December 26, 2004

• This Just In:

  'Tidal Waves Kill More Than 3,000 in Asia"

  23 minutes ago By LELY T. DJUHARI, Associated Press Writer

  JAKARTA, Indonesia - The world's most powerful earthquake in 40 years triggered massive tidal waves that slammed into villages and seaside resorts across Asia on Sunday, killing an estimated 3,000 people in five countries. The prime minister's office in Sri Lanka said 1,500 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...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 tidal wave being washed ashore. 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 miles 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

   

  2000 years ago

  "The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again." ( Isaiah 24:20 ).

  "For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows" (Mark 13:8).

  "And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;  And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind" (Revelation 6:12-13).

   

  These are the beginnings of sorrows.

   

   

  UPDATE: 12/27/04 10:06 a.m. pst

   

  "Tidal Waves Kill 23,700 in Nine Countries"

   

  By DILIP GANGULY, Associated Press Writer

   

  COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Rescuers piled up bodies along southern Asian coastlines devastated by tidal waves that obliterated seaside towns and killed more than 22,000 people in 10 countries, and officials indicated Monday that the death toll could climb far higher.

   

  The International Red Cross reported 23,700 deaths and expressed concern about waterborne diseases like malaria and cholera. Jan Egeland, the U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator, said millions of people were effected — by lost homes, polluted drinking water, destroyed sanitation — and that the cost of the damage would "probably be many billions of dollars."

   

  "We cannot fathom the cost of these poor societies and the nameless fishermen and fishing villages and so on that have just been wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of livelihoods have gone," he told reporters.

   

  Countries around the world had people among the dead. Britain reported 11 of its citizens had died; Norway 10; Sweden 9; Japan 9; Germany four; the United States and Denmark three.

  ---

  When I told my roommate about this devastation, he wryly commented, as he is wont to do about any news or weather stories. "This happens all the time." I had been following the story, like a true news junkie, throughout the day, caught in shock and despair over the rising casualty numbers. While it is certainly true that the Earth has seen it's share of fatalities following major earthquakes, this was the fifth strongest earthquake since 1900.  The magnitude was 8.9.  In India on Jan. 26, 2001, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9 killed over 2,500 people. Estimates put death toll as high as 13,000. An 8.1 quake in Mexico City in 1985 killed about 9,500 people. Here is a link to a list of the "Top Ten" earthquakes.

  The second and third-strongest earthquakes in the past century both struck Alaska, one with a magnitude of 9.2 at Prince William Sound on March 28, 1964, and another measuring 9.1 shook the Andreanof Islands in 1957.

  It is true that "this happens all the time." But that doesn't make it less greivous or upsetting to hear about it. I highlighted the amount of American fatalaties, 3, in the Updated story above. On this side of the world, we are somewhat "immune" to the devastation which wreaks havoc in other countries. Especially when Americans are not on the casualty lists. I find the number 23,700 very disturbing, a major "disturbance in the force". In America, the daily lives of the citizens continue, as if "nothing has happened".

  Asian peoples, who practice Islam, Buddhism and the Hindu religion, among other "Non Christian" faiths, might not make too much sense of my "Biblical" references, something which I as a Christian immediately thought about when confronted with the initial news of the "sorrows" befalling the other side of the world. I used to "sniff" at the idea of "End Times" in Bible Study while in college, and left a particular group because I didn't want to think "too negatively" about certain demise.

  The "sad fact" of life, of course, is death, and it arrives to each of us, in time, whether we are ready or not. We just have to live each day as if it were a treasure we might never see again, and take solace in the thought that we are all part of a grander plan in the Universe.   

   

  • 6:25 am
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