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One of the major disasters of this century

The bodycount is now over 125,000 from the killer waves in Asia. Looks like it has surpassed all the initial estimates with almost 80,000 deaths just from Aceh in Sumatra alone. The mind boggles at the scale of this disaster.

Nobody will be able to predict the final figure of those killed; perhaps it is going to hit 200,000 or more? Thousands are injured and thousands are still missing, plus those living in remote areas will probably never be accounted for. It is estimated that more than 5 million have been displaced or made homeless by the tsunami and the quakes in the region.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4144467.stm#map

Latest update on the deaths from the killer waves in Asia has exceeded 80,000.
Refer also to these websites for details:-

http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/killerwaves/

http://izreloaded.tripod.com/december2004.htm#magnitude9killerearthquake

Some estimates, including from the Red Cross go higher than 100,000 for the total number killed when all the deaths are accounted for. This would include all those who are currently listed as missing, and also those people who would later succumb from injuries and disease over the next few weeks.

23,000 dead and rising ....

Looks like my original estimate was way off. The death-toll from the tsunami in the region is now passing 23,000 and this figure is rising steadily. Thousands are still missing and many more are injured, with millions affected by the tidal waves.

It appears that at least 10,000 people died in Sri Lanka and another 2,000 (perhaps even more) in the Andaman Islands were killed by the rising waves.

The BIG earthquake and tsunami in Asia!

As the news unfolds and information from remote regions start being tallied as well, looks like the death toll will probably exceed 15,000 for the whole region. The current figure reported in BBC is now more than 12,000 fatalities after 24 hours from the start of the disaster.

Truly an "act of God" in magnitude and intensity. Thankfully Singapore was spared, but not Penang and parts of north Malaysia with about 40 deaths reported so far. Of course the biggest numbers of people killed would be from Aceh in Sumatra (which was nearest to the epi-center of the quake and the source of the tsunami) and from Sri Lanka and India.

The whole of the Indian Ocean rim was affected by the quake and the subsequent killer tsunamis. Many people were killed from Sumatra, India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Malaysia and Thailand which were close to the source of the quake. Coastal flooding but no deaths was reported as far away as Reunion and Madagascar, the Arabian coast and East Africa as well as the Seychelles. However within the Bay of Bengal region, there is so far only news of 12 deaths total in coastal Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar) which are almost as close to the quake epicenter as are Sri Lanka and the Maldives, and unprotected by any land mass from the tsunami waves, except for the Andaman Islands.

Compared to those living on the Pacific Ocean rim, the people in the Indian Ocean coastal regions were totally unprepared for this type of disaster, as tsunamis are infrequent and almost unknown in this region. Also this earthquake at magnitude 8.9 was one of the most powerful in the last century that the world has ever known. The number of deaths and destruction due to the recent earthquake and tsunamis are unprecedented in living memory.