Tidal Waves Kill More Than 700 in Asia JAKARTA, Indonesia - The world's most powerful earthquake in 40 years rocked northern Indonesia on Sunday and launched tidal waves that swamped villages and seaside resorts across Asia, killing more than 700 people in five countries. Some 300 were reported killed in Sri Lanka, 286 in India, 94 in Indonesia, 61 in Thailand and seven in Malaysia. Hundreds were reported missing, and the death toll was expected to rise. The U.S. Geological Survey (news - web sites) said a magnitude-8.9 quake — one capable of massive damage — struck off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra at 8 a.m. Sunday. The USGS (news - web sites) revised the quake's size upward from magnitude-8.5. Soon after it hit, immense waves or tsunamis crashed into several countries, and aftershocks in the magnitude-7 range were seen, the USGS said, raising the possibility of a catastrophic regional death toll. Waves crashed into coastal villages over a wide area of Sri Lanka — some 1,000 miles west of the quake's epicenter — killing some 300 people and displacing thousands of others, said military spokesman Brig. Daya Ratnayake. Parts of the northeastern districts of Muttur and Trincomalee were inundated by waves as high as 20 feet, said D. Rodrigo, a Muttur district official. In India, beaches were turned into virtual open mortuaries with bodies of people caught in the tidal wave being washed ashore. At least 150 were recovered around the coastal town of Cuddalore, said deputy Superintendent of police K. Panniselvan. Some 100 others were found around Madras, the capital of Tamil Nadu, said Police Chief R. Nataraj. Thirty-six were killed in neighboring Andhra Pradesh, said state Chief Minister Y. Rajashekhar Reddy. Officials at the USGS, based in Golden, Colo., blamed the tidal waves on the quake. "This is not unusual occurrence for an earthquake this size and where it's located," said geophysicist Julie Martinez. Martinez said the quake was the world's fifth-largest since 1900 and the largest since a 9.2 quake hit Prince William Sound Alaska in 1964. At least 94 people were killed in Indonesia's Aceh province, hospital and local officials said. Bireun district head Mustofa Glanggang told The Associated Press that 50 people were killed in Bireun district, and 35 bodies were brought to Cut Meutia Hospital in the northern city of Lhokseumawe, an official there said. Nine others were killed in the provincial capital Banda Aceh, witnesses told a local radio station. Communications were down in several coastal towns facing the epicenter of the undersea quake off the western coast of Aceh, raising fears of widespread and as yet unreported damage in the region. "The ground was shaking for a long time," resident Yayan Zamzani told Jakarta's el-Shinta radio station. "It must be the strongest earthquake in the last 15 years." Sixty-one people died and many were missing in popular southern Thailand resorts, the Narenthorn Center of the Public Health Ministry reported. The center also reported that people were swept away in Phuket by a tsunami with waves surging as high as 16 feet. The Bangladesh Meteorological Department said a powerful earthquake jolted a wide area of that country early Sunday, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. The quake was reported to be a magnitude-7.3. Police in Malaysia said seven people were killed in tidal waves. Indonesia, a country of 17,000 islands, is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on the margins of tectonic plates that make up the so-called the "Ring of Fire" around the Pacific Ocean basin. 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. ------------------- Very sad...a friend of mine is on vacation in Thailand with his family, I hope that they are alright... I did not even know that Thailand's beaches are in danger of being hit by Tsunamis...
I was reading about this a little while ago, and now they say perhaps about 1500 are dead. It's crazy, saw it on the news a couple of hours ago. Scary, because I know a bunch of people scuba diving in the area.
I just read about it too. They are now saying more than 3000 people in five countries. http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=360106 +
I remember that the island I was on in the Maldives did not have any two-story houses. I would imagine that everything must have been under water there, I cannot imagine that everyone survived that .
Good grief, 8.9 is an incredibly strong earthquake. I'm surprised the tsunamis it generated weren't even bigger. Sad because it's not like they have anywhere to run or much early warning.
This is really saddening. I'm working in singapore and it was reported the tremor was felt as well. Also, the death toll is rising to 7000+ in the affected countries.
Wow...that was some scary stuff...here in Seychelles we weren't hit too bad...but some areas were flooded and a there's about a dozen missing right now. It's so amazing the distance this thing travelled in the amount of time that it did -- some estimates had the first surge at about 500 mph. Less than 10 hours to get here...it usually takes a boat 12 days. What was really scary was that the water just got sucked out of the harbour. The coral reefs were exposed and you probably could have waded out to some of the other islands a mile or so away. With as much water that got sucked out I thought it might be much bigger. My uncle, on a different island, said that where he was, the water turned white as the sand started churning up, and then the bay just cleared out within minutes. I live right on the coast, but there's a large stretch of reclaimed land out in front which helped break the surge. There's a channel in between my place and the reclaimed land, and there was a huge rush of water that came through and almost submerged the reclaimed land during a couple of the surges. Everything looks okay for now, just hope there aren't more aftershocks...we've already had a main bridge collapse. No work tomorrow.
My mom lives in Singapore and I'm going out there in a about a month. I presumed since Singapore is on the other side of Sumatra that they would be OK but that's scary that it was felt there since I don't believe Singapore building codes are up to resisting earthquakes or tsunamis. My mom called me this morning at 7AM CDT. I didn't pick up the phone in time but heard the message from her saying she was vacationing in Battam, Indonesian island about 10 miles from Singapore, but that she was OK. I didn't know what she was talking about until I saw the headline on CNN.com. This tragedy is truly awful and the extent of the devestation is increasing by the minute. I urge everyone out there to donate to the relief operations. http://www.redcross.org/donate/donate.html Sorry Clutch for calling for donations to another site but I think you can appreciate how serious this is.
"Martinez said the quake was the world's fifth-largest since 1900 and the largest since a 9.2 quake hit Prince William Sound Alaska in 1964." "Indonesia, a country of 17,000 islands, is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on the margins of tectonic plates that make up the so-called the "Ring of Fire" around the Pacific Ocean basin." What a massive earthquake.
I was thinking the same thing until I read the wave traveled at about 500 mph. Anyone in the path of a 500 mph wave probably isn't around any longer to show us any video that might have been captured. The death toll is now over 20,000.
______ Now they are saying it was a 9.0 on the Richter scale. There must be some video of these tidal waves coming ashore ~ during the big Alaskan quake in 64 someone filmed the entire bay draining out into the ocean.
A tad off topic, but that graphic is incorrect. The 1964 earthquake didn't hit Anchorage. It hit Valdez. I lived there in 84-85. The crazy part is after the earthquake, rather than rebuild Valdez, it was so destroyed that they up and moved the town 4 miles west.
