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| Thread: Tsunami Earthquake Relief -- What You Can Do | |
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Peacemaker
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted December 30, 2004 12:13 AM |
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Tsunami Earthquake Relief -- What You Can Do
Okay all. This is an e-mail I just generated and sent to over forty people in my address book. This was inspired by the dialogue in Earthquake thread along with discussions with my husband and several friends.
I strongly urge all of you to copy/paste the following into an e-mail of your own to send to as many people as you can. My apologies to those of you outside the U.S. -- I worded the e-mail based on my original thinking that most everyone in my address book resides here in the States. You can edit it as you wish of course, tailoring it to suit your needs:
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Hello family and friends --
This is hopefully the beginning of a mass movement to get help to those who are in desperate and sudden need on the other side of the globe as a result of the recent earthquake and resulting tsunamis, which killed possibly over a hundred thousand people and left over a million homeless in several nations. This was truly a shocking, devastating event.
If every adult in the United States alone donated only five dollars, we could provide over a billion dollars in disaster relief. Ten dollars a piece would double that amount. This would help stave off the lasting wave of devastation our neighbors are going to face as disease, famine, economic devastation and homelessness continue to plague them into the indefinite future.
Below I have provided two websites that make the donation process quick and painless. If each of us makes a contribution and forwards this e-mail to only a few individuals, we could keep the wave of assistance moving throughout our society.
http://www.redcross.org/donate/donate.html
http://www.wfp.org/
Please, please take the time to consider doing this, and be as generous as you can. Remember the orphans, and all the others who have been left with nothing but their tears.
Thanks to you all for reading this.
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<EDIT>
See below for more international contribution sites in various posts.
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Peacemaker
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted December 30, 2004 01:31 AM |
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What it's like over there -- eyewitness accounts
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December 28, 2004
Yahoo News
The biggest humanitarian relief operation ever mounted was underway along Asia's devastated shores as the death toll from a massive earthquake and the tidal waves it unleashed was predicted to hit 45,000.
With the scale of the catastrophe still unfolding the confirmed death toll passed 27,000 in nine countries -- but Indonesia warned that it alone could have suffered up to 20,000 more fatalities on top of its official figure of 4,725 deaths.
Indonesia's Vice President Yusuf Kalla, who is in charge of coordinating relief efforts, said he estimated that "21,000 to 25,000 people" had been killed in Sunday's disaster.
The quake, the biggest in 40 years at 9.0 on the Richter scale, ruptured the Indian Ocean seabed off Indonesia's Sumatra island, sending huge waves thousands of kilometres (miles) to kill and destroy in countries around southern and southeast Asia and even in Africa.
Mass funerals were taking place amid scenes of traumatic grief as bodies lay rotting along coastlines throughout the region, lending weight to fears that outbreaks of disease could unleash a second wave of tragedy on a region struggling to cope with the first.
"The people should be buried and the animals should be destroyed and disposed of before they infect the drinking water. It's a massive operation," said UN disaster relief coordinator Jan Egeland.
Gruesome scenes met emergency teams in the worst hit countries of Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and Thailand, while the death tolls ticked up even in the less affected areas of Malaysia, the Maldives and Myanmar.
As survivors were evacuated from stricken areas tales of the full horror of carnage wrought by the tidal waves emerged: babies torn from their parents' hands, children and the elderly hurled out to sea from their homes, entire villages swept away.
Hundreds of rescue ships, helicopters and planes were mobilised to evacuate tourists from wrecked resorts and airlift stricken victims to hospitals already overflowing with the injured and corpses.
The UN's Egeland told a press conference at UN headquarters in New York that relief operations would be the biggest ever as the destruction was not confined to one country or region.
"The cost of the devastation will be in the billions of dollars. It would probably be many billions of dollars," he said.
In Sri Lanka, where the death toll neared 12,000, bodies pulled from washed out trains, cars, devastated buildings and beaches, were being buried in mass funerals along the southern coastal areas.
The government waived normal legal procedures to dispose of the thousands of bodies to help stave off the threat of disease.
Drinking water wells were already badly contaminated with sea water, government minister Susil Premajayantha said, but the biggest fear is of water contamination by decomposing bodies which could spark epidemics of diseases such as cholera and typhoid, experts warned.
"The biggest health challenges we are facing are the spread of waterborne diseases," said International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies health official Hakan Sandbladh.
Compounding the problem is the huge number of people left homeless, with Sandbladh's organisation saying there were one million people displaced in Sri Lanka alone and 29,000 more in Thailand.
Thousands were also homeless in Indonesia's Aceh province, which bore the brunt of the temblor, hit at point-blank range and then battered by a tsunami.
There were post-apocalyptic scenes in the main city of Banda Aceh, where the stench of death hung over the rubble of houses, while reports trickling in from Aceh's southwestern coast spoke of an almost complete obliteration of a shoreline that is home to an estimated one million people.
"All 17 villages on the coast are no longer there," said Teungku Zulkarnaini, the head of the southwestern Nagan Raya district.
In southern India vultures gathered as survivors grimly buried or burnt their dead. The death toll passed 7,500 Tuesday, with thousands more missing.
Rescuers were anxious to discover the fate of 30,000 people unaccounted for in India's Andaman and Nicobar islands, which are close to the epicentre of the earthquake.
G.C. Gupta, a district official in the Andaman archipelago, 1,200 kilometres (745 miles) from mainland India, said some 30,000 were still missing in the tropical islands known as a vacation paradise where at least 3,000 are known to have died.
"Villages are spread all over. There are 30,000 people that need to be accounted for. Some may have fled into the interior jungles or been swept to sea," said Gupta.
Witnesses spoke of waves "taller than buildings" that crashed into the islands spread over 800 kilometres (500 miles).
On the southern Indian mainland, the death toll was expected to mount with tens of thousands still missing. Cranes dug mass graves and mourners built funeral pyres as vultures gathered where bodies still lay in the open. Funerals were carried out in a rush with minimum ritual.
Tens of thousands spent the night huddling in emergency relief camps as the government stepped up relief efforts and the Indian Red Cross appealed for food, clothes and tarpaulins.
In the worst-hit Indian state of Tamil Nadu, fisherman A. Ravi wept as he recalled watching his family, including four children, swept away as his village was flattened.
"We went fishing in the early morning and a few hours later the water started swirling around us and suddenly the level went down so sharply we could see the seabed," said Ravi.
"Then I saw a huge sheet of water going towards the shore... when I got back I found my village under water and my family gone," he said.
Similar stories of personal tragedy were repeated throught the region, with new horrors revealed each time rescuers reach previously cut off areas.
In Thailand, more than 700 foreign tourists are believed to be among the total of 990 dead.
"The latest figure we have is more than 990 confirmed deaths. Of these some 200 were Thais and the rest were foreigners," Sutham Sangprathum told reporters before a cabinet meeting on the disaster.
In the tourist resort of Khao Lak, scores of bodies found scattered on streets and among trees were piled into trucks by emergency crews, with up to 150 corpses on a single flatbed truck seen by an AFP photographer.
Hundreds of rescue workers and soldiers in white face masks were still pulling the dead out of the mud, or retrieving them from forests or ruined buildings.
For four to five kilometres (2.5-3 miles) through the town, the scene was of utter devastation and the destruction stretched two kilometres inland.
Almost 29,000 people were evacuated from the Thailand's affected areas, which included the resort islands of Phuket and Phi Phi where thousands of European tourists had been enjoying holidays.
Hardly a building was left standing on Phi Phi island east of Phuket, where bodies were seen strewn about the island, covered in white cloths before being taken away by emergency crews or Western tourist volunteers.
"I saw bodies almost everywhere on land, and in the water too, and I think there are many more bodies trapped under the bungalow debris," said rescuer Wirat Mansa-ad, estimating 300 died on the island alone.
As Thailand mobilised its army and navy in a huge rescue operation, dazed foreigners began flying home -- still struggling to come to grips with what had happened.
Melina Heppell, a six-month-old baby girl from Australia, was swept from her father's arms on Patong Beach, Phuket, when a tsunami wave hit, her uncle Simon Illingworth said on Australian television.
"They were walking along Patong Beach yesterday... he thought he had the baby in his hands, but all he had was clothes," Illingworth said, tears streaming down his cheeks.
The waves triggered by the quake were so powerful that the destruction reached the shores of Africa about 7,000 kilometres (4,000 miles) away, killing more than 100 Somali fishermen.
The tragedy has sparked a growing chorus of calls throughout the region for a tsunami alert system, as many victims were swept from coastlines hours after the quake which triggered the giant waves was recorded.
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Peacemaker
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted December 30, 2004 01:46 AM |
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WHO: Disease Could Double Asia Death Toll
Dec 28, 1:12 PM (ET)
By SAM CAGE
GENEVA (AP) - The World Health Organization warned on Tuesday that disease in the aftermath of southern Asia's tsunami disaster could kill as many people as the deadly waves and earthquake have.
Governments in 11 nations are still trying to determine how many were killed in the devastation wreaked by Sunday's quake and the tsunamis it caused. The death toll now stands at around 44,000 and is expected to rise.
But with relief officials warning of possible cholera epidemics and malaria, Dr. David Nabarro, head of crisis operations for WHO, told reporters in Geneva that "there is certainly a chance that we could have as many dying from communicable diseases as from the tsunami."
Nabarro said the main threat to life now is communicable diseases associated with a lack of clean water and sanitation.
"The initial terror associated with the tsunamis and the earthquake itself may be dwarfed by the longer term suffering of the affected communities," Nabarro warned.
Local hospitals and health services are already overwhelmed by the initial impact of the earthquake, and so are less able to cope with people who may fall ill, Nabarro said.
"So our focus, with the governments and with civil society organizations throughout the region, will be on saving lives, preventing disease and promoting recovery of the essential infrastructure for public health and well-being," he explained. "The assessments are underway."
Relief organizations are distributing supplies over 11 countries in Asia and Africa, and the United Nations has said it will likely make its largest ever appeal for humanitarian funding in response to the disaster.
The hardest-hit countries are Indonesia, whose Aceh region was closest to the epicenter of Sunday's earthquake, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India.
"Some areas are still hard to get to, but we're now moving into Aceh and finding early signs of a really terrible humanitarian tragedy in that part of Indonesia, and we're much more aware now of the needs in Sri Lanka, and Maldives and in the other countries," Nabarro said.
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privatehudson
Responsible
Legendary Hero
The Ultimate Badass
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posted December 30, 2004 05:41 PM |
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Peacemaker
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted December 30, 2004 06:09 PM |
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(BLUSHES)
Sorry 'bout that
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Dingo
Responsible
Legendary Hero
God of Dark SPAM
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posted December 31, 2004 04:34 AM |
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I heard that 9.0 Earthquake was so bad, that it messed up the earths rotation by a fraction of a second.
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The Above Post/Thread/Idea Is CopyRighted by, The Dingo Corp.
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Peacemaker
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted December 31, 2004 08:18 PM |
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Here's one other contribution site I found (International Red Cross/Red Crescent) that accepts the Swiss Franc and the Euro:
http://www.ifrc.org/helpnow/donate/donate_response.asp
If anyone else is having trouble finding a site that will accept your currency, just post here or e-mail/IM me and I will be glad to help you find one. Just let me know where you are and what currency you use locally.
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Peacemaker
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted December 31, 2004 09:08 PM |
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Svarog
Honorable
Supreme Hero
statue-loving necrophiliac
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posted January 04, 2005 02:21 AM |
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Hey Peacemaker, I already get mails from friends to confirm me they've donated. Thanks a lot.
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The meek shall inherit the earth, but NOT its mineral rights.
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THEultimateN...
Tavern Dweller
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posted January 04, 2005 07:59 AM |
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After hearing that terrible news, I myself went and donated money, clothes, and food for the victims of the earthquake. I am rather greatful to god that my family had just left the area no less then two days before the quake hit. They were rather greatful as well, can't really blame them. But the horror the victims went through....uncomparrable. 
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Come to best the Vets
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Peacemaker
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted January 04, 2005 10:08 PM |
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Right on Svarog. Good work. No need to thank me.
N00b, glad to hear your family got out okay. Where were they?
I just received confirmation that a friend of mine who lives in Thailand was also inland when the tsunami struck. He is alright too.
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Shiva
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted January 05, 2005 02:20 PM |
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Edited By: Shiva on 5 Jan 2005
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As of now, the total amount donated
has reached billions, with more to come
I'm sure. I think the world has responded
very well both individually and country wise.
Lets hope that most of this money reaches
where its intended.
This made me think of how people react
in emergencies. Barriers come down,
we talk to eachother more and help
strangers without any second thought.
Personally, I witnessed that with the
ice storm in Montreal a few years ago
that shut down the electricity in the
middle of winter.
This is a great disaster, but
the fact that so many want to
help is extremely heartening.
Despite the bad news fed us every
day by the media, this response
of the world shows what most people
quietly are like:Just plain good folks
ready to reach out when called.
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angelito
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
proud father of a princess
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posted January 05, 2005 05:08 PM |
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As i heard the good news that the australian and german government raised their amount of money donating to the victim countries up to 500 million euros today, the german chancellor gave the info, that until yesterday night, the private german inhabitants donated already 170 million euro.
I think that is awesome, and i´m very sure the inhabitants of some other countries have donated about the same amount (like usa, japan, china).
Usa additionally doubles their amount of helicopters for the transport of helping issues like food, medicine, clothes and such...
With all that help, at least the damages can be repaired and the houses, streets and all that can be rebuild again.
We can´t do anything for the dead victims though...
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Better judged by 12 than carried by 6.
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privatehudson
Responsible
Legendary Hero
The Ultimate Badass
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posted January 05, 2005 05:18 PM |
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The problem tends to be that in a month or two the press will stop talking about this, but the fallout will go on for a hell of a lot longer.
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We're on an express elevator to Hell, goin' down!
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angelito
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
proud father of a princess
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posted January 05, 2005 05:28 PM |
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Very true PH....like it happened with the earthquake in Iran....
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Better judged by 12 than carried by 6.
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THEultimateN...
Tavern Dweller
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posted January 06, 2005 07:20 AM |
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My apologies PM, until I visit or hear from my family again I'm unsure as to where they were, I do know they said they were going to Asia someplace by the Pacific Ocean. As I was not invited I didn't really care as to where they went until after hearing about the quake. Now, I'm just glad they got the "hell outta dodge" so to term.
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Come to best the Vets
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