Remembering the 231,000 dead. The worst disaster of mankind. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10546933/ Tsunami survivors honor victims in Thailand PHUKET, Thailand - Tsunami survivors and relatives of the dead laid wreaths and prayed on the Thai island of Phuket on Saturday as they began marking the first anniversary of the disaster. About 150 Norwegians gathered for a garden church service near Kata Beach to honor the 84 nationals who died when the tsunami struck Thailand’s Andaman Sea coastline last year, killing 5,395. “Thailand is a warm country, sunshine, palm trees. But for some people it also feels cold because of their loss,” Rune Birkeland, a priest with the Norwegian Seaman’s Church, told the sunset ceremony. The Phuket service was one of several events held in the region as Thailand prepared for a full day of commemorations on Monday on the first anniversary of the disaster. Thai authorities say at least 10,000 people will attend memorials to be held in the six southern provinces affected by the tsunami, which killed more than 2,000 foreign tourists. Suwat Liptapanlop, chairman of the tsunami commemoration committee, said the Thai government was sponsoring about 2,000 survivors and relatives of victims so they could attend the events. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra had earlier announced plans to pay for the flights and accommodation of survivors and the immediate family of victims from Dec. 25 to Dec. 27. Groups helping foreign families to attend services said the Christmas period would be especially tough. “For people who lose someone, the first year is always the hardest. You go through it all alone,” said Knut E. Pedersen, who is helping Norwegian survivors and relatives in Thailand. Boat laden with flowers Other ceremonies were also held across the region to remember the death and devastation caused by the disaster which struck Asia last Dec. 26, leaving 231,000 dead or missing. In Khao Lak, where most of the Thai casualties occurred, the Moken sea gypsies launched a ceremonial boat laden with incense and flowers into the ocean to ward off evil spirits. The Moken are nomadic fishermen whose ancient beliefs warn them to flee to higher ground if ever the ocean recedes. Hundreds of Muslim and Buddhist villagers watched as fisherman launched the brightly colored four-meter-long boat, wrapped in yellow and pink cloth, into calm seas. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will join survivors in prayers on Monday evening, officials said. Up to 10,000 people are expected to attend the prayers at the historical Baiturrahman mosque in Banda Aceh, capital of the province of Aceh which took the brunt of the tsunami. During his two-day trip to Aceh, Yudhoyono will also visit mass graves and maintain a moment of silence at the Baiturrahim mosque in a coastal suburb of Banda Aceh. “There will be a moment of silence at 8:16 a.m. (0216 GMT), which was around the time the first waves hit Aceh last year,” Adlai Goldberg, manager of the Media Center at the Aceh Reconstruction Agency which oversees the rebuilding process in Indonesia’s tsunami-hit areas, told a news conference. The tsunami left nearly 170,000 dead or missing and half a million homeless in Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra island.
One Year Ago Today One year ago today over 230,000 people died in one of the worst disasters in history. Even though its been a year hundreds of thousands are still homeless or are still struggling to rebuild their lives. As we go on with our lives looking forward to the New Year lets pause for a moment and remember the victims of the tsunami that swept away lives and lively hood all along the Indian Ocean. http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/12/26/tsunami.main/index.html
I just posted a thread on the same subject. Oh well considering its such a huge disaster I guess it doesn't hurt to have two threads on it.
This is really weird. _______________ Scientists discover tsunami dead zone A dead zone, devoid of all marine life, has been discovered near the epicentre of last year's tsunami earthquake, 2.5 miles beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean. The first scientific expedition to the epicentre found little or no effect on deep sea fauna except at one site off Sumatra where, five months after the disaster, no evidence was found of large animals. British scientists taking part in the Census of Marine Life, a worldwide marine survey, made an 11-hour dive with a robot submarine. In one region nicknamed the "ditch", a 200-yard wide trench where one tectonic plate of the Earth slips under another, they were shocked to find no signs of life. This was "unprecedented in 25 years of deep-sea sampling", said Prof Paul Tyler of the National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton. "We tried to sample the sediment but so much was in suspension it was hard to see where the seabed was. The water just got thicker and thicker. "There were no large animals. I think it is because of the high sediment load that may clog gills or feeding mechanisms." The census continually finds large numbers of new species in some of the remotest parts of the ocean. They include tiny carnivorous sponges, just five millimetres wide, found on the flat expanses of the abyssal plains, deep beneath the Southern Ocean. Along the northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge, beneath the most travelled ocean surface on Earth, new and strange varieties of deep sea fish have been found, along with at least four new species of sea cucumber and possibly two new species of squid. An international database called the Ocean Biogeographical Information System now contains more than 40,000 marine species including 78 fish newly added to the database this year. link
