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Montag, 27. Dezember 2004 |
Updates on Tsunami from bloggers in India and Sri Lanka
Xeni Jardin:
Rohit Gupta writes:
Rohit Gupta says, "One of my media friends is a TV show host in Sri Lanka, and is writing live accounts of the frenzy on our community blog while rushing around in search of loved ones. Morquendi writes..."The picture here is taken from the southernmost tip of India, where until today there were hundreds of tourists trapped at the Vivekananda Rock Memorial, off the coast of Kanyakumari district. In an amazing display of humanitarian collaboration and bravery, the local fishermen saved roughly 500 of the 600 trapped people, while the role of relief agencies was severely limited by the breakdown of communications and bad weather. Even as I write this, most local media can only offer conflicting figures. Link.
A majority of the deceased from the mainland were local fishermen who had gone out in the sea, to net their nightly catch. Throughout the day and night, and the following day, small boats and catamarans, perhaps too small to brave the violent sea, were plying up and down the strait that divides the island from the Indian mainland. While the Indian Air Force kept dropping food and medical supplies, it is the fishermen who've kept the Kanyakumari death toll (524) as low as it is. Most of the saved were not locals, but tourists, including a Supreme Court judge. There were no riots or cases of civic indiscipline reported in that district, nor in any other part of India, during the rescue efforts. Thankfully, the Indian media has taken due note of the effort. Also, Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India, has offered extensive aid to Sri Lanka, and at least four Indian Navy ships have already carried medicines, food and water to Galle, one of the most affected areas in Sri Lanka.
A part of me wants to say fuck you to being a journalist and go out there and get involved in the aid work. Carry bags of food to the people who need it. But another part keeps saying my work is here. Making calls and making sure people stay informed. Seen things today I never thought I'd see. Seen things I don't ever want to see. How do you ask a question from a father who saw his 4 year old child being dragged off into the sea and be sensitive about it? Do you say sorry? Does that cut it? 2 friends dead. They were on a romantic beach holiday. I like to believe they died holding each other's hands. 2 more missing. Presumed dead. Find a vehicle in about an hour and head off down South to look for them, or identify their bodies. If anyone had told me the day was going to be like this maybe I'd have stayed in bed.
Alex Steffen points us to another first hand report on the worldchanging.com blog: Link. In Mumbai, blogger Dina Mehta is also covering the disaster: Link. Dina is also participating in the collaborative tsunamihelp.blogspot.com, which is shaping up to be something of a central clearinghouse for blog updates on the aftermath and relief efforts.
(Boing Boing.)
10:41:49 PM
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Bloggers in SE Asia cover quake and tsunami disaster
Xeni Jardin:
Image: Screencap of TV coverage in Bangkok -- Buddhist monks chanting for the souls of those who died in the disaster. At present, the international death toll stands at nearly 24,000. Ron Morris in Thailand says, "Since the first tremor from the Sumatran quake was felt in Bangkok over 36 hours ago, we have been blogging the latest news about the disaster. Includes screen grabs from Thai TV and links to locals who took photos of the wreckage after the tidal waves." Link
Cameron Sinclair of the nonprofit group Architecture For Humanity tells BoingBoing, "Two members of the WorldChanging.org crew live close by the Tsumani disaster and are reporting on whats going on: Link. As for reconstruction issues, a page is being set up at Architecture for Humanity to cover this: Link."
Here is a photoblog maintained by a man named Fred in Sri Lanka, with snapshots of the destruction in Jaffna, where he lives and works: Link. Here's another Sri Lankan blog maintained by "Zeus": Link. See also this livejournal maintained by a man named Ernest who was in Phuket when the catastrophe hit. Link. Here's a personal blog maintained by a person in Malaysia, with posts related to the event: Link. Blogger Rezwan in Bangladesh posts about a near-miss here.
BoingBoing reader Dav asks how he and other displaced Western tourists can help.
"Just since I know you guys are at the nexus of a lot of information: I'm here in Thailand on holiday, been staying on the island of Koh Samui on the east side of Thailand. We had been planning to go to Krabi (one of the places hit hard in southern thailand) in a couple of days for a psy-trance party. Now we're thinking of keeping the flight tp Krabi and trying to volunteer to help however we can. Any ideas on how to find out if any organization would want volunteers and where/what? I tried a few sites like Red Cross, etc but didn't notice any info on emergency volunteering and the net connection is so slow it is difficult looking around."
Pointers to other blog coverage welcome, submit sites here.
Update: Alex Steffen of worldchanging.com says,
"Some South Asian bloggers, including a couple of my colleagues from Worldchanging, have set up a blog tracking relief efforts and how folks can contribute: tsunamihelp.blogspot.com. We're also going to be posting more throughout the day on Worldchanging. This is not "just" one of the worst disasters of the decade, one where every bit of help will be needed to save lives and rebuild, it's also a call to change the way access to basic science is shared on our planet. Most of the tens of thousands of people who died yesterday might have been saved with better scientific, communications and warning systems."
And here are more eyewitness blog accounts from bloggers in Phuket, Thailand:
pleloup, Andrew Sutton: Link 1, Link 2, and the French Photojournalism Association: Link. (Thanks, Jim Basman)
(Boing Boing.)
10:36:37 PM trackback []
Tsunami Blog-Links
Xeni Jardin: Cameron Sinclair from Architecture for Humanity says, "We've set up a reconstruction fund specifically to deal with rebuilding issues. As with all our disaster relief operations we are commited to zero overhead/admin. costs. All services are being donated pro-bono and we are partnering with locally based NGO's that will use locals in the rebuilding process." Link
Previous BB posts related to blog coverage of the Asian quake and tsunami: Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4, Link 5, Link 6.
(Boing Boing.)
10:35:57 PM trackback []
Animation of tsunami's path
Xeni Jardin:
BB pal Mike Outmesguine says, "This animation shows the wave of the tsunami moving outward from the island chain north of Sumatra. Remarkably, it travelled the 750 miles to Sri Lanka and Eastern India in only 100 minutes. Spotted on the USGS page mentioned earlier on BB: Link."
(Boing Boing.)
10:35:01 PM trackback []
SE Asian bloggers cover quake and tsnunami disaster
Xeni Jardin:
Ron Morris in Thailand says, "Since the first tremor from the Sumatran quake was felt in Bangkok over 36 hours ago, we have been blogging the latest news about the disaster. Includes screen grabs from Thai TV and links to locals who took photos of the wreckage after the tidal waves." Link
See also this livejournal maintained by a man named Ernest who was in Phuket when the catastrophe hit. Link
BoingBoing reader Dav asks how he and other displaced Western tourists can help.
"Just since I know you guys are at the nexus of a lot of information: I'm here in Thailand on holiday, been staying on the island of Koh Samui on the east side of Thailand. We had been planning to go to Krabi (one of the places hit hard in southern thailand) in a couple of days for a psy-trance party. Now we're thinking of keeping the flight tp Krabi and trying to volunteer to help however we can. Any ideas on how to find out if any organization would want volunteers and where/what? I tried a few sites like Red Cross, etc but didn't notice any info on emergency volunteering and the net connection is so slow it is difficult looking around."
Pointers to other blog coverage welcome, submit sites here. Image: Screencap of TV coverage in Bangkok, Buddhist monks chanting for the souls of those who died in the disaster. At present, the international death toll stands at more than 21,900 people.
(Boing Boing.)
10:33:43 PM trackback []
EFF helping produce anonymizing software
Cory Doctorow: I have the coolest job: my employer, EFF, is now officially doing development on Tor, an anonymizing network tool that lets people use the Internet without being snooped upon:
Your traffic is safer when you use Tor, because communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers, called onion routers. Instead of taking a direct route from source to destination, data packets on the Tor network take a random pathway through several servers that cover your tracks so no observer at any single point can tell where the data came from or where it's going. This makes it hard for recipients, observers, and even the onion routers themselves to figure out who and where you are. Tor's technology aims to provide Internet users with protection against "traffic analysis," a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.Traffic analysis is used every day by companies, governments, and individuals that want to keep track of where people and organizations go and what they do on the Internet. Instead of looking at the content of your communications, traffic analysis tracks where your data goes and when, as well as how big it is. For example, online advertising company Doubleclick uses traffic analysis to record what web pages you've visited, and can build a profile of your interests from that. A pharmaceutical company could use traffic analysis to monitor when the research wing of a competitor visits its website, and track what pages or products that interest the competitor. IBM hosts a searchable patent index, and it could keep a list of every query your company makes. A stalker could use traffic analysis to learn whether you're in a certain Internet cafe.
Donations to EFF are tax-deductible -- you've got a week left to knock some bucks off your tax bill and do some good for the whole Internet!
(Boing Boing.)
10:32:05 PM trackback []
Use SFX to make your own Dr Who theme mix
Cory Doctorow:
The BBC has posted a mixer that lets you make your own version of the Dr Who theme, adding from a long list of SFX with names like "Scottish Hamster" and "Party Popper."
(Boing Boing.)
10:30:26 PM trackback []
Data alert network could have helped in Asia tsunami
Xeni Jardin: India and Sri Lanka, the two nations with highest death tolls from yesterday's devastating tidal waves, are not among the group of 26 countries that comprise the International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System. Had they been part of the alert system, say scientists -- lives could have been saved. Snip from NYT story:
Link to NYT story, and Link to USGS data on the "great earthquake" at magnitude 9.0 which occurred off the west coast of Northern Sumatra Sunday.Although waves swamped parts of the Sumatran coast and nearby islands within minutes, there would have been time to alert more distant communities if the Indian Ocean had a warning network like that in the Pacific, said Dr. Tad Murty, an expert on the region's tsunamis who is affiliated with the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.
Within 15 minutes of the earthquake, in fact, scientists running the existing tsunami warning system for the Pacific, where such waves are far more common, sent an alert from their Honolulu hub to 26 participating countries, including Thailand and Indonesia, that destructive waves might be generated by the Sumatra tremors.
But there was no way to convey that information speedily to countries or communities an ocean away, said Dr. Laura S. L. Kong, a Commerce Department seismologist and director of the International Tsunami Information Center, an office run under the auspices of the United Nations.
(Boing Boing.)
10:18:48 PM trackback []
Last update: 26.02.2005; 0:23:29 Uhr .
