本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛中国想参加美国主导的救灾行动也难啊.政治外交无所不在....
Ravaged Sumatra's toll rises
False alarm has Asians fleeing coasts amid historic relief efforts
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (AP) — The death toll from last weekend’s earthquake-tsunami catastrophe rose to almost 115,000 today as Indonesia uncovered more and more dead from ravaged Sumatra island, where pilots dropped food to remote villages still unreached by rescue workers.
Elsewhere, a false alarm that new killer waves were about to hit sparked panic in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
The increase came after Indonesia reported nearly 28,000 newly confirmed dead in Sumatra, which was closest to the epicentre of last weekend’s massive earthquake and was overwhelmed by the tsunami that followed.
Some 60 per cent of the Banda Aceh, the main city in northern Sumatra was destroyed, the UN children’s agency estimated, and the island’s northwest coast — lined with villages — was inundated.
India issued a tsunami warning at midday today following aftershocks in the Indian Ocean region, prompting tens of thousands to flee the southeastern coast. Hours later, no waves had arrived.
Still, the warning sparked panic among people still rattled by the weekend’s devastation.
“We got into a truck and fled,” said 40-year-old Gandhimathi of Nagappattinam in Tamil Nadu state, who added that authorities told her to leave her home. “We took only a few clothes and left behind all of our belongings, everything we had.”
Sri Lanka’s military later told residents there to be vigilant but not to panic, while coastal villagers climbed onto rooftops or sought high ground. “There is total confusion here,” said Rohan Bandara in the coastal town of Tangalle.
Tsunami sirens in southern Thailand sent people dashing from beaches, but only small waves followed the alarms.
An estimated 5.7-magnitude aftershock was recorded in seas northwest of Sumatra by the Hong Kong observatory Thursday morning, along with earlier, overnight quakes at India’s Andaman and Nicobar islands.
But a 5.7-quake would be about 1,000 times less powerful than Sunday’s, and probably would have “negligible impact,” said geologist Jason Ali of University of Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, military ships and planes rushed to get desperately needed aid to the ravaged coast of Sumatra, the Indonesian island closest to Sunday’s quake. Countless corpses strewn on the streets rotted under the tropical sun causing a nearly unbearable stench.
Food drops began along the coast, mostly of instant noodles and medicines, with some of the areas “hard to reach because they are surrounded by cliffs,” said Budi Aditutro, head of the government’s relief team.
On the streets of Banda Aceh, a provincial capital in Sumatra, fights have broken out over packets of noodles dropped from military vehicles.
“I believe the frustration will be growing in the days and weeks ahead,” UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland said.
The United States, India, Australia and Japan have formed an international coalition to co-ordinate worldwide relief and reconstruction efforts, U.S. President George W. Bush announced.
In Ottawa, Defence Minister Bill Graham said Canada will give another $36 million for relief efforts in the region, bringing the country’s total contribution to $40 million Cdn. A 12-member reconnaissance team will go to the area to make recommendations on additional help, he said.
Vacationing Prime Minister Paul Martin, meanwhile, issued a statement detailing the government’s initiatives.
“The shocking human toll of the terrible disaster in south and southeast Asia has moved Canadians across the country to do what they can to try and help. Thousands of Canadians have been touched personally by this tragedy,” he said.
“The scope of the devastation will demand that we continue to work together to respond to the immediate and long-term rescue, humanitarian and reconstruction needs.”
At least three Canadians were among the many foreigners killed, with two in Thailand and one in Sri Lanka, Foreign Affairs Canada said. Two others were officially listed as missing, while 12 were injured.
One of the three Canadians reported dead was identified Tuesday by Quebec’s TVA television network as Mathieu Lafond, 28, of Repentigny near Montreal.
The number of deaths in Indonesia stood at about 79,940. Sri Lanka reported 24,473 dead, India 7,330 and counting and Thailand 2,394 — though that country’s prime minister said he feared the toll would go to 6,800.
A total of more than 350 were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya.
The disaster struck a band of the tropics that not only is heavily populated but attracts tourists from all corners. Throughout the world, people sought word of missing relatives, from small-town Sri Lankan fishermen to Europeans on sand-and-sun holidays.
On hundreds of websites, the messages were brief but poignant: ``Missing: Christina Blomee in Khao Lak,” or simply, “Where are you?”
But even as hope for the missing dwindled, survivors continued to turn up.
A two-year-old Swedish boy was reunited with his father days after the toddler was found alone on a roadside in Thailand’s southern beach resort island of Phuket. In Sri Lanka, a lone fisherman named Sini Mohammed Sarfudeen was rescued Wednesday by an air force helicopter crew after clinging to his wave-tossed boat for three days.
The body count mounted as survey teams reached remote areas. Peter Ress, operations support chief for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said the toll could top 100,000.
Rescuers on Thursday plied the dense forests of India’s remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, where authorities fear as many as 10,000 more people may be buried in mud and thick vegetation. Many hungry villagers were surviving on coconut milk, rescuers said.
Mohammad Yusef, 60, a fisherman who fled his village and was holed up at a Catholic church in the territory’s capital Port Blair along with about 800 others, said all 15 villages on the coast of Car Nicobar island had been destroyed.
“There’s not a single hut which is standing,” he told The Associated Press. “Everything is gone. Most of the people have gone up to the hills and are afraid to come down,” Yusef said.
Many villagers had not eaten for two days and said that crocodiles had washed ashore during the disaster, compounding the horror of more than 50 aftershocks since Sunday’s quake.
In southern Thailand, rescue and forensic teams from Australia, Japan, Germany and Israel fanned out in a race to find survivors and identify rapidly decomposing corpses.
“We have to have hope that we’ll find somebody,” said Ulf Langemeier, heading a team of 15 Germans who combed a wrecked resort early Thursday. Langemeier said there’s always a chance of finding survivors trapped under rubble when earthquakes strike on land, but ``when waves enter a building you have no chance.”更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net
Ravaged Sumatra's toll rises
False alarm has Asians fleeing coasts amid historic relief efforts
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (AP) — The death toll from last weekend’s earthquake-tsunami catastrophe rose to almost 115,000 today as Indonesia uncovered more and more dead from ravaged Sumatra island, where pilots dropped food to remote villages still unreached by rescue workers.
Elsewhere, a false alarm that new killer waves were about to hit sparked panic in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
The increase came after Indonesia reported nearly 28,000 newly confirmed dead in Sumatra, which was closest to the epicentre of last weekend’s massive earthquake and was overwhelmed by the tsunami that followed.
Some 60 per cent of the Banda Aceh, the main city in northern Sumatra was destroyed, the UN children’s agency estimated, and the island’s northwest coast — lined with villages — was inundated.
India issued a tsunami warning at midday today following aftershocks in the Indian Ocean region, prompting tens of thousands to flee the southeastern coast. Hours later, no waves had arrived.
Still, the warning sparked panic among people still rattled by the weekend’s devastation.
“We got into a truck and fled,” said 40-year-old Gandhimathi of Nagappattinam in Tamil Nadu state, who added that authorities told her to leave her home. “We took only a few clothes and left behind all of our belongings, everything we had.”
Sri Lanka’s military later told residents there to be vigilant but not to panic, while coastal villagers climbed onto rooftops or sought high ground. “There is total confusion here,” said Rohan Bandara in the coastal town of Tangalle.
Tsunami sirens in southern Thailand sent people dashing from beaches, but only small waves followed the alarms.
An estimated 5.7-magnitude aftershock was recorded in seas northwest of Sumatra by the Hong Kong observatory Thursday morning, along with earlier, overnight quakes at India’s Andaman and Nicobar islands.
But a 5.7-quake would be about 1,000 times less powerful than Sunday’s, and probably would have “negligible impact,” said geologist Jason Ali of University of Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, military ships and planes rushed to get desperately needed aid to the ravaged coast of Sumatra, the Indonesian island closest to Sunday’s quake. Countless corpses strewn on the streets rotted under the tropical sun causing a nearly unbearable stench.
Food drops began along the coast, mostly of instant noodles and medicines, with some of the areas “hard to reach because they are surrounded by cliffs,” said Budi Aditutro, head of the government’s relief team.
On the streets of Banda Aceh, a provincial capital in Sumatra, fights have broken out over packets of noodles dropped from military vehicles.
“I believe the frustration will be growing in the days and weeks ahead,” UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland said.
The United States, India, Australia and Japan have formed an international coalition to co-ordinate worldwide relief and reconstruction efforts, U.S. President George W. Bush announced.
In Ottawa, Defence Minister Bill Graham said Canada will give another $36 million for relief efforts in the region, bringing the country’s total contribution to $40 million Cdn. A 12-member reconnaissance team will go to the area to make recommendations on additional help, he said.
Vacationing Prime Minister Paul Martin, meanwhile, issued a statement detailing the government’s initiatives.
“The shocking human toll of the terrible disaster in south and southeast Asia has moved Canadians across the country to do what they can to try and help. Thousands of Canadians have been touched personally by this tragedy,” he said.
“The scope of the devastation will demand that we continue to work together to respond to the immediate and long-term rescue, humanitarian and reconstruction needs.”
At least three Canadians were among the many foreigners killed, with two in Thailand and one in Sri Lanka, Foreign Affairs Canada said. Two others were officially listed as missing, while 12 were injured.
One of the three Canadians reported dead was identified Tuesday by Quebec’s TVA television network as Mathieu Lafond, 28, of Repentigny near Montreal.
The number of deaths in Indonesia stood at about 79,940. Sri Lanka reported 24,473 dead, India 7,330 and counting and Thailand 2,394 — though that country’s prime minister said he feared the toll would go to 6,800.
A total of more than 350 were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya.
The disaster struck a band of the tropics that not only is heavily populated but attracts tourists from all corners. Throughout the world, people sought word of missing relatives, from small-town Sri Lankan fishermen to Europeans on sand-and-sun holidays.
On hundreds of websites, the messages were brief but poignant: ``Missing: Christina Blomee in Khao Lak,” or simply, “Where are you?”
But even as hope for the missing dwindled, survivors continued to turn up.
A two-year-old Swedish boy was reunited with his father days after the toddler was found alone on a roadside in Thailand’s southern beach resort island of Phuket. In Sri Lanka, a lone fisherman named Sini Mohammed Sarfudeen was rescued Wednesday by an air force helicopter crew after clinging to his wave-tossed boat for three days.
The body count mounted as survey teams reached remote areas. Peter Ress, operations support chief for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said the toll could top 100,000.
Rescuers on Thursday plied the dense forests of India’s remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, where authorities fear as many as 10,000 more people may be buried in mud and thick vegetation. Many hungry villagers were surviving on coconut milk, rescuers said.
Mohammad Yusef, 60, a fisherman who fled his village and was holed up at a Catholic church in the territory’s capital Port Blair along with about 800 others, said all 15 villages on the coast of Car Nicobar island had been destroyed.
“There’s not a single hut which is standing,” he told The Associated Press. “Everything is gone. Most of the people have gone up to the hills and are afraid to come down,” Yusef said.
Many villagers had not eaten for two days and said that crocodiles had washed ashore during the disaster, compounding the horror of more than 50 aftershocks since Sunday’s quake.
In southern Thailand, rescue and forensic teams from Australia, Japan, Germany and Israel fanned out in a race to find survivors and identify rapidly decomposing corpses.
“We have to have hope that we’ll find somebody,” said Ulf Langemeier, heading a team of 15 Germans who combed a wrecked resort early Thursday. Langemeier said there’s always a chance of finding survivors trapped under rubble when earthquakes strike on land, but ``when waves enter a building you have no chance.”更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net