130,000+ people die due to tidal wave in Asia... (1 Viewer)

Oh man...this is just incredible...

They say its the biggest earthquake ever on Earth since 40 years ago. Whoa.

That majorly sucks. 10.000... :frowning: .

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H

The death toll is at 11,500 now and rising. :frowning: The devastation there is unbelievable. My heart goes out to the victims and their families.

Jesus, that is absolutely horrible.

The BBC are now reporting the death toll is up to 15,000

Scrub that, it's now 20,000+ and still rising.

Crazy. Just crazy. I can't even imagine what it would be like. There were reports that people off the coast felt a tremble and thought it was just an earthquake and went back to sleep. When they woke up they saw the devistation.

Crazy.

They said seismology machines, in New York, picked it up

I was just reading an article about how the tsunami was created, very interesting. This earthquake happened about 25 miles below the sea, and was estimated to have lasted for a few seconds. That's enough though to push all the water above it up just a few feet and start the tsunami... pretty amazing stuff. It said the speed of it was estimated to be about 300 miles per hour at the start, but it dies down after a while, and when it reached the shores of Thailand it was more like a tenth of that... still, for it to reach all the way to Africa, there's a LOT of energy there.

Thailand is a very popular tourist destination for Swedes, so it's estimated that about 20,000 Swedes were in the Thai areas hit by the earthquake, that's why I read so much about it. Sad, but when there's not much local interest in it for me, these things kind of slip under my radar, so to speak.

I guess at least it was a good thing that the eartquake was at sea. I imagine the devastation had it been on land would have been much worse.

/Mike

Isn't this natural disaster getting much coverage in the US? Unbelieveable

Jonathan,

It's been the top story on every news channel and radio for the past day. If that's not coverage, I don't know what is.

Its getting tremendous coverage here, I have been following it since the beginning, so don't even think that its not...this is truly sad. My thoughts and prayers are with those people, and it is only going to get worse with contamination and other sanitary issues.

23,600 per CNN.

This is horrible...

:frowning:

My sister was on the Island of Phuket when the the earthquake hit; she said it shook so hard that cars slid around, etc. She flew out to Bangkok today, but will head back to Thailand tomorrow morning.

I heard that it hit at 500 mph, but that was a local radio station, so I don't know how accurate that was.

Damn! With the weird snow we've been having in the US and this...Someone (up there) is Angry! :frowning:

I read an article that people were being swepped several miles out to sea. I can't even imagine what that scene must've looked like.

I've always been fascinated with oceanography and plate tectonics. A large shift in the level of the ocean floor causes a displacement of water at the surface resulting in a tidal wave (or Tsunami... depending on what side of the globe you're on). The wave can travel at high speeds for great distances pretty much as a harmless swell until it reaches shallower water where it slows and its wavelength starts to become compressed and it's amplitude increases, creating that "wall-of-water".

Phuket is windy as hell, and it's amazing she made it out.

Here's what happened after the March 1964 Alaska quake.
Each color band equals one hour of wave travel time.
http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/web_tsus/...traveltime.gif