That's enough for today.

A hug to everyone. What a terribly sad story.

Quote:

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - Rescuers piled up bodies along coastlines devastated by a tsunami that obliterated seaside towns in Asia and Africa, killing 21,000 people in nine countries. …. On the remote Car Nicobar island northwest of Sumatra, Police Chief S.B. Deol told New Delhi Television he had reports that another 3,000 people may have died. If confirmed, that would raise India's death toll to 6,000 and the overall number to 23,900…. The Indian state of Tamil Nadu reported thousands of deaths. Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa called the scene ``an extraordinary calamity of such colossal proportions that the damage has been unprecedented.''… The tsunamis came without warning. Witnesses said sea waters at first retreated far out into the ocean, only to return at a vicious pace. Some regions reported a crashing wall of water 20 feet high…. One man, Rajali, said his wife and two children were killed and he could not find dry ground to bury them. Islamic tradition demands that the deceased be buried as soon as possible.``What shall I do?'' said the 55-year-old man, who, like many Indonesians, goes by a single name. ``I don't know where to bury my wife and children.''…. About 200 inmates took advantage of the chaos, escaping from a prison in coastal Matara.The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake's magnitude was 9.0 - the strongest since a 9.2-magnitude temblor in Alaska in 1964 and the fourth-largest in a century.The quake occurred more than 6 miles deep and was followed by a half-dozen powerful aftershocks. A 620-mile section of a geological plate shifted, triggering the sudden displacement of water…. Tsunamis as large as Sunday's happen only a few times a century. A tsunami is a series of traveling ocean waves generated by geological disturbances near the ocean floor. With nothing to stop them, the waves can race across the ocean like the crack of a bullwhip, gaining momentum over thousands of miles.Dec 27 2004 8:41AM

The totality will never be known.

This just sucks more and more the more we fnd out about it.

*speechless*

:(

Such a tragedy. Makes you wanna gather everyone you love and give them all a big hug.

Fatalities have also been reported in Somalia and Kenya, 4,000 miles away from the epicenter.

I think that part floored me more than anything else in this tragedy, that the wave could inflict damage so far away...suddenly I don't feel like I'm nearly far enough inland anymore...

After reading that the death toll could reach 100,000 I truly wondered how in the world that could happen... and I found these sites...

http://jlgolson.blogspot.com/2004/12/tsunami-video.html

http://www.pbase.com/issels/phuket_tsunami&page=all

They are blogs, which in some cases give more first hand accounts of what actually happened - more so than the news that is reported which has a tendency to either inflate or deflate information...After downloading a video from the first site I listed from Thailand, I truly can't imagine being the person behind the camera and experiencing this...

I am not one to be at a loss for words but this has just floored me.

A stunned silence is about all I can muster with the magnitude of this horrific disaster.

Right Sharni,

Mother Earth is angry!

I said the same thing today when discussing how horrific this was... and feeling a lot ashamed that I know very little about many of the countries impacted... someone pissed off Mother Earth... and they better start apologizing and quick...unfortunately I think it's a lot of someones...

Also like Bibi, mostly I'm just awe-struck... to know that people 4,000 miles from the epicenter were killed is beyond my comprehension... to help grasp how far 4,000 miles was, I found that the driving distance from San Francisco to Washington DC is 2,840 miles... AMAZING the power of nature.

I am watching an ABC special on it all. Just horrifying. :(

Sharni,

I love you...you KNOW I do! But I can't abide by your entire reply...(though I have respect for what you are thinking and feeling).

I've been thinking about this a lot as the days pass...and it reminded me of many losses in my personal life that have never made sense. My first niece died at 5 months of age, and my mom at 54. Human nature is to blame ourselves for [our] past "evil" doings whenever something as a loved ones untimely death, or this particular horror or ones like it, happens.

WE (the fairly good-doers) ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THE HORRORS/HORRIBLE THINGS THAT HAPPEN ON THIS PLANET! I just feel...not all of mankind is "being punished" for the minority assholes/dickheads/evildoers/natural disasters of the world! YES...it's beyond big at the time. But in retrospect/hindsight it's NOT due to anything [we] did or didn't do. I believe that the good outweighs the bad...but we only notice the bad because it touches our heart so much deeper!!!!

AND...The media is sucking this disaster up in ratings, with no respect for any human feeling that is hitting us all...as we watch...helplessly...............

Not to change the subject...just to put a different glimmer on it, is all I am doing!