsak. ''Over a billion baht ($25.8 mn) worth of property, especially hatchery farms, has been destroyed, not to mention over a billion baht worth of lost opportunity in post-larval shrimp production. Total losses could be around 20 bn baht ($517.4 mn).'' According to Mr Somsak Paneetatayasai of the Thai Shrimp Association, the shrimp industry may need up to six months to acquire new breeders and restore damaged hatcheries. The tsunami may cause post-larval shrimp production to plummet 40% in the first six months of this year, leaving large shrimp production down 30%. ''In general, it takes about four months to raise shrimp to a marketable size. That means that in the first 10 months of this year, feeder shrimp production will fall 40%. Thailand could stand to lose over US$500 mn in export revenue this year,'' Mr Somsak said. Last year, Thai shrimp fetched about $1.7 bn in export revenue.

In response to the devastation from the recent earthquake and tsunami in Asia, Global Greengrants Fund is offering a way for US donors to get direct aid to NGOs on the ground in Sumatra, Sri Lanka and India. Impoverished coastal communities in these regions have been completely destroyed, and the resulting humanitarian crisis requires a generous international response. Greengrants, as a US-based 501(c)(3) organization, can provide US donors with a tax-deduction and will send 100% of your donation directly to the two groups described below. Greengrants will also match the first $5,000 donated. Greengrants has pre-existing relationships with the two organizations listed below, which have allowed GGF to already transfer funds into local bank accounts. Greengrants is currently working to identify groups in India, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia and other affected regions that can accept immediate funds for relief efforts as well. Global Greengrants Fund is a US 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, and will match the first $5,000 donated to this special relief effort. 100% of Tsunami Fund donations will be sent to these relief efforts. Greengrants' US tax ID number is: 84-1612422 For additional information on international donors providing relief assistance please visit the Grantmakers Without Border website at: http://www.internationaldonors.org/issues/tsunami_dec2004.htm, or the Tides Foundation at: http://www.tidesfoundation.org For more information, please contact Chet Tchozewski of the Global Greengrants Fund at chet@greengrants.org. Website: http://www.greengrants.org

Emergency Action Blog -

Creating a ready to use SMS system for the next major disaster.

SMS (Short Message Service) is a technology that allows people with cell phones to have two way communications with people on the web. The value of such a service to relief workers on the ground cannot be under-estimated: whenever they needed info, their requests can be sent to volunteers who have time to google there way to the answers. Thus, people on the otherside of the world would be able to help relief efforts with their keyboards.

At some point in the future (i.e. when the Tsunami relief operation has stabalized and no longer needs every second of possible assistance) , we should consider building a read to use SMS system here. In the meantime, I'll contact a few people who might be able to direct me to instructions on setting it up.

Alright folks, later today I'm planning on developing this site a little further. For those of you who just arrived, we are building a generic website to be used by an open community of bloggers in the event of a disaster. Moving forward,I want to develop a content management system for the following info:

1.Missing people

2. Resources for vicitims

3. Resources for people looking to donate to charity

4. News center (takes in breaking news, and spits out only the news that is relevent to the disaster)

5. Forums for whoever needs them.

Anyhow one want to help? Have any bright ideas? Let me know under the comments box.

Hi everyone,

The folks at LearningTimes.org have donated their Elluminate virtual meeting room tool to my organization's website, the Digital Divide Network, for tsunami-related online collaboration. The tool includes a collaborative whiteboard, webcasting capabilities, real-time audio and video support and other features. Dozens of users may access the tool simultaneously, which makes it idea for real-time online meetings that require live audio, whiteboards, etc.

To access the tool, please go to DDN's online workspace for disaster relief and emergency preparedness and click on the virtual meeting room.

The following are collected stories and websites with tsunami information.

A current death toll is included.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"The BBC's Rachel Harvey, in Banda Aceh, reported seeing ten truck-loads of bodies delivered to one mass grave in just 20 minutes..."

I learned about this excellent piece of journalism by the WP's Michael Dobbs from Roger Mellen via Anonymoses.Thanks to both. This is a first-hand accounting of a nightmare-turned all too real.

Tsunami, Blogs and The Philanthropic Class 

TSUNAMI

These seem like end-times. The eschaton. Amerigeddon. There are locusts in Egypt, trihurricanes, megaquakes, floods, brothers killing brothers, death on a mass scale.Howard Zinn and others have suggested that America become a "humanitarian superpower", and what better time than the present? The big natural event that could unite all people...has occurred. Are we mobilizing? Are we going above and beyond the proverbial call of duty? Or are we giving lip-service, and tossing out a few painless dollars?And what are "painless dollars"?PAINLESS DOLLARS

In order to support my life of heady leisure, I sometimes do work for a well-to-do family here in town. Some of it is painless, but some of it is quite painful. It is impossible that my pay causes any pain whatsoever to the payer, and the other day, I was ruminating on how it would be if people exchanged pain for pain. Pay 'til it hurts. In equal degree. Wouldn't that be nice! So 10k for a day's work makes you cringe? Well carry these barbells to the attic, and then let's talk.

DDN Community 'Disaster Relief and Emergency Preparedness' Blogs

Trip to India Jan 17-Feb 16 Anything to do?

My wife and I have a trip planned to India beginning Jan. 17 in Chicago, arriving in Chennai on Jan. 19, with trip to Madurai/American College and on to Kerala, Goa, Mumbai, Delhi. I was wondering if (1) there is anything I might take along as baggage to drop off in Chennai/Madurai/Kerala area, (2) there is any community telecom center to visit without getting in people's way. First thought: How about bringing along computer modeling software for children/youth to propose ways to create "South Asia Tsunami Warning System," and perhaps some power bars or other healthy food. I would like to explore how to link Illinois-based community technology networks including many at land grant universities serving urban and rural areas throughout the state, with similar community networks in India. Layton Olson Director, Midwest Technology Access Group Sustainability Chair, Illinois Community Technology Consortium Law firm Howe & Hutton, Ltd. and Telecommunication Innovation and Access Network

The horrible tsunami that slammed South East Asia this week, taking a projected toll of 100,000 lives, happened with little warning. Even so, at times it seems hard to believe that with such ubiquitous technology more lives couldn't have been saved. In June, The Age reported that cell phones outnumbered landlines two to one in Sri Lanka. With "vegetable vendors, taxi drivers and pavement hawkers" all carrying cell phones, in a country where many people were individually accessible via affordable technology, perhaps a single emergency message might have been broadcast to every person carrying a phone, telling them to get to higher ground, and fast. I know that such a plan has some complications. Even here in the U.S., it's hard not to imagine the ramifications of such a proposal: "I'm not giving the government my cell phone number!" would go the cry. Still, wouldn't it be something if cell phones carried with them the option of opting into a federal emergency notification system? Better yet, what if the tsunami warning system (now sure to be put in place in the Indian Ocean basin and elsewhere) notified cell phones directly? The video cameras, blogs, cell phone cameras and and high-speed Internet connections are all doing a good job of transmitting news from after the disaster (see Information Week). But I find myself hoping that this will be the last global relief effort that has such a low proportion of survivors. In my dreams, we can put this technology to far better use.

The following international relief organizations are accepting donations: Thank You. Jacqueline Lee Executive Director Homespun Hearth Foundation USA 1=5936&cp1=1">http://www.msnbc.com/modules/interactive.asp?id=/d/ip/tsunami_aid_04/data.js&navid=6758618>1=5936&cp1=1 (a directory) http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwc.nsf/contactDirHome?OpenForm (a directory) http://www.compassion.com/Default http://www.ob.org/ http://www.redcross.org/article/0,1072,0_312_3876,00.html http://www.samaritanspurse.org/home.asp

The last several days have been extraordinarily difficult, watching the news coverage of the devestation across South Asia. It seems only yesterday that Susanne and I were in Mahabalipuram, India, along the coast of Tamil Nadu, marveling its amazing Shore Temple. Walking from the Temple, we met lots of children, eager to show off the latest stone carvings made by local artisans. Here's what I wrote in my journal that day: It was getting very breezy and the salt spray was strong, so we headed inland past the temple and down a street lined with small restaurants and stalls of stone cutters. Stone carving and masonry is still alive and well in Mahabalipuram, and each shop would show off its artisans' work, from small soapstone paperweights to massive marble shrines of Hindu gods, which were sold to temples around the world. As you walked down the unpaved road, it was impossible to not notice the constant clicking of stonemason's tools patiently pounding on rocks of all sizes. There were so many sculptors chipping granite, the staccato sounds of their work continuously swirled around you like some strange John Cage performance art piece. But such hard work would never get in the way of the hard sell - from within every shop, the carvers would yell out to you, "Mister, please, come and see my statues. Very good work...." Often they would have their children come out and try to bring you inside, but unlike in other cities, these kids would just as soon give up their charge and spend their time playing and running around rather than escorting dumb tourists like us back to father's showroom.... As we strolled along the street, we stopped at a small cafe run by a beautiful young woman with striking green eyes and European facial features, but dark black hair and Tamil coloring. "The Pepsis were cheap and they were playing this odd westernish music that sounding like Prince performing lounge standards," I wrote that day. "The woman who ran the cafe was striking, yet not particularly Indian. She must have a significant amount of Portuguese or French blood, for both cultures dominated parts of the south for many centuries." Mahabalipuram lies on the shore of the Indian Ocean, just south of Chennai (Madras). Watching the news the last several days, I couldn't stop thinking of the Shore Temple, the children, the stonemasons -- and more than anyone else, the Woman With the Green Eyes. According to an AP wire story about Mahabalipuram, at least 15 townspeople were killed, around 100 total in the surrounding villages. That charming strip of shops, cafes, and stonemason shops were washed completely away. Amazingly, all that is left standing is the 1,200-year-old Shore Temple, thanks to an engineering project initiated by Indira Gandhi. Compared to so many other villages that lost everything, Mahabalipuram may have gotten off lucky; nonetheless, livelihoods have been ruined, families destroyed. I have no idea what happened to the children we met in Mahabalipuram, to the Woman With the Green Eyes. I suppose I will never know. I can only hope they survived. No matter their fate, I dedicate this blog to them. I've made my contribution to the Red Cross -- have you? -Andy

DDN Community Headlines 'Disaster Relief and Emergency Preparedness'

MicroAid launches 'ASCENT' for recovery in Tsunami communities

Are you working on a Tsunami recovery project in Aceh / North Sumatra? If so, MicroAid wants to hear from you. Visit the ASCENT site http://www.ascent.microaid.net and try the *Community Look Up* tool to find details on the location you are working in. MicroAid is preparing an “Aceh and north Sumatra Community Empowerment, Networking and Telecentres (ASCENT)” project for the Tsunami recovery phase that will ensure: * Community needs are shared with all development partners * Tsunami communities benefit from easy to use, dual language systems to manage their recovery themselves Find out more: http://www.ascent.microaid.net ...

When tsunami waves broke all communication lines across India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, ham radio came to the rescue. Bharati Prasad, India's foremost amateur ham radio operator, was attempting a new transmission record here when the Dec 26 earthquake followed by the giant waves hit the archipelago. Faced with a massive humanitarian crisis - with hundreds dying and islands with thousands of people completely out of reach - Prasad quit her project and jumped into action. "In situations like this, the only thing that works is radio," said Prasad, one of the 20,000 Indian ham radio operators - people who run powerful radio transmission sets connecting with fellow enthusiasts across the world. "The phone links had disappeared, so I started using my radio set to connect with people in mainland (India) and giving information about people in Port Blair."In fact, I was one of the first people to get in touch with a radio guy in Thailand who told me what was happening there ba...

A Red Cross website to aid anxious relatives locate survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster partially crashed on Thursday after being overwhelmed by some 650,000 hits in its first 24 hours, a spokesman said. The Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRCS) was installing a bigger server and hoped to have FamilyLinks, which had become almost impossible to access, up and running again on Friday, Florian Westphal said. "We have had a tremendous response ... the system is partially down," he said. As a result of the technical problems, it was not possible to tell just how many people had been able to find their loved ones through the site -- system. But a few people had called to have names removed, he added. The site has special sections for the four worst-affected countries -- Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand and India -- where the overwhelming majority of the more than 125,000 deaths occurred. ...

Faced with searing images of suffering and grief in South Asia, Americans are finding an instantaneous way to reach out to tsunami victims: on their home computers. As never before, people are turning to the Internet to donate money, the latest step in a revolution that has altered everything from shopping to presidential campaigns. "This is like 1951, when television really took off,'' Paul Saffo, director of the Silicon Valley-based Institute for the Future, said yesterday. "We are in the middle of a fundamental shift from mass media to the personal media of computers and the Internet, and charitable giving is a logical progression.'' At Amazon.com alone, more than 53,000 people had donated more than $3 million by yesterday evening after the company made an urgent appeal on its home page. Catholic Relief Services was so overwhelmed with Web traffic that its site crashed. Online donations to the Red Cross outstripped traditional phone banks by more than 2 to 1. ...

It's hard to know how many people are affected when disasters like a tsunami strike remote areas. But a new approach to population mapping called LandScan is improving the ability of relief agencies to estimate how many people need help. NPR's Jon Hamilton reports. ...

BBC News | In Depth | 2004 | Asia quake disaster | UK Edition

Animated guide: The tsunami explained

How a massive earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggered sea surges and the deaths of thousands of people.

Indonesia says it hopes for formal peace talks with Aceh's rebels after the tsunami created a lull in clashes.

The local administration in India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands are severely criticised by local aid groups.

Indonesia denies saying foreign troops involved in tsunami relief operations must leave in March.

Rich countries need to honour their promises and deliver cash pledged for tsunami-hit countries, Oxfam says.

LIRNEasia

LIRNE at ICT4D and higher education conference

Conference on “Higher Education, Information Technology and Sustainable Development: The central role of universities in building knowledge societies in Asia, Africa and Latin America,” January 10-14, 2005, De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines I was invited to this event, I think, primarily because of the perception of LIRNE.NET as a ...

The BBC world service programme ASSIGNMENT this week is about the tsunami and emergency communications in Sri Lanka and includes an interview with Rohan. You can hear it at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/meta/tx/nb/assignment_au_nb.ram If you don't have RealPlayer, you can dowload it from here.

The press conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka and Washington DC of the World Bank President, Mr. Wolfensohn is available in its entirety via Audio and Video streaming. More details on post-Tsunami reconstruction effort can be found on World Bank's website. Detailed damage assessments will follow initial estimates WASHINGTON, January 12th, 2005-World Bank President ...

SMS enlisted for Tsunami warning system? By Ben Charny, CNET News.com Monday, January 10 2005 11:55 AM At least five countries have begun developing an alert system using cell phone text messages, a response to the catastrophic Asian tsunami that exposed flaws in present-day early warning schemes. Discussions among officials in India, Indonesia, Sri ...

Led to the Colombo Regency Rotary Club's successful web relief operation. This has been featured in Rotary International's publication, without either of their names . We, in our small way, seek to correct this by this post. Good work, guys. You are appreciated, by us as ...

Junk for Code

Francis Bacon #5

There has been a movement in Western academic and artistic circles for reclaiming the body and repositioning its locus and...

a nice comment on political life: Leunig The background is here and here. It's a tough life. Full of stress....

The Cassini spacecraft is the first to explore the Saturn system of rings and moons from orbit. Cassini entered orbit...

Guillem Ramos-Poquí is a painter who has regularly created digital photomontages since 1996. G. Ramos-Poquí, Orwell's Prediction, Study 2003,Digital photomontage,...

Bandah Aceh Phoenix Rising, one of many civic helicopter pilots currently helping rebuild the lives of those affected by the...

bloggers without borders - Blogueurs Sans Frontières | Blogger Ohne Grenzen

On Citizens Who Write, Part X of Endless

Dan Gillmor just announced he’d removed some comments from someone he considers a “Troll” from his weblog. It’s Dan’s weblog, and Dan can do whatever he wants with it. I’d go as far as to claim, that Dan’s recourse is the only one I’d take - in the context of his weblog, Dan is Writer and Editor in one person, and as such has the right and duty to exercise editorial control.

However, Dan’s acts have come to spur some questions as to how this ties into his new venture, Citizen Journalism. And while I can’t speak for Dan’s motives, I can speak for what I believe makes good foundations for the above mentioned act of Citizens who Write.

From the early days of BwoB, it has been clear to us that the market currently offers little pre-fab technology to make good Citizen (or Grassroots) Journalism work. Too much of it is tailored either towards a single user making all editorial decisions or a full-fledged editorial approach with absolute power to a handful or everyone.

North Korea Zone has a link to a video of what looks like a protest in North Korea. Unfortunately, at this point there’s no confirmation that’s what it really is. From the site:

What does the tape tell us? That depends on whether it’s really North Korea. There aren’t enough distinctive landmarks in the tape for anyone except a native of Hoeryong to identify the location with any degree of certainty. The accents were clearly North Korean. The use of bicycles and the general state of bleak disrepair match descriptions of North Korea today.

If authentic, the tape would validate one of the foundational assumptions behind the North Korean Human Rights Act—that at least some of the North Korean people are deeply discontented with the regime and searching for ways to oppose and overthrow it. If the tape reflects the views of a fairly large percentage of the North Korean people, money appropriated to stir dissent could be money well spent.

Either way this is something worth keeping an eye on for sure. Reuters has more. [via Global Voices]

Just got tipped off to the creation of The Committee To Protect Bloggers. So far it looks like they are just announcing what they are are planning, but it looks like a great step in the right direction:

We acknowledge the good work being done by the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and Bloggers Without Borders. There will be some overlap between our group and theirs.

However, several things set us apart and give us a distinct focus, allowing us to become a valuable addition to the global free-speech community.

• We are concerned primarily, though not exclusively, with the well-being of the bloggers themselves. Press freedom is extremely valuable and will be agitated for, but our primary concern is keeping bloggers alive and free.
• We are concerned for them as bloggers, even if some are also journalists or activists.
• We are a group of bloggers, communicating via blogs, about other bloggers. We have some understanding of our fellows that other groups, no matter how well-meaning, cannot. We also have immediate access to the communications power of the blogosphere.

San Diego Union:

How odd that San Diego County, with the United States’ third-largest population of Iraqis, isn’t on the list of out-of-country voting centers for Iraq’s first democratic election this month. Yet Los Angeles, with a 10th of San Diego’s Iraqi population, is on the list, though no exact site is listed yet. But the local Iraqi community, who are – coincidentally, we hope – mostly minorities within Iraq itself, says it’s determined to have a polling center here, by legal action if necessary, because voter participation

Nineteen-year-old Nicholas M. Ciarelli, a Harvard undergraduate who has run the website thinksecret.com since age 13, says he can’t afford to defend himself against Apple’s recent lawsuit.

An article today in the Harvard Crimson says Ciarelli, who is also a Crimson editor, confirmed in an e-mail yesterday that he owns and runs Think Secret. In a lawsuit filed last month, Apple claims that Ciarelli and his company, The dePlume Organization, broke the law when soliciting insider tips online from anonymous sources, “inducing” Apple employees to break their confidentiality agreements with the company.

Shandy's Blog

Keeping Track Of Meeting Notes & Tasks

It's 07:00 in the morning. I got in from work at 23:00 last night and managed around 3 hours sleep before giving in trying to get back to sleep at around 03:30. At least I've managed to catch up on the MVP VB newsgroups for the first time since before xMAS.

Spent a couple of hours catching up entering the latest bug and feature requests for our Raw Materials System at work. I still find I take written notes in meetings, re-write them in a format I can understand, usually in the car on the way into work the following morning, then type them out in word as an email and then enter the bug and feature requests as entries into OnTime, and finally write other tasks into my paper calendar. It all seems rather long winded in this day and age :(

Using OnTime I am happy with. I have found this a massive help in keeping track of software modifications. However it has no facility to handle a more sophisticated requirement of storing meeting notes and a ToDo list. If anyone has any recommendations on how to do this I would be interested in hearing from you :) Of course, I could write thesoftware myself but with my current workload I can't see it getting finished any time soon.

Thinking about it logically I could do with some sort of electronic personal organiser that can handle Word style documents (for meeting notes), allowing a template to be used to enter standard information like meeting location, date/time, attendees, points raised and actons required. I'd want to export this Outlook as an email that could be sent to attendees and people on the action list etc. I could handle entering the software bug/feature requests manually into OnTime and entries into some sort of ToDo list application, preferably that supports exporting time based tasks as Outlook calendar entries. Hmm just typing this out has made me think of actually looking at Outlook and seeing if it has a task list. How embarrassing :-o (See Smilie Code Table for where I figured what an embarrassed smile code was) it has a task list. Well if nothing else writing in my blog has made me think things through logically ;-)

My mobile phone, has a very useful Outlook calendar synchronisation feature so I can upload my Outlook calendar and utilise its reminder facility on my phone. Maybe what I am after is a mobile phone/organiser. I think some investigation is required ...

One question I am consistantly asked at the moment is what is it like living in Colombo in the aftermath of the Tsunami. Well the short answer is - exactly the same as before the Tsunami hit.

To clarify that a bit I would say that you could be living and working and Colombo and if you chose to you could be completely unaware of the problems Sri Lanka is having. The shops are open as normal and stocked as normal. The hotels, bars and restaurants are open as normal. Hey, pizza hut still delivers. The only really visible signs are the red cross drop off points, the white flags flying from buildings and vehicles (white and not black is the buddist colour for mourning) and the sri lanka flag flying at half mast.

Last night we went out to Cheers, an English style pub in Colombo (situated on the bottom level of the Colombo Plaza Hotel) where we met Paul Bishop the CEO (sorry if I got your title wrong Paul) for the three Martin Emprex (the company I work for) factories in Sri Lanka of the Crystal Martin Group.  He had just got back from our Koggala factory (Koggala is about 10Km east of Galle in southern Sri Lanka). His report on the situation was very positive. Yes, we have lost a few employees and several have been made homeless but we have got supplies through to them and are providing money and assistance to get back on their feet. The road down to Galle is navigable and in fact with the lack of traffic the journey takes approximately the same time as it did before the disaster. However, rail travel is only possible for about 40Km south of Colombo on the main line to Galle.

We then moved on to my favorite bar in Colombo, the Cricket Club Cafe. This has been packed all week and Friday night was no exception. It is a favorite hangout of ex-pats and well to do Sri Lankans alike. Although the conversations enevitably center around the situation regarding the Tsunami people are eating, drinking and making merry as normal. Life must go on and although we are all doing what we can to help probably the best we, as ex-pats, can do is continue to work as before to ensure our companies continue to provide jobs to local people and bring much needed revenue into the country.

In my opinion if you were visiting the cultural triangle or any inland destinations in Sri Lanka, or Colombo for that matter, I wouldn't even consider cancelling your holiday. Obviously beach holidays are another matter. Although there are hotels on the coast open many are not and I have no first hand experience about exactly what the situation is in the main tourist areas for beach holidays mainly in the west and south of the island. The cultural triangle is a fantastic experience. See My Sri Lanka for some more information.

We have no reports of disease out of the ordinary at the moment. There is always the threat of malaria, dengee etc. in any tropical country so always make sure you take your doctors advice about injections etc. before travelling.

One poster asked about continuing to set up business in Sri Lanka and again I see no reason not to continue. Sri Lanka appears to be receiving a lot of aid to get things up and running again and certainly our garment manufacturing business is continuing as normal. The biggest worry is always the situation with the Tamil Tigers and currently this appears to be no better nor worse than in the 12 months I have lived in Sri Lanka.

However, these are my views and I suggest you check with both your own government and the Sri Lanka tourist board before travelling to Sri Lanka.

Well I am back in Sri Lanka. Managed to get to Bangkok late on Wednesday afternoon and Colombo just before midnight last night. Colombo appears to be reasonably normal although I base this simply on seeing out appartment where we have running water, electricity etc., a short walk between Majastic City & Liberty Plaza where the shops have food in them and the drive from the airport to Colombo where I didn't notice any flood damage.

I am having an early night tonight as I haven't slept well since the Tsunami struck. I need a holiday just to get over the last holiday. But I'll take the fact I am alive and I have food and shelter available to me and be thankful for that.

My apologies for not replying to the many comments to my blog over the last few days but travelling (postponed flights etc.) and a rapidly dwindling wad of Bahts meant my time on-line has been very limited. Reading through the comments many thanks for other people who have been able to get on-line for answering some of the questions asked.

I am back in work tomorrow and on Tuesday the company I work for hopes to get some information from around the Koggola area of Sri Lanka, where we have a factory.

I have downloaded the pictures I took in Phuket of the aftermath of the tsunami from my Camera to my laptop and will try and get these uploaded over the next few days.

It is now over 48 hours after the tsunami struck. The clear up operation is well under way. The only signs on the kata beach hinting at the disaster are the lack of deckchairs. People are back on the sand lying on towels. A few of the beach side hotels and bars have opened again. The debris has been cleared from the main street and several buildings have been demolished. We have regular helicopter patrols overhead and the odd airplane. there are many water tankers passing through.

our hotel has remained completely unaffected throughout the entire disaster. the bars/restaurants/water supply/electricity have all remained on-line. well over 50% of the restaurants and bars are now open in kata beach. karen beach appears to have been more badly hit.

I must stress that the damage is not constant down the coastline. some places are much more badly effected than others.

i have been trying to contact my work as I have no idea whether they want me to return to sri lanka (where I currently live and work), remain here or return to the UK. I cannot contact Puket airport to find out if my flight back to Bangkok will go ahead tomorrow. The mobile number I have for the local tour guide just gives a deadtone when I ring it. If i can get no more information I guess i will just get a taxi to the airport and hope for the best.