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Bodies line Indian beaches - The Sumatra earthquake



jijaji - Mon, 27 Dec 2004 05:42:29 +0530
Bodies line Indian beaches

Monday, December 27, 2004 Posted: 0754 GMT (1554 HKT)

CHENNAI, India (Reuters) -- Wailing relatives gathered around dozens of bodies on beaches in southern India after a tsunami triggered by an earthquake in distant Indonesia killed at least 2,300 people.

Television showed bodies floating in turbulent, muddy seas off Chennai, capital of worst-hit Tamil Nadu state, and people carrying bodies in hessian sacks to hospitals while dozens more, including those of young girls, were tossed into lorries.

Officials said at least 1,725 people died in Tamil Nadu and about 300 in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and Kerala states. Another 1,000 were feared dead in the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands just off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, near the quake's epicentre.

Vast swathes of countryside were submerged in one of India's worst natural disasters in living memory as heavy waves and winds lashed the coastline, leaving thousands homeless and hundreds of fishermen missing.

"Never in my life I have had such an experience. The whole area has been turned into a cemetery," said Chellappa, a 55-year-old fishermen in Chennai.

Hours after the tsunami, loud wails of women pierced the night at a fishermen's village in Chennai. Injured and bleeding goats roamed aimlessly among wrecked coconut palms.

A heavy stench of fish, kerosene and dead bodies pervaded the ruins of the village. Household debris including pots and pans, fishing nets, broken televisions and slippers littered the ground.
'Eerie sound'

"I was standing by the seashore when I noticed the sea level rising but I was not concerned then because I only thought it was an unusually high tide," said Chellappa.

"Then I heard an eerie sound that I have never heard before. It was a high pitched sound followed by a deafening roar which seemed to be getting louder. I told everyone to run for their life and I started sprinting inland."

The tsunami, triggered by the world's fifth-largest quake in a century, has killed at least 9,500 people across Asia.

Hundreds of homeless people thronged pavements in Chennai, a city of 10 million people, while others fled to higher ground. At least 100 people were killed in the city alone.

"It was a terrible sight. I could see dead bodies all around and the devastation is of colossal proportions," Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa said in a statement after touring the worst hit areas."I'm shocked and there are no words to describe the devastation.

"The giant tidal wave has smashed through everything in sight. Houses have been flattened. Fishing boats have been thrown one over the other in a mangled heap. Buses, vans and autorickshaws have been smashed to smithereens."

Half-submerged cars and wrecked boats lay on the famed 12-km (8-mile) long Marina Beach in Chennai.

"My mother had gone to the seaside to buy fish when the wave came and lifted her," said a dazed Muthulakshmi, a fisherman's wife, standing on a pavement with hundreds of refugees.

"It took an hour for us to go and recover her body. Thank God my husband had not gone to sea as he was unwell."

In Andhra Pradesh, about 400 fishermen were missing and 200 Hindu devotees who had gone to the beach for a holy dip in the morning were feared dead.

Federal Interior Minister Shivraj Patil told local television at least 200 people had died in Andhra Pradesh.

A state official in Kerala, on the southwestern coast, said at least 92 people had died there. The armed forces have been called in to help in rescue operations at home and in neighbouring Sri Lanka.

"The situation is very grim," the Press Trust of India quoted police inspector general S.B. Deol saying in the Andaman and Nicobar islands. He told Reuters 300 people were confirmed dead, another 700 feared dead.

He said there had been no contacts with the southernmost islands closest to Indonesia since the tsunami.

Almost 500 tourists were also stranded on a rock in the sea off India's southernmost tip, witnesses said.

Tourists take a ferry to the Vivekananda Rock memorial to see the sunrise, but services were halted soon after the tourists landed because of choppy seas, an official said.

Water also entered India's main space centre at Sriharikota, an island off the south coast, but there were no reports of damage, Prabhakar Reddy, a bureaucrat in Andhra Pradesh, said.

Television reports said a nuclear power station in Tamil Nadu had been shut as a precaution but there were no details.

Two oil refineries on the eastern coast were safe and operating normally, according to initial reports, a national government official said.
jijaji - Mon, 27 Dec 2004 05:47:23 +0530
....
Madhava - Mon, 27 Dec 2004 10:04:40 +0530
I heard there were waves swelling up a stair's height or so, which is around 25 cm, at Radha-kunda. The local people thought that Radha-Krishna had come for jala-keli out of schedule. Usually they come in the mid-day. They don't make such waves, though, not visible for us, anyway!

A very tragic incident, for the little I've been able to follow up in the news. I have to do some more reading today. Fortunately the epicentre wasn't any closer to India.
jijaji - Mon, 27 Dec 2004 16:16:57 +0530
....
jijaji - Tue, 28 Dec 2004 02:17:23 +0530
....
babu - Tue, 28 Dec 2004 02:41:03 +0530
QUOTE(bangli @ Dec 27 2004, 10:46 AM)
This is a major event that has been foretold by many earthquake sensitives for decades I am afraid. The earthquake hitting in the Indian ocean with this intensity has been said to be a warning sign of other major events in the 'Ring of Fire' that will follow, specifically California.
I don't want to sound overly dramatic, but I say anyone living on the 'Ring of Fire' at this time should be VERY concerned. This is so LARGE an event it can easily trigger more in the 'Ring of Fire'.


Ring of Fire by Johny Cash


Love Is A Burning Thing

And It Makes A Firery Ring

Bound By Wild Desire

I Fell Into A Ring Of Fire

CHORUS:

I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire

I Went Down, Down, Down

And The Flames Went Higher

And It Burns, Burns, Burns

The Ring Of Fire

The Ring Of Fire

Repeat INTRO Twice
Repeat CHORUS


The Taste Of Love Is Sweet

When Hearts Like Ours Meet

I Fell For You Like A Child

Ohh, But The Fire Went Wild

Repeat CHORUS
Repeat CHORUS

And It Burns, Burns, Burns

The Ring Of Fire

The Ring Of Fire

babu - Tue, 28 Dec 2004 03:00:20 +0530
While we all grieve for the pain and suffering caused and we send our love and prayers and material support to those in harm's way, one cannot help but think that Mother Bhumi is sending a wake-up call to all to leave behind our fears, our greed and our hate.
jijaji - Tue, 28 Dec 2004 03:17:12 +0530
....
jijaji - Tue, 28 Dec 2004 03:44:54 +0530
....
Talasiga - Tue, 28 Dec 2004 04:49:01 +0530
QUOTE(bangli @ Dec 27 2004, 10:46 AM)
This is a major event that has been foretold by many earthquake sensitives for decades I am afraid. The earthquake hitting in the Indian ocean with this intensity has been said to be a warning sign of other major events in the 'Ring of Fire' that will follow, specifically California.
I don't want to sound overly dramatic, but I say anyone living on the 'Ring of Fire' at this time should be VERY concerned. This is so LARGE an event it can easily trigger more in the 'Ring of Fire'. Only three days prior to this 'Monster' hitting there was an 8.2 earthquake in the upper Anartica region that shook Tasmania and lower Australia.

I wake in the middle of the night with this running through my head and a overwhelming need to post this.

......



The meeting of the Australian and the Pacific tectonic plates particularly in the line from New Zealand to Fiji gives rise to about 75% of the Earth's quakery. A tsunami originating in this area could reach the East Coast of Australia within 3 to 4 hours. Currently, there are no warning systems for tsunami here.

Since the late 60's many of us here have been having recurrent dreams about the Big Wave. We have been forced to comply with the predominant view and are required to take these dreams metaphorically. Some of us dream the wave is at least 100 metres high as it looms to shore on a bright clear still summer's day. This will be the biggest tidal wave in the written history of mankind.

Even those of us who have never smoked or taken hallicinogenics dream this.
We have built our homes in high places.

jijaji - Tue, 28 Dec 2004 05:03:06 +0530
user posted image

sad.gif
jijaji - Tue, 28 Dec 2004 09:25:48 +0530
....
Perumal - Tue, 28 Dec 2004 10:46:23 +0530
crying.gif
Perumal - Tue, 28 Dec 2004 10:53:16 +0530
rolleyes.gif
jijaji - Tue, 28 Dec 2004 23:44:20 +0530
....
Sakhicharan - Tue, 28 Dec 2004 23:54:56 +0530
Some friends of mine went to Phuket, Thailand for vacation, on my recommendation blush.gif ( I was in Phuket, Krabi and Ko Phi Phi in August and told them of the sheer tropical beauty of the area.) They arrived in Phuket on the 23rd and then the next day took the 2 hour boat ride to Ko Phi Phi and spent the night there. On the fateful morning one of them came down from their 2nd story room to stretch her legs. She said, suddenly she felt the urge to just go back upstairs. Within seconds of closing her door the wave hit. They only got wet and quickly ran to the topmost level for protection. The people on the first floor were all washed away and presumed dead.
All the survivors climbed mountain paths and spent the night in the forest under the stars, fearing more waves might come. The next day they found a way to Krabi, and from there flew to Bangkok, and safety.
I just received this news of their safety, I had known their travel itinerary all along. What a relief.
jijaji - Wed, 29 Dec 2004 03:32:16 +0530
28-DEC-2004

21:07:36 5.4 magnitude ANDREAN OF ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN IS.

Not a 'Major Event' but in the area to be watched now....

again you can see what is going on around the 'Ring of Fire' at the 'Iris Seismic Monitor'

http://www.iris.edu/seismon

namaskar,

bangli
jijaji - Wed, 29 Dec 2004 21:59:25 +0530
29-DEC-2004

13:20:25 - 5.6 magnitude - RYUKYU ISLANDS (southwest of the main islands of Japan)

again not a 'major event' but again in the area to be watched now.

namaskar,

bangli
jijaji - Wed, 29 Dec 2004 22:30:16 +0530
Reuters

Where Are All the Dead Animals? Sri Lanka Asks

Wed Dec 29, 4:41 AM ET

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lankan wildlife officials are stunned -- the worst tsunami in memory has killed around 22,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast, but they can't find any dead animals.

Giant waves washed floodwaters up to 2 miles inland at Yala National Park in the ravaged southeast, Sri Lanka's biggest wildlife reserve and home to hundreds of wild elephants and several leopards.

"The strange thing is we haven't recorded any dead animals," H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of the national Wildlife Department, told Reuters Wednesday.

"No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit," he added. "I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening."

At least 40 tourists, including nine Japanese, were drowned.

The tsunami was triggered by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean Sunday, which sent waves up to 15 feet high crashing onto Sri Lanka's southern, eastern and northern seaboard, flooding whole towns and villages, destroying hotels and causing widespread destruction.
jijaji - Thu, 30 Dec 2004 02:12:25 +0530
29-DEC-2004 05:56:50 6.2 Magnitude NICOBAR ISLANDS, INDIA
29-DEC-2004 01:50:53 6.1 Magnitude NICOBAR ISLANDS, INDIA

Quakes are being triggered around the whole region, outside Sumatra!

namaskar,

bangli
babu - Mon, 03 Jan 2005 01:27:06 +0530
I would hate to say there is silver lining to the pain and suffering the dark cloud of this tsunami has brought, but before the tsunami came, the world was very much divided and it is inspiring to see the world coming together to bring aid, relief, comfort... love to those in harm's way of the tsunami.
babu - Mon, 03 Jan 2005 01:40:20 +0530
And too, as Hindus or at least folks who worship the same bunch of Gods, we naturally root for the Tamil Nadu Tigers, its a bit embarassing for us at these times to see them put their regional concerns in their long fought battle for independence above giving aid workers free and open access to the areas in need.
jatayu - Mon, 03 Jan 2005 13:21:12 +0530
QUOTE(bangli @ Dec 29 2004, 08:42 PM)
29-DEC-2004 05:56:50   6.2 Magnitude  NICOBAR ISLANDS, INDIA
29-DEC-2004 01:50:53  6.1 Magnitude NICOBAR ISLANDS, INDIA

Quakes are being triggered around the whole region, outside Sumatra!

namaskar,

bangli





The thing is that all people in that regions say that such a huge flood never happened in the past and there wasn't the slightest hint of such a catastrophe could ever take place. Scientists start to seek for other reasons:

QUOTE
Unknown Energy Surges Continue to Hit Planet
by Sorcha Faal - Global Research


Editor’s Note: The following report was released barely a few days before the Tsunami which swept South and Southeast Asia on December 26.

What is important in this report is that it points to a pattern of major climatic disruptions. In fact several disruptive climatic events took place within the months preceding the dramatic events of December 26.

On December 1, 2004 barely reported in the media, in one of "the largest weather events in recorded human history, 86,800 square miles of China was shrouded in fog, bringing transportation systems (especially air travel) to a virtual standstill throughout the country."

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to the Russian Academy of Sciences
December 22, 2004

An increasingly panicked global effort is now underway by the world's top scientists to understand an unprecedented series of 'blasts', energy surges, which the planet has been taking from an as yet unknown source which has been bombarding Antarctica with cosmic rays and disrupting Northern Hemisphere weather systems on a global scale.

The first of these cosmic ray blasts occurred nearly 5 years ago and have been increasing in their frequency and intensity since the end of November. The once normally darkened skies of the Northern Hemisphere's Arctic regions are now in twilight due to these blasts. Wayne Davidson, from the Canadian Government's weather station at Resolute Bay, located in the Arctic Circle, says about this mysterious lighting, "The entire horizon is raised like magic, like the hand of God is bringing it up."

On December 1, 2004 the largest recorded blast sent not only shockwaves through the world scientific community but also through the Northern Hemisphere resulting in one of the largest weather events in recorded human history when 86,800 square miles of China was shrouded in fog, bringing transportation systems (especially air travel) to a virtual standstill throughout the country.

As reported by the BBC in this article from October, 2002, "German scientists have found a significant piece of evidence linking cosmic rays to climate change. They have detected charged particle clusters in the lower atmosphere that were probably caused by the space radiation. They say the clusters can lead to the condensed nuclei which form into dense clouds."

These German scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg go on to say that their measurements "have for the first time detected in the upper troposphere large positive ions with mass numbers up to 2500", and "Our observations provide strong evidence for the ion-mediated formation and growth of aerosol particles in the upper troposphere."

What they hadn't expected to happen though has been the large- scale occurrences of this over the past few weeks, to include China on December 2nd and 14th and then India on the 21st, which is due to both China's and India's reliance on fossil fuels and the continuing degradation of their air quality.

The effects of these blasts have also been felt throughout the rest of the Northern Hemisphere resulting in such freak occurrences as, hurricane force winds in Paris , Germany, Canada, Russia, England and the United States on an almost simultaneous basis. Accompanying these hurricane force winter winds have been the massive cold fronts following them dropping normal winter lows to record lows throughout the entire Northern Hemisphere.

Though not yet at a point to acknowledge this publicly, some of the world's top scientists are beginning to see an astrophysical correlation between these cosmic ray blasts to our planet and an ever-increasing number of global events relating to atmospheric explosions of inbound meteors, such as those in Indonesia, where a meteorite was picked up by their Air Forces radar, China, where a meteorite explosion turned 'night into day' and Washington D.C. where one police official stated, "It looked like a ball of fire falling out of the sky."

The world's top scientists have begun coordinating with Dr. Eun-Suk Seo from the United States University of Maryland, and her team, in a 'search' for answers to the origin of these cosmic ray blasts directed from an unknown origin in space towards the South Pole and disrupting our global weather systems.

user posted image

Under Dr. Eun-Suk Seo's and her international team's direction NASA launched a stratospheric balloon on December 20th from Antarctica's McMurdo base and have stated,

"The balloon, following circulation of winds high, will sail around the ice continent for about three weeks. During this time, data of great scientific interest will be gathered. These data concern flows of charged particles of highest energy (cosmic rays) coming from Space."

But as one Russian scientist said to us, and who wished to remain anonymous,

"Why this game? We all know what's happening"

--an apparent reference to the fact though these events are well known to both world governments and the scientific establishments they are beyond the understanding of the general public at large.

Whatever the end results these experiments reveal for these scientists, it remains an undisputed fact that this world of ours is facing a type of global cataclysmic event buried in our common geological past, and maybe, as some social scientists report, in our common ancestral memory also.
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/FAA412A.html

babu - Wed, 05 Jan 2005 04:47:22 +0530
QUOTE(jatayu @ Jan 3 2005, 07:51 AM)
Unknown Energy Surges Continue to Hit Planet
by Sorcha Faal - Global Research


I'm no expert on these things but it sounds like Indra is up to his old tricks like when he sent the deluge down on the inhabitants of Braja and Krishna saved them when he lifted Govardhana for their protection only now Indra is deluging the planet with cosmic rays.

[ Please don't quote entire articles in your replies to posts. Just post your reply, possibly with the relevant snippet included. - Madhava ]
bhaktashab - Wed, 05 Jan 2005 14:16:20 +0530
QUOTE
Mega-tsunami: Wave of Destruction

NARRATOR (EMMA FIELDING): 40 million people live and work along the east coast of the United States, yet this entire population unknowingly lives under threat of a sudden catastrophe.

DR. SIMON DAY (Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre, UCL): The east coast of America is, is the worst place this could happen. It’s not some remote, deserted coastline, it’s one of the most densely populated places in the world.

NARRATOR: Scientists have now found evidence that a colossal wave will one day devastate the coast of America. It will be far bigger than any normal tidal waves, or tsunami. It is what scientists call a mega-tsunami.

PROF. BILL McGUIRE (Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre, UCL): It’s almost inconceivable how much damage this event will cause and yet the general public knows absolutely nothing about it.

DR. GEORGE PLAFKER (US Geological Survey): These forces have almost unlimited power to cause utter destruction and there’s nothing that we can do to stop them.

NARRATOR: Geologist George Plafker first came to this remote bay in southern Alaska 50 years ago. What he discovered were signs that a strange force of nature had once struck here.

GEORGE PLAFKER: Lituya Bay is one of my favourite places in the world. It’s a magnificent landscape. There’re mountains roaring up behind it, glaciers come off those peaks right down to sea-level and you have a bay that is unique along this coast.

NARRATOR: Plafker came to Lituya Bay with his colleague, Don Miller, in 1953. They came to survey for oil.

GEORGE PLAFKER: We didn’t find any petroleum in Lituya Bay but what we did find was something that happened on a cataclysmic scale and we spent a large part of our time trying to understand it.

NARRATOR: What these scientists discovered in the 50s was the evidence for a previously unknown force of destruction. The evidence lay not in the rocks but in the trees.

GEORGE PLAFKER: One thing that was very peculiar is the fact that mature forest did not extend all the way down to the shoreline as was true almost everywhere else in this general area. Instead there were bands of younger trees below mature forest and the line at which the trees of different ages joined we call the trim line.

NARRATOR: Nothing like this had been recorded before. They suspected the surviving trees from just above the trim line might contain evidence of what had happened many years earlier.

GEORGE PLAFKER: We cut selected trees, took samples from those slices and sent them to the Juneau Forestry Research Lab and asked them to count the rings and give us an analysis of just what happened to those trees.

ELLEN ANDERSON (Juneau Forestry Sciences Lab, Alaska): This is a photo of a section of a spruce tree that was taken by Don Miller and George Plafker in 1953 in Lituya Bay. The tree was right above a trim line in the bay and it tells a very interesting story. The early growth in this tree was very good, nice wide rings. All of a sudden it changes. Something happened to it, something must have hit it very hard on this side over here. There’s a large scar.

NARRATOR: The tree ring analysis showed a violent force had struck the entire shoreline of the bay. The forest looked like it had been hit by a giant wave. For the scientists it seemed impossible. No wave in history had ever reached anything like this high.

GEORGE PLAFKER: There was some powerful force at work here that created a wave possibly 150 metres high. That’s the equivalent of say the height of a 50 storey building and we just didn’t have any idea of what could do that.

NARRATOR: Even the most powerful waves, tidal waves, known to science by their Japanese name tsunami, could not have created such destruction. This wave had been caused by something very different.

GEORGE PLAFKER: Well we didn’t know what caused the wave. We considered earthquakes and earthquakes cause tsunami but those tsunamis are usually less than 10-15 metres and here we have something that’s 10 times as high as that.

NARRATOR: In comparison one of the most destructive tsunami this century hit the islands of Hawaii in 1946 destroying the town of Hilo yet it was little more than 10 metres high. Waves surged far inland causing death and destruction before petering out in the town. Like almost all tsunami the wave that struck Hilo was created by an earthquake on the ocean floor far away.

PROF. GARY McMURTRY (University of Hawaii): Well the Hilo tsunami in 1946, the classic earthquake generated tsunami, came from thousands of kilometres away. There was no warning, very little warning at all and destroyed large portions of the city and over 100 people were killed, including quite a few children.

NARRATOR: It is known that for all their destructiveness tsunami formed by earthquakes are inherently limited in size. That is because they are caused by shifts in the seabed. When an earth-quake cracks the ocean floor one side of the fracture rises up. When this happens the water above the fracture is lifted up by the same amount. This movement pushes the water upwards and outwards creating a wave on the surface of the sea which becomes a tsunami, but even the biggest earthquakes can only lift the sea floor by about 10 metres which creates a wave of the same height. That’s about as big as a normal tsunami gets.

BILL McGUIRE: Well the point about earthquake generated tsunami is that their size is inherently limited by what causes them. Now the biggest submarine earthquakes shift the ocean bed up or down by around 10 metres and that produces tsunami on that sort of scale, but not very much bigger.

NARRATOR: What happened in Lituya Bay seemed inexplicable. It had produced a wave not 10 metres, but 150 metres high. Whatever had caused it, it certainly wasn’t an earthquake.

GEORGE PLAFKER: We really did not have any idea of just what happened to create the wave evidence that we saw in Lituya Bay. We knew that, you know, Mother Nature doesn’t give up her secrets readily, but we still were frustrated about the whole thing and we did not expect to ever learn what the answer to our problem was.

NARRATOR: In 1953 the scientists left Lituya Bay baffled, but 5 years later this rare phenomenon was to strike again and this time there were witnesses.

HOWARD ULRICH: The date was July 9th 1958. We came into Lituya Bay about 8 o’clock in the evening. My son was with me.

SONNY ULRICH: I was 8 years old at the time and being a child like I was halfway asleep as well.

HOWARD: Approximately 10.15 there was a large rumbling noise from up at the head of the bay.

SONNY: It was like a big loud noise from over in this direction towards the mountains over there.

HOWARD: There was a slight pause. I thought that everything was over with, but some movement up there caught my attention out of the corner of my eye and so I looked directly up there and what I observed was a, like an atomic explosion. After this big flash came a huge wave. It looked like just a big wall of water.

SONNY: He threw me a life preserver and he said son, start praying.

HOWARD: You’re looking at death and this is exactly my first thought.

SONNY: When the wave hit us I did feel the boat all of a sudden start shooting upwards skywards.

HOWARD: I had 40 fathoms of anchor chain and it started running out off the boat. Came to the end of the 40 fathoms just snapped it like a string and then we were free and, but we were still on the front of the wave. We were swept up over the land and up above the trees. That’s where I assumed that we were going to end up.

NARRATOR: The Ulriches were lucky. They rode the wave as it swept them above the trees and washed them back into the bay. Two other boats weren’t as fortunate. They were carried by the wave into the open sea where they were wrecked.

COASTGUARD RADIO: Has there been a first-hand report from any of the boats up there, over? If there’s any other boats in here, I don’t think they made it. I don’t see ‘em and I don’t hear ‘em. God what an awful sight. You ought to see it in there. Something like the end of the world.

HOWARD ULRICH: I had never heard or seen of anything like this. It was unbelievable. I couldn’t imagine what could have caused anything. I kept wondering just what mechanism could cause something like that.

NARRATOR: Don Miller flew over Lituya Bay the following day. This is the previously unseen film he took. It shows the utter devastation the wave had created.

GEORGE PLAFKER: Well in 1958 I was out of the country. Don Miller wrote to me and told me about this incredible wave that had occurred in Lituya Bay that stripped the timber and soil off to a height of 520 metres above sea-level. That’s a half a kilometre high and this is unbelievable, incredible thing, far greater than any wave ever heard of in history.

NARRATOR: This time Miller could see the cause of the wave: a huge section of rock had fallen off a mountain and hit the water at the head of the bay. The impact of this created a wave which washed over the nearby headland and surged towards the open sea. For the first time scientists realised that giant waves could be caused not by earthquakes but by a different destructive force: landslides.

GEORGE PLAFKER: Don said why haven’t we thought of this before? It was a gigantic landslide that fell into the head of the bay, fell from a height of as much as 1100 metres above sea-level and this created a huge splash and wave that then propagated toward the mouth of the bay and creating havoc in its way.

NARRATOR: This is by far the highest wave ever recorded. Normal tsunami are tiny in comparison. The largest tsunami it is possible for earthquakes to generate are around 10 metres high when they are formed. Compared to a skyscraper, that barely reaches the 5th floor, but when it was formed the wave at Lituya Bay reached half a kilometre high, over 50 times the height of an ordinary tsunami. This is higher than any skyscraper on earth.

GEORGE PLAFKER: The mean lesson of Lituya Bay is that a body of rock that’s large enough and falls from high enough into the water can generate extremely large and violent waves. GARY McMURTRY: Many people start to think about the sheer size, magnitude of landslide generated tsunamis. They’re practically unlimited.

NARRATOR: Scientists now began the task of trying to understand this new phenomenon. Tsunami created not by earthquakes but by massive landslides. They called these waves mega-tsunami. Even though landslides happen all the time, we know that mega-tsunami are extremely rare. That is because the vast majority of landslides are too small to generate such a wave. For a mega-tsunami to be created a large amount of rock must be falling fast enough so that when it hits the water it releases a single huge pulse of energy in the form of a wave. Crucially the size of the wave will be directly related to the size of the landslide.

GARY McMURTRY: Landslide generated tsunamis have the potential to be almost unlimited in size. They can basically be as big as the edifice they come from and that means that when something gives way the displacement of the water can also be enormous.

NARRATOR: Scientists in Switzerland have built the most advanced model in the world to study landslide-generated mega-tsunami.

HERMANN FRITZ (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology): What we have here is a very sophisticated laboratory experiment which allows us to physically model landslide impact into water and what we have up here is a very powerful pneumatic landslide generator with the red box where the gravel is filled in to mimic the landslide. The red box is accelerated down the ramp at high speed, the flap opens and the landslide is released to impact the water.

NARRATOR: The scientists here made a detailed analysis of what happened at Lituya Bay where 90 million tons of rock hit the water. They wanted to see how this impact had released enough energy to create a giant wave able to reach half a kilometre high.

HERMANN FRITZ: We adapted our model to mimic a cross-section of Lituya Bay. Up here we have the landslide generator representing the mountain where the rock fell off. At the other end we have a ramp representing the headland where the wave ran up to and what we found when we ran the experiment was fascinating. What we found explains how a wave could reach the extraordinary height of 520 metres. A high speed landslide impacted the water, the water moved away so fast that it couldn’t flow behind the landslide creating a large air cavity displacing far more water than the landslide volume itself and this explains how a wave can have enough energy to run up half a kilometre and clear out everything in its way.

NARRATOR: The speed and size of the Lituya Bay landslide explains how the wave there could be so big when it was generated. This wave did not travel far. It struck land almost immediately, but mega-tsunami are also able to cross whole oceans. As they radiate outwards their height will drop considerably, yet because they are a powerful single pulse of energy they can travel thousands of kilometres and still cause destruction on distant shorelines.

BILL McGUIRE: The energy that a mega-tsunami unleashes when it hits a coastline is far greater than that of any storm wave imaginable and the reason for this is the huge wave length – that’s the distance from the beginning of the wave to the end of the wave.

NARRATOR: Storm waves, however high they are, have a very short wave length, usually no more than 100 metres from the front of the wave to the back. This is because they are created merely by the effect of the wind on the surface of the sea. Mega-tsunami, on the other hand, move the entire body of the ocean, right down to the seabed several kilometres below. Because of the enormous volume of water that is shifted, mega-tsunami have very long wave lengths, often hundreds of kilometres from the front of the wave to the back. This makes them particularly devastating when they approach a shoreline. As the ocean shallows the front of the wave slows down, but the back of the wave is still travelling fast and pushes against the front making it rise up. This creates the first destructive characteristic of mega-tsunami when they hit the shore. They rear up to become a wall of water. The long wave length also creates a second frightening characteristic. Instead of breaking on the shore the whole length of the wave sweeps onto land engulfing everything before it.

BILL McGUIRE: With storm waves the wave length is just a few tens of metres, but with mega-tsunami it’s hundreds of kilometres and what this means is that when storm waves break onto a coastline they break almost immediately, but mega-tsunami just keep on coming through the whole length of the wave and this makes them incredibly powerful and incredibly destructive.

NARRATOR: Once scientists understood that landslides into water could produce mega-tsunami they began wondering where the next massive landslide would occur. They looked for where the biggest landslides had happened in the past in the belief it could tell them where they might happen in the future. Geologists knew that one type of location was particularly vulnerable to landslides: large volcanic islands. There are dozens of such islands scattered throughout the world’s oceans and the reason they are prone to landslides is because of the way they’re built. These islands began life millions of years ago when lava erupted onto the ocean floor. As this cooled and hardened layer built upon layer until it formed a land platform of volcanic rubble above sea-level. Scientists realised that every few thousand years one of these piles of volcanic rubble had fallen into the sea.

GARY McMURTRY: Volcanic islands grow by one lava flow after another over tremendous amounts of time. As they do this they become over-steepened. At the same time you have the ocean eroding away at the base and eventually all these things together end up weakening the edifice to the point at where it collapses.

NARRATOR: This is Hawaii, the largest chain of volcanic islands on earth. These scarred valleys are where vast sections of Hawaiian coastline fell into the sea hundreds of thousands of years ago. The mega-tsunami they created would have been thousands of times more powerful than Lituya Bay. Underwater lies the debris of ancient Hawaiian collapses. Whole chunks of the islands have fallen onto the sea floor. The biggest section is the Tuscaloosa sea mount, a giant block which fell off the island of Oahu 2 million years ago. This single rock is almost 10 times the volume of Mount Everest. When it hit the water it would have created an unimaginable mega-tsunami. It would have taken 5 hours to travel across the Pacific and strike the west coast of America, but this event was not unique.

GARY McMURTRY: What we notice when we start looking at the volcanic islands is that every archipelago has collapses. The evidence is insurmountable, everywhere you go you find evidence for debris avalanches, slumps.

NARRATOR: The Cape Verde islands in the Atlantic also had a massive landslide. This was 80,000 years ago. The mega-tsunami this created would have taken just one hour to strike the west coast of Africa. These volcanic island collapses seem to be rare, only happening every several thousand years. The most recent one is thought to have occurred in the Indian Ocean when part of the island of Réunion collapsed just 4,000 years ago. Seven hours later the wave it generated would have struck Australia. Although this is believed to be the last volcanic island to collapse it seems inevitable that somewhere it will happen again.

GARY McMURTRY: You can’t build islands over thousands of years flow after flow without having collapse. It just is part of their nature, it’s part of their history and it’s part of their future.

NARRATOR: The big question is where and when the next large volcanic island collapse will occur. Because these landslides all happened in the ancient past no-one has ever witnessed one. They are so rare scientists cannot be sure what the precursors will be, but of all the large volcanic islands around the world one in particular shows disturbing signs of instability. If this island collapses it would create a mega-tsunami that would race across the Atlantic and hit the east coast of the United States. Every city on the shoreline would be destroyed. From New York in the north to Miami in the south. The wave would wreak havoc for as much as 20 kilometres inland. The origin of this wave would be thousands of miles away. This mega-tsunami would come from a volcanic island off the coast of North Africa, from one of the Canary Islands. It would come from the island of La Palma. La Palma is one of the western-most islands in the Canaries. 80,000 people live here making their living from farming and tourism. There are also two volcanoes on the island, one extinct, one active. In the early 1990s a British geologist travelled to the island to study the active volcano called the Cumbre Vieja.

SIMON DAY: I came here to work on the Cumbre Vieja volcano with the aim of understanding the history of the volcano and the volcanic hazards that it produced.

NARRATOR: Simon Day was to discover evidence that the next volcanic island collapse is likely to occur here. La Palma consists entirely of two volcanoes. The extinct volcano makes up the northern part, but the southern half of the island is the active volcano, the Cumbre Vieja. This is shaped like a ridge rather than a cone and for thousands of years volcanic vents have regularly erupted all along the summit of this ridge. In 1949 it suddenly erupted again and this eruption was to change everything. Although the eruption itself posed little danger to islanders, shortly after it started an unusual event occurred.

SIMON DAY: About a week after the start of the 1949 eruption something extraordinary happened. There was a series of very strong earthquakes and the west side of the volcano slid downwards and towards the sea by about 4 metres and for about 2 kilometres along the summit of the volcano this fissure opened up. It’s not an ordinary volcanic vent that just opens horizontally and that magma then erupts out as lava. This side has gone down relative to this side by about 4 metres as this area moved off towards the sea and this was something quite unusual, quite unique that you don’t normally see on volcanoes.

NARRATOR: A section of La Palma had started to slide and then abruptly stopped. Simon Day couldn’t be sure what was happening to the volcano and whether it would slide again or even collapse into the sea.

SIMON DAY: The problem was the Cumbre Vieja had erupted many times in its history, but there’d been no previous history of faulting, so what was so special about the 1949 eruption, why had the faulting occurred then?

NARRATOR: To find out Day had to discover what was happening to the rock structure inside the volcano. This might tell him not just why the fault had appeared, but also whether it was the precursor to a giant collapse. The Cumbre Vieja is still active making it hard to know exactly what’s happening inside, but the other volcano on La Palma is extinct and its rock structure is the same as the Cumbre Vieja’s. Here there is a place where geologists can look inside a volcano.

SIMON DAY: These tunnels are an amazing opportunity for geologists because they allow us to look into the interior of the volcanoes, going in several kilometres horizontally and up to 2 kilometres below the surface, so what we can see in here uniquely almost in the world is the inside of a volcano.

NARRATOR: Deep underground lay a clue which began to explain not only what had caused the fault above, but also whether one day the Cumbre Vieja would collapse. For what lies in the heart of these volcanoes is surprising: water. The volcanoes on islands like La Palma are unusual. They are full of water. Much of the rain which has fallen on La Palma for thousands of years has been trapped inside the volcanoes because of their particular rock structure. Deep within the volcanoes on La Palma are two types of rock. One is permeable rubble which allows rain to soak into it, but standing vertically upright within this rubble is the other type of rock, vast walls of cooled lava which form hardened dykes. These are impermeable and act as dams trapping columns of rainwater in the heart of the volcano.

SIMON DAY: What we’re looking at here is one of the two types of rock that we find within the heart of volcanoes like the Cumbre Vieja. It’s very loose, very permeable material, the water can soak straight down through it from the surface, down to this level within the volcano and the second type of rock is this. This is the lava dyke and it’s very hard, it’s formed by volcanic lava forcing its way up through the volcano. Once the eruption’s ended the lava in the dyke solidifies and produces this very hard rock and the important point about this rock is that it’s very impermeable. The water can’t penetrate through it, it’s trapped behind it and these dykes within the middle of each volcano act as a series of dams.

NARRATOR: Simon Day began to wonder if it was the effect of this water on the volcano which could lead to its eventual collapse. He contacted a geologist who studies the forces that build up inside volcanoes, Derek Elsworth. In particular, Elsworth was interested in the effect of water pressure on volcanic collapses.

PROF. DEREK ELSWORTH (Pennsylvania State University): This is a very simple model of how water pressures can cause instability in landslides and we have two inclined bricks. When the bricks are dry with no water pressures acting between the join in these two bricks then just like in a stable volcanic slope there’s no movement.

NARRATOR: If water is added, however, it begins to force the two bricks apart. The pressure of the water actually lifts the top brick off the bottom.

DEREK ELSWORTH: When we add water between these two bricks if the water pressure’s high enough to reduce the strength sufficiently, then the upper brick will slide off.

NARRATOR: Although water pressure is enough to push bricks apart, Elsworth realised that water on its own couldn’t collapse a volcanic island. He discovered that another element needed to be acting on the water: heat. For when this type of volcano erupts heat from the magma has a crucial effect.

DEREK ELSWORTH: This represents what happens to ground water in the Cumbre Vieja trapped between the dykes and magma rises within the upper regions of the volcano. This heated bath represents the magma within the volcano. The red water within the flask, like water within the volcano, expands as it’s heated and as the pressure within the flask increases the only outlet for the water is in this thin tube. This represents what happened within the Cumbre Vieja. As water trapped between the dykes is heated, expands, pressures increase drastically, ultimately causing the flanks of the volcano to collapse.

SIMON DAY: It was tremendously exciting because here was a mechanism that we could use to explain how it was that these enormous masses of rock could be pushed off the side of the islands.

NARRATOR: The heat from an eruption was the final part of the puzzle which explained the forces that would be working in the volcano. When a new column of magma rises and starts erupting water trapped between the dykes will be heated up. This will make it expand, creating enormous pressures within the heart of the Cumbre Vieja. These scientists believe this will trigger the collapse of the western flank of the volcano into the sea.

DEREK ELSWORTH: We found that the relatively small rising temperature in the core of the volcano due to the injection of magma could result in very large changes in water pressures. These water pressures are large enough to produce strength in the flank and result in collapse of the volcano. What this of course means is that the next collapse will ultimately be tied to a future eruption.

NARRATOR: All the conditions for a giant landslide on the Cumbre Vieja are present. It is an active volcano that is full of water. Simon Day needed to find out how big the potential collapse would be and to do that he had to discover the size of the fault within the volcano. He began a detailed survey of all the volcanic vents along the summit to see how extensive the fault was, something no-one had done before.

SIMON DAY: We mapped the volcano from the south to the north and from the south we followed this line of volcanic vents running north up the volcano to here on the summit region. What we found was that the line of vents continued straight off to the north and this told us about how the magma was coming up from deep within the earth up underneath the volcano and erupting at the surface.

NARRATOR: When Day plotted these volcanic vents on a geological map he realised that inside the volcano the fault was far more extensive that it appeared on the surface. It could be as much as 20 kilometres long, dissecting the entire length of the volcano. Potentially one side of the Cumbre Vieja, half a trillion tons of rock, would fall into the sea.

SIMON DAY: When we started analysing the information that we gained by mapping the Cumbre Vieja we found that a change had taken place in the vents of the volcano. The north/south line of vents had extended further to the north with new vents appearing each younger further to the north. This meant that the western side of the volcano was becoming deeply unstable. The whole of this flank was moving towards the sea as a single block.

NARRATOR: The Swiss scientists began to calculate what would then happen. They had to build a new model to estimate the size of the mega-tsunami this event would create. The Cumbre Vieja landslide would be thousands of times larger than any that the scientists had studied before. Because of this, their experiments could only give an approximate figure for the dimensions of the wave.

HERMANN FRITZ: Of course there’s a huge difference in scale between the Cumbre Vieja collapse and its physical model in the laboratory. We’ve tried to err on the side of the caution when we made our calculations using conservative assumptions, but nevertheless what we’ve found when we ran the model was very disturbing.

NARRATOR: The Swiss scientists’ final calculations produced an extraordinary wave.

HERMANN FRITZ: If the Cumbre Vieja were to collapse as one single block it would create a giant mega-tsunami with an initial wave height of 650 metres and a wavelength of 30-40 kilometres travelling westwards across the Atlantic with speeds up to 720 kilometres an hour towards America.

SIMON DAY: The scale of this produced a feeling of unreality as one realised what could happen. This event was so huge that it will affect not only the people on the island but people way, way on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, people who’ve never even heard of La Palma will be affected by this event.

NARRATOR: There is evidence that seems to show collapses like La Palma create mega-tsunami that really can cross whole oceans and devastate distant continents. Scientists know that one of the last volcanic landslides in the Canaries happened here on a neighbouring island to La Palma. When a section of the island collapsed around 120,000 years ago it launched a mega-tsunami which would have swept across the Atlantic towards the Americas. Simon Day believes that evidence for its destructive power can be seen thousands of miles away in the Bahamas. He believes the huge wave reshaped some of these islands, blasting these shaped chevron ridges up to 10 kilometres long across parts of the Bahamian coastline. The wave also ripped vast boulders from off the ocean floor, some over 1,000 tons in weight and dumped them high above sea-level.

SIMON DAY: This was astonishing. Here was evidence that an event so extraordinary, that it could really only be produced by something as catastrophic as an ocean island collapse.

NARRATOR: So when is the next catastrophic event going to happen? The geologists had now discovered the Cumbre Vieja could collapse during some future volcanic eruption. The difficulty, however, is in knowing when this will happen.

SIMON DAY: We have no idea when the next eruption will occur on the summit of the Cumbre Vieja. In recorded history there have been eruptions in 1949, in 1712, in 1646 so it looks as though there is an eruption up there once every 2 centuries or so, on average. The last eruption was 50 years ago so it is likely that sometime during the next century there’ll be another eruption up there.

NARRATOR: Tourists in America and the Canaries shouldn’t cancel their holidays. The next summit eruption is unlikely to happen for decades and it may take many more eruptions before the flank of the volcano is pushed into the Atlantic. The problem is scientists cannot tell.

BILL McGUIRE: There could be 5 more summit eruptions of the Cumbre Vieja before the western flank collapses, there could be 10, there could be 20. On the other hand, the west flank could collapse during the next eruption. We simply don’t know, but put it this way, if I was living in Miami or New York and I heard that the Cumbre Vieja was erupting I’d be keeping a very close eye on the news.

NARRATOR: The geological evidence now shows that La Palma may well be the next volcanic island to collapse and when it does so it will create a devastating natural disaster.

BILL McGUIRE: The first thing that you’d feel actually would be seismic activity, earthquakes, because the collapse is going to be related to an eruption.

SIMON DAY: As the forces within the volcano built up to, to the point where they would begin to overcome the friction forces holding the flank in place the flank would begin to move towards the sea.

BILL McGUIRE: And then at some point the rock would fail on a major scale and this huge chunk of rock, maybe 20 kilometres long or more, would start to slide into the sea.

SIMON DAY: The waves initially here would be many hundreds of metres high and those waves would all be moving out into the ocean spreading out laterally, but with a lot of the energy heading across the Atlantic towards the coast of the Americas.

BILL McGUIRE: Looking down on it, it’ll look unbelievable, it’ll look as if the island is falling apart generating these huge waves which are fanning outwards to reach the eastern coast of the United States.

SIMON DAY: The waves will take about 8 hours to travel between here and the coast of America just enough time to get the message out to warn people that this event was happening, but unless evacuation plans were incredibly efficient it would not be enough time to get everybody out of the affected areas. The areas at risk include cities like Miami, parts of Boston, the coastal areas and suburbs of New York.

GARY McMURTRY: If you were standing on a beach in what is presently Miami, the very first effects you’d probably see is what we call drawback. The ocean would suddenly just pull away. You’d see a tide, a low tide like you’ve never seen before in your life. It would be actually spellbinding but in the background you’d be seeing this wall and it’d keep coming at you.

BILL McGUIRE: This would be the biggest natural catastrophe in history. There’s a problem with all major natural catastrophes. Because we’ve never experienced these things we don’t think that they’re going to happen to us. We just ignore them, but these sorts of events have occurred throughout geological history. They’re not going to stop happening just because we’re around. La Palma is going to collapse into the North Atlantic. It’s not a question of if, it’s just a question of when.
jatayu - Wed, 05 Jan 2005 23:48:14 +0530
http://www.geocities.com/trikaldas/

Trikala prabhu's South Indian ashram was hit badly by the tsunami.

Attachment: Image
Madhava - Thu, 06 Jan 2005 00:30:46 +0530
[ Please don't quote entire articles in your replies to posts. Just post your reply, possibly with the relevant snippet included. - Madhava ]
jatayu - Fri, 07 Jan 2005 12:56:56 +0530
QUOTE(bangli @ Dec 29 2004, 04:29 PM)
29-DEC-2004

13:20:25 - 5.6 magnitude - RYUKYU ISLANDS (southwest of the main islands of Japan)

again not a 'major event' but again in the area to be watched now.

namaskar,

bangli



Some members might have raised the same question of India News, it's time for the Indian Navy to investigate:

QUOTE
Human Hand behind earthquake and Tsunami?

It is time for Indian Navy to investigate!
http://216.132.172.240/indiadaily/editorial/12-29a-04.asp

Balaji Reddy – indiadaily.com January 07, 2005

Was this an earthquake creation experiment that ran out of control? Many countries are working on methods of creating massive earthquakes as means to defeat the enemy. The technologically advanced countries are working on this project.

If an earthquake and Tsunami can be created artificially and directed to a specific enemy, it can literally create havoc to the enemy. Weather control, controlling tectonic plate movements, electromagnetic wave simulated weaponry are all on the table of many countries.

The planetary alignment can cause many earthquakes all around the world of magnitude the modern mankind has never seen before.

Many all around the world are puzzled with the fact that Tsunamis never happen in South Asia. Also is perplexing is the fact that Tsunamis travelled 1000 miles at a speed of 500 miles an hour and smashed the coastal lines of South and South east Asia where Tsunamis do not happen.

There are technologies on the research table that is used to create electromagnetic effects to release the gravitational effects which can cause this kind massive earth movements.

Another astonishing feature of this earthquake and Tsunami is the amount by which the Kar Nicobar Islands have displaced. The level of devastation simulates 10 or higher Richter scale earthquake.

Was this a show down by a country to show the region what havoc can be created?

We do not have the answers to this. We know many countries including India are working on anti-gravity lifters and devices.

No matter what, it can be an experiment that went out of control. If it is not, that is the best news.

But given the level of devastation and given the fact India is a regional power in South Asia, Indian Navy has the obligation to investigate and tell the world what they found.
www.indiadaily.com/
Madhava - Fri, 07 Jan 2005 13:18:42 +0530
QUOTE(jatayu @ Jan 7 2005, 08:26 AM)
Also is perplexing is the fact that Tsunamis travelled 1000 miles at a speed of 500 miles an hour and smashed the coastal lines of South and South east Asia where Tsunamis do not happen.

What is this article supposed to be, a serious editorial or report? Sounds like a cheap conspiracy theorist writing the story. The uneducatedness of this contribution is betrayed (1) by the sloppy language, and (2) his astonishment over the range and speed of the tsunamis, while in fact such figures are quite common.

In other news from India Daily: India may be the first country to explain to the world about extra-terrestrial and UFO contacts – the secret debate is on. "It is well accepted between the UFO and extra-terrestrial experts that all the five nuclear powers are in contact with the beings from other stars for quite some time. Recently India has seen enormous news on UFO contacts and secret UFO bases in Himalayas near the Chinese bases. ... Military officials and politicians have confessed the fact that India has been contacted. India has been told the rules of the Universe." biggrin.gif
babu - Fri, 07 Jan 2005 22:18:15 +0530
QUOTE(Madhava @ Jan 7 2005, 07:48 AM)

What is this article supposed to be, a serious editorial or report? Sounds like a cheap conspiracy theorist writing the story.



What are your credentials to decide what is and what isn't a valid conspiracy theory? Have you read action hero comics since you were a young boy? Have you seen every episode of the "X Files"?
DharmaChakra - Fri, 07 Jan 2005 23:31:09 +0530
Views of the destruction
Elpis - Sat, 08 Jan 2005 02:46:28 +0530
QUOTE(Madhava @ Jan 7 2005, 08:48 AM)
In other news from India Daily: India may be the first country to explain to the world about extra-terrestrial and UFO contacts – the secret debate is on. "It is well accepted between the UFO and extra-terrestrial experts that all the five nuclear powers are in contact with the beings from other stars for quite some time. Recently India has seen enormous news on UFO contacts and secret UFO bases in Himalayas near the Chinese bases. ... Military officials and politicians have confessed the fact that India has been contacted. India has been told the rules of the Universe."

They should not keep the rules of the universe secret. they should definitely tell us.
babu - Sat, 08 Jan 2005 04:14:21 +0530
QUOTE(Elpis @ Jan 7 2005, 09:16 PM)
QUOTE(Madhava @ Jan 7 2005, 08:48 AM)

They should not keep the rules of the universe secret. they should definitely tell us.



"When all these factors are added together and analyzed, it seems like India is being told by the world to abide by the hidden protocols and in exchange be recognized as a major emerging superpower." Page two of India may be the first country to explain to the world about extra-terrestrial and UFO contacts – the secret debate is on
jijaji - Mon, 10 Jan 2005 20:00:53 +0530
Alert in Guatemala as volcanoes become active

[World News]: Mexico City, Jan 9 : Guatemala has declared a state of alert after three volcanoes in the south American nation has become active again, almost simultaneously, reports Xinhua.

Hugo Hernandez, a spokesman for the National Disaster Management Coordination, said the preventive alarm was meant to keep vigilance over the three volcanoes, Pacaya, Santiaguito and Fuego.

Over the past week, the three have been spewing out lava, ashes and rocks in a low magnitude, forcing local inhabitants to be evacuated. This is after a gap of 31 years that the three volcanoes have become active almost simultaneously.


Indo-Asian News Service
jijaji - Mon, 10 Jan 2005 20:20:50 +0530
Manorama Online
9th JAN 19:20 hrs IST

Sri Lanka may be hit by cyclone: Meteorological office
- -
Colombo: Sri Lanka's tsunami-battered shores are in danger of being hit by a cyclone which is building off its east coast, the meteorological department warned on Sunday.

"It is not a cyclone at the moment but there is a possibility of a cyclone within the next 24 hours," department Deputy Director Lalith Chandrapala said. Alerts were being sounded on radio telling people still trying to come to terms with the tsunami devastation to be "cautious and vigilant," he said.

A low pressure system had developed in the Bay of Bengal around 300 kilometres southeast of the town of Hambantota, Chandrapala said. "There is no immediate threat to Sri Lanka but if it develops into a cyclone then we will issue a cyclone alert."

Chandrapala said the department had cautioned all government offices and police on the southeast and eastern coast, especially in districts such as Ampara and towns like Galle, Matara and Hambantota. "We are telling people to listen to radio bulletins so that they can be alert and if it strikes it is easier to evacuate people," he said, adding, however, "We are not expecting any need for that."
babu - Mon, 10 Jan 2005 22:18:34 +0530
Bangli, please let me know personally of any activity in the Canary Islands.
jijaji - Wed, 12 Jan 2005 06:12:33 +0530
....
jijaji - Thu, 13 Jan 2005 00:35:06 +0530
12-JAN-2005 08:40:03 Magnitude 6.0 CENTRAL MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE
jijaji - Thu, 13 Jan 2005 02:52:15 +0530
THIS IS MAJOR !

2005/01/12 08:40 Magnitude 6.8 CENTRAL MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE

ohmy.gif
Chanahari - Thu, 13 Jan 2005 17:12:22 +0530
Damn, Bangli, you just made me addicted to that Seismic Monitor - I look to it every day to know where was an earthquake today, waiting the big one! laugh.gif blush.gif

By the way, such sizes of quakes - magnitude 6.0-7.0 - are still relatively frequent. There are cca. 6-7 of mag 6.0-6.5 quakes in every months. Yearly, there are cca. 20 quakes wich have a greater magnitudo than 7.0.

There is a site where one can find past quakes up to today
jijaji - Thu, 13 Jan 2005 21:06:06 +0530
*A magnitude 6.8 earthquake in the central Mid-Atlantic Ridge
has occurred 1290 km (800 miles) ENE of Fernando de
Noronha, Pernambuco, Brazil.
*A landslide caused by heavy rains killed six children and one
adult in a shantytown by the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo.


Chanahari, yea that Seismic Monitor is a good one. Also I know mag 6 and 7 earthquakes are frequent, however after a large 9.2 event they should be closely watched as they could be precursors to other major events...

namaskar,

bangli
jijaji - Fri, 14 Jan 2005 02:52:06 +0530
B.C. natives believe they'll face similar disaster


DIRK MEISSNER, CP 2005-01-10

VICTORIA -- Aboriginals who live in the villages that dot the rugged, fjord-like west coast of Vancouver Island believe one day they'll face an earthquake and tidal wave similar in destructive force to the quake and tsunami that hit southeast Asia on Boxing Day. It happened before on Vancouver Island more than 300 years ago and it will happen again, say aboriginals and scientists.

"It's in our oral history," says Chief Robert Dennis about the violent earthquake and massive tsunami that struck the west coast of Vancouver Island.

"There was an earthquake and they felt the ground shake and then shortly after the tidal wave came and it washed up all the sand onto the houses," he said. "All the dwellings were destroyed and people by the thousands drowned. They didn't even have time to get into their canoes."

The island quake and tsunami are more than a legend to scientists, says Garry Rogers, a seismologist with Victoria's Pacific Geoscience Centre, a federal research facility that studies the earth's movements.

He can actually pinpoint the date and time of day when the west coast of Vancouver Island was hit by an earthquake and tsunami.

"Three hundred years ago, Jan. 26, the year 1700, there was a massive tsunami caused by a magnitude nine earthquake, the same size that was in Sumatra," said Rogers. "The difference is it occurred at night time rather than the daytime.

"The reason we can put it to the date is because the tsunami went across the Pacific and it impacted Japan," he said. "At that time, Japan had a good timing system and a good recording system. It damaged the rice store houses in several ports along the east coast of Japan."

Island aboriginals who live in the Cowichan Valley, about 60 kilometres north of Victoria, tell stories of the ground shaking in the night, causing landslides and massive damage, Rogers said.

West Coast aboriginals who lived on a hillside overlooking the ocean tell a story of continuous shaking and survival, but their neighbours who lived on the water at what is now called Pacheena Bay were wiped out, he said.

"The whole village was gone," Rogers said. "The buildings were gone. The canoes were gone. The people were gone, taken away by the tsunami like we're seeing in Sumatra."

Dennis, elected chief of the Hu-ay-aht First Nation of Bamfield, a fishing and tourism village located about 300 kilometres northwest of Victoria, said he knows of at least 10 different aboriginal accounts passed down over time that tell of the destruction wrought by the island earthquake and tsunami.

The quake and tsunami of 300 years ago have become ingrained in the culture of the West Coast aboriginals and what happened in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India on Boxing Day is a stark reminder of what is lurking in the Pacific Ocean, he said.

The London Free Press
jatayu - Fri, 14 Jan 2005 13:21:33 +0530
QUOTE(bangli @ Jan 13 2005, 09:22 PM)
B.C. natives believe they'll face similar disaster


DIRK MEISSNER, CP    2005-01-10

VICTORIA -- Aboriginals who live in the villages that dot the rugged, fjord-like west coast of Vancouver Island believe one day they'll face an earthquake and tidal wave similar in destructive force to the quake and tsunami that hit southeast Asia on Boxing Day. It happened before on Vancouver Island more than 300 years ago and it will happen again, say aboriginals and scientists.

"It's in our oral history," says Chief Robert Dennis about the violent earthquake and massive tsunami that struck the west coast of Vancouver Island.

"There was an earthquake and they felt the ground shake and then shortly after the tidal wave came and it washed up all the sand onto the houses," he said. "All the dwellings were destroyed and people by the thousands drowned. They didn't even have time to get into their canoes."

The island quake and tsunami are more than a legend to scientists, says Garry Rogers, a seismologist with Victoria's Pacific Geoscience Centre, a federal research facility that studies the earth's movements.

He can actually pinpoint the date and time of day when the west coast of Vancouver Island was hit by an earthquake and tsunami.

"Three hundred years ago, Jan. 26, the year 1700, there was a massive tsunami caused by a magnitude nine earthquake, the same size that was in Sumatra," said Rogers. "The difference is it occurred at night time rather than the daytime.

"The reason we can put it to the date is because the tsunami went across the Pacific and it impacted Japan," he said. "At that time, Japan had a good timing system and a good recording system. It damaged the rice store houses in several ports along the east coast of Japan."

Island aboriginals who live in the Cowichan Valley, about 60 kilometres north of Victoria, tell stories of the ground shaking in the night, causing landslides and massive damage, Rogers said.

West Coast aboriginals who lived on a hillside overlooking the ocean tell a story of continuous shaking and survival, but their neighbours who lived on the water at what is now called Pacheena Bay were wiped out, he said.

"The whole village was gone," Rogers said. "The buildings were gone. The canoes were gone. The people were gone, taken away by the tsunami like we're seeing in Sumatra."

Dennis, elected chief of the Hu-ay-aht First Nation of Bamfield, a fishing and tourism village located about 300 kilometres northwest of Victoria, said he knows of at least 10 different aboriginal accounts passed down over time that tell of the destruction wrought by the island earthquake and tsunami.

The quake and tsunami of 300 years ago have become ingrained in the culture of the West Coast aboriginals and what happened in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India on Boxing Day is a stark reminder of what is lurking in the Pacific Ocean, he said.

The London Free Press



This tsunami again shows clearly how this world functions. Mostly only the real poor are being punished again and again, also like the recent heavy Haiti flooding (2,500 people have died ) or the African clashes in Sierra Leone and on the Ethiopian-Eritrean border that have killed and displaced millions of the poorest people. Those who wrongly used their nature given riches are taking birth in those places to get punished again and again, while the opulent western nations even become richer by all these catastrophes. Not knowing in future births they are the candidates to experience the total loss of all facilities if they dont start to learn their lesson how to properly use material opulence. rolleyes.gif

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"As the clouds do not feel the powerful wind because they are being carried by it, the conditioned soul doesn't feel the passage of time.... The living entity, in whatever species of life he appears, finds a particular type of satisfaction in that species, and he is never averse to being situated in such a condition." (Bhagavatam, Canto 3)
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jijaji - Fri, 14 Jan 2005 20:25:23 +0530
Quake lifted the surface of the globe

By William J. Broad The New York Times

Friday, January 14, 2005
NEW YORK New studies of the giant earthquake that produced devastating tsunamis in the Indian Ocean show that its shock waves ricocheted around the globe for hours and lifted the earth's surface nearly an inch even half a world away.
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Rick Aster, a geologist at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, compiled seismograms to measure the shock waves at increasing distances from the quake's epicenter. The waves were 1,000 times the size of those that seismologists customarily measure, Aster said.
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The quake struck on Dec. 26 off the west coast of northern Sumatra, and the shock waves radiated out through the earth's rocky interior, traveling faster than waves do in air or water. The waves were eventually picked up by seismometers, which measure vibrations in the ground. Aster used data gathered by a global network of seismometers run by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, or IRIS, a consortium based in Washington that is financed mainly by the National Science Foundation. IRIS has nearly 150 member institutions at universities in the United States and abroad.
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The closest readings came from the Cocos Islands, an Australian territory south of Sumatra, and from Sri Lanka, and the farthest from Ecuador. The seismic data show the waves traveling around the earth for six hours.
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Aster said that even in Ecuador, the shock wave displaced the Earth's surface more than two centimeters, or nearly an inch, but the movement was too slow to be perceptible to humans. The jolt was much sharper in Pallekele, Sri Lanka, and shook the ground over a range of nearly four inches, he said.
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Waves from the quake weakened as they bounced around the globe but were still discernible after making a complete loop. The seismogram from Tristan da Cunha, a group of British islands in the South Atlantic, shows the main wave arriving after a little more than 60 minutes, then two smaller ones that circled the earth in two directions arriving after about 120 minutes and 230 minutes.



jatayu - Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:09:03 +0530
Tsunami conspiracy theorists come out
By Neil Western in Hong-Kong
January 6, 2005

JUST 11 days after Asia's tsunami disaster, conspiracy theorists are out in force, accusing governments of a cover-up, blaming the military for testing top-secret eco-weapons or aliens trying to correct the Earth's "wobbly" rotation.

In bars and Internet chat rooms around the world questions are being asked, with knowing nods and winks, about who caused the undersea earthquake off Sumatra on December 26, and why governments did not act in the minutes and hours before tsunamis slammed into their shores, killing almost 150,000.

"There's a lot more to this. Why is the US sending a warship? Why is a senior commander who was in Iraq going there?" whispered designer Mark Tyler, drinking a pint of beer at a bar in Hong Kong's Wan Chai district.

"This happened exactly a year after Bam," said Tyler, referring to the earthquake in Iran which killed 30,000 on December 26 last year. "Is that a coincidence? And there was no previous seismic activity recorded in Sumatra before the quake, which is very strange," he said, nodding sombrely.

After every globally shocking event – from the bombing of Pearl Harbour to the assassination of John F Kennedy, the death of Princess Diana and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States – conspiracy theorists emerge with their own sinister take on events.

This time the Indian and US military are in the frame, while the governments of countries from Australia to Thailand stand accused of deliberately failing to act on warnings of the impending earthquake or the tsunamis it unleashed around Asia.

Among the more common suggestions is that eco-weapons, which can trigger earthquakes and volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves, were being tested.

More outlandish theories include one that aliens caused the earthquake to try and correct the "wobbly rotation of the Earth".

Scientists give such theories short shrift.

"This was a natural disaster," said Dr Bart Bautisda, chief science research specialist at Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, debunking the idea that an "eco-weapon" could be used to cause an earthquake or such large-scale tsunamis.

"You would need a very huge amount of energy. It's impossible. A billion tonnes could not do it," Dr Bautisda said.

He said wave activity might be able to be triggered very close to the scene of a giant explosion, but the effect would be a tiny fraction of the tsunamis which travelled thousands of kilometres at the speed of a jet after tectonic plates shifted off Sumatra.

"It's possible to cause vibration, but not sufficient to cause disruption," he said.

"We can tell the difference between an artificial explosion and an earthquake. The mechanisms are different."

Scientific evidence, however, cuts little ice with many conspiracy theorists.

The Internet – which has proved invaluable in dealing with the disaster by aiding rescues, providing witness accounts from bloggers and allowing grieving relatives to comfort each other through chat rooms – is abuzz with more sinister explanations.

The Free Internet Press, which claims to offer "uncensored news for real people", has an article saying the US military and the US State Department received advanced warning of the tsunami, but did little to warn Asian countries.

America's Navy base on the Indian Ocean jungle atoll of Diego Garcia was notified and escaped unscathed, it said, asking "why were fishermen in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand not provided with the same warnings?".

"Why did the US State Department remain mum on the existence of an impending catastrophe?," author Michel Chossudovsky pondered.

"Probably because fishermen in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand don't have multimillion dollar communications equipment handy," one respondent said as readers posted angry replies.

"Maybe rescuers will find Elvis and the gunman form the grassy knoll," jibed another, referring to those who believe Elvis Presley is still alive and that former US president Kennedy was shot by someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald.

The India Daily's website joined the conspiracy theorists noting, "it seems the whole world decided to fail to do anything together at the same time. Are we missing something?

"Can it be that all the government agencies knew what was happening but were told not to do anything? Who told them? Or is this just a tragic coincidence?" wrote Sudhir Chadda, a correspondent.

"Recent alien contacts have been reported with the South Asian Governments especially India. UFO sightings have been rampant over the region affected," Chadda wrote.

"Some in Nicobar Island say that it was an experiment conducted by the alien extra-terrestrial entities to correct the wobbly rotation of the earth. And some of the Indian scientists are actually seeing that wobbly rotation of the earth has been corrected since the massive underwater earthquake and tsunami."

In Hong Kong, Tyler laughed at the alien idea, but remained convinced humans had a hand in this disaster. "Wait and see. There will be a lot more to come out," he said.

Agence France-Press
jijaji - Sat, 15 Jan 2005 12:31:47 +0530
14-JAN-2005 12:28:39 4.7 magnitude KOMANDORSKY ISLANDS REGION
jatayu - Sat, 15 Jan 2005 13:53:30 +0530
Villagers In Terror Of
Tsunami Victims' Ghosts

By Sebastien Berger
The Telegraph - UK
1-15-5

A plague of ghost sightings has hit the Thai coast, with the restless spirits of tsunami victims said to be wandering the area.

Thais are intensely superstitious and the reports first began to emerge as rumours of fresh tsunamis began to die down.

Many of the apparitions on Phuket are said to be of foreigners, with one taxi driver reported to have picked up three Caucasians to take them to the airport.

He arrived only to be asked by the car park attendant why he was there, as his van was empty, and fled in terror.

"My staff are getting really panicked," said Chaiyun Trisuwan, general manager of the Phi Phi Island Village resort, which was untouched but where corpses from a neighbouring bay were kept for four days before they could be moved.

"There are rumours, some guy saw this, some guy saw that. This is definitely the number one problem."

Now security guards accompany his workers when they return to staff accommodation at night.

Mental health specialists say the phenomenon may be a way of expressing mass trauma following the tsunami and its aftermath.

Wallop Piyamanotham, a Thai psychologist, said: "This is a type of mass hallucination that is a clue to the trauma being suffered by people who are missing so many dead people, and seeing so many dead people, and only talking about dead people.

"Thai people believe that when people die a relative has to cremate them or bless them. If this is not done, or the body is not found, people believe the person will appear over and over again to show where they are."

A bar manager in Patong, Napaporn Phroyrungthong, said: "I believe in ghosts and I always will. It happened so quickly the foreigners didn't know what happened and they all think they are still on holiday."

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.


babu - Sat, 15 Jan 2005 20:05:23 +0530
QUOTE(jatayu @ Jan 14 2005, 07:51 AM)
This tsunami again shows clearly how this world functions. Mostly only the real poor are being punished again and again,  also like the recent heavy Haiti flooding (2,500 people have died ) or the African clashes in Sierra Leone and on the Ethiopian-Eritrean border that have killed and displaced millions of the poorest people. Those who wrongly used their nature given riches are taking birth in those places to get punished again and again, while the opulent western nations even become richer by all these catastrophes.


This is one part of Vaisnava philosophy that I disagree with. When I go back to Godhead, one of the first things I'm gonna do is to ask Krishna to change His policy of punishing the poor people.
Dhyana - Sat, 15 Jan 2005 20:21:35 +0530
QUOTE
This is one part of Vaisnava philosophy that I disagree with. When I go back to Godhead, one of the first things I'm gonna do is to ask Krishna to change His policy of punishing the poor people.

You mean you will wait with expressing your criticism until you are already on the safe side? wink.gif


jijaji - Sat, 15 Jan 2005 20:40:56 +0530
QUOTE(babu @ Jan 15 2005, 08:05 PM)
QUOTE(jatayu @ Jan 14 2005, 07:51 AM)
This tsunami again shows clearly how this world functions. Mostly only the real poor are being punished again and again,  also like the recent heavy Haiti flooding (2,500 people have died ) or the African clashes in Sierra Leone and on the Ethiopian-Eritrean border that have killed and displaced millions of the poorest people. Those who wrongly used their nature given riches are taking birth in those places to get punished again and again, while the opulent western nations even become richer by all these catastrophes.


This is one part of Vaisnava philosophy that I disagree with. When I go back to Godhead, one of the first things I'm gonna do is to ask Krishna to change His policy of punishing the poor people.




Or if he's just plain gettin a bad rap, have him change how folks refer to these things as ... 'An Act of God'


wink.gif
jatayu - Tue, 18 Jan 2005 03:15:05 +0530
QUOTE(babu @ Dec 27 2004, 09:30 PM)
While we all grieve for the pain and suffering caused and we send our love and prayers and material support to those in harm's way, one cannot help but think that Mother Bhumi is sending a wake-up call to all  to leave behind our fears, our greed and our hate.




This is a highly respectable source of information: The Jerusalem Post, especially for those who easily say, oh, yes, cheap conspiracy hallucinations... cool.gif

QUOTE
Egyptian paper: Israel-India nuke test caused tsunami
Joseph Nasr – The Jerusalem Post Monday January 17, 2005

The earthquake that struck the Indian Ocean on December 26, triggering a series of huge waves called tsunami, "was possibly" caused by an Indian nuclear experiment in which "Israeli and American nuclear experts participated," an Egyptian weekly magazine reported Thursday.

According to Al-Osboa', India, in its heated nuclear race with Pakistan, has lately received sophisticated nuclear know-how from the United States and Israel, both of which "showed readiness to cooperate with India in experiments to exterminate humankind."

Since 1992, the magazine argued, leading geological centers in Britain, Turkey and other countries, warned of the need "not to hold nuclear experiments in the region of the Indian Ocean known as 'the Fire Belt,' in which the epicenter of the earthquake lies.

Geologists labeled that region 'The Fire Belt' for being "a dangerous terrain that can move at anytime, without human intervention," Al-Osboa' wrote.

Despite warnings not to carry out nuclear experiments in and around the 'Fire Belt', "Israel and India continue to conduct nuclear tests in the Indian Ocean, and the United States has recently decided to carry out similar tests in the Australian deserts, which is included in the 'Fire Belt', the Egyptian weekly magazine wrote.
"Last year only, Arab and Islamic states have asked the United States to stop its nuclear activities in that region, and to urge Israel and India to follow suite," Al-Osboa' reported.

Although Al-Osboa' does not rule out the possibility that the tsunami could have been caused by a natural earthquake it speculates however that, "while it has not been proved yet, there has been a joint Israeli-Indian secret nuclear experiment [conducted on December 26] that caused the earthquake."

The Egyptian weekly magazine concludes in its report that "the exchange of nuclear experts between Israel and India, and US pressure on Pakistan which is exerted by supplying India with state-of-the-art nuclear technology and preventing Islamabad from cooperating with Asian and Islamic states in the nuclear field, pose a big question mark on the causes behind the violent Asian earthquake."

Incitement against Israel and Jews in Egyptian media is usually limited to the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict yet exceptions are known to occur.

In August 2002, the Paris Supreme Court summoned Ibrahim Naafi', editor of the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram, for having authorized the publication of a controversial article entitled 'Jewish matza is made from Arab blood' in the October 28, 2000 edition of the paper.

Naafi' was charged with incitement to anti-Semitism and racist violence.
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1104981578311