Today marks the 6th month after the devastating Tsunami hit the Indian Ocean. I still remember sitting in Switzerland and watching a breaking story on the Tsunami, without quite comprehending the scale of what was happening. In the first post I made that morning, I had no clue (250 dead in Indonesia, I thought) the death toll would be so staggering. Current estimates suggest that over 300,000 people perished and several millions were left homeless. The re-building has begun to some extent, but there's a long, long way to go. Obviously, six months on, the disaster has faded from media memory for the most part, so it's imperative that we keep the story alive in whatever form we can. To that end, I am reposting our orginal Tsunami relief post, with some minor edits to make it less dated. Please read through it and see if there's some way you'd like to help. By way of clarification, the updates are all from the old Tsunami relief post, and not something new I have added in June.A good list of relief efforts at his post.
Reuben Abrahams at Zoo Station re-posts a list of relief efforts, 6 months after the disaster :
Acting Head of Southwest Aceh District Burhanuddin Sampe has found tsunami aid being illegally stocked at 5 temporary warehouses in his district. The relief supplies in the warehouses has been piled since early January by former camat (subdistrict head) of Susoh. Read More....
(Source: Indonesia-Relief)
(Source: Indonesia-Relief)
While tsunami-affected nations of Indian Ocean region are working to create their own early warning systems, the US Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) in Hawaii is providing interim coverage for this and other regions against the threat of tsunamis.
Until a few years ago, the PTWC was responsible for the Pacific Basin as a regional and long-distance tsunami warning center and for Hawaii as a local tsunami warning center, Director Charles Chip McCreery said.
"In the aftermath of the Indian Ocean event, we are serving as an interim warning center until a system can be put in place in the region," he said during a tour of the center by participants of international Asia Pacific All-Hazards Workshop in Hawaii being held from June 6-1 2.
"We're doing this in cooperation with the Japan Meteorological Agency, which is issuing bulletins for (tsunami-related) events in the Indian Ocean region." More than 175 people from 18 countries are attending the all-hazards workshop, sponsored by NOAA and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and held in cooperation with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
(Source: Press Trust of India)
Until a few years ago, the PTWC was responsible for the Pacific Basin as a regional and long-distance tsunami warning center and for Hawaii as a local tsunami warning center, Director Charles Chip McCreery said.
"In the aftermath of the Indian Ocean event, we are serving as an interim warning center until a system can be put in place in the region," he said during a tour of the center by participants of international Asia Pacific All-Hazards Workshop in Hawaii being held from June 6-1 2.
"We're doing this in cooperation with the Japan Meteorological Agency, which is issuing bulletins for (tsunami-related) events in the Indian Ocean region." More than 175 people from 18 countries are attending the all-hazards workshop, sponsored by NOAA and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and held in cooperation with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
(Source: Press Trust of India)
India will have its own advanced Tsunami early warning system by the first quarter of 2007 with the first phase of the trials of the indigenously developed equipment having been completed, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) Director S Banerjee disclosed today. The equipment, being developed by BARC, will be able to predict Tsunami, which had devastated several parts of Southerm India and a few other countries on December 26 last. BARC initiated the project a few weeks after the deadly Tsunami claimed thousand of lives.
''Ours is a computational simulation for all the three phases of Tsunami source generation, its propagation and finally run up evaluation for the protect of public life and property,'' BARC Director Dr S Banerjee told reporters here. The scientists were working on the integrational and practical phase of the system, he said. The BARC has carried out significant studies with the analytical solution for a specified sea bed simulations and the scientists were finally successful after five months, Dr Banerjee said.
(Source: Deepika Global)
''Ours is a computational simulation for all the three phases of Tsunami source generation, its propagation and finally run up evaluation for the protect of public life and property,'' BARC Director Dr S Banerjee told reporters here. The scientists were working on the integrational and practical phase of the system, he said. The BARC has carried out significant studies with the analytical solution for a specified sea bed simulations and the scientists were finally successful after five months, Dr Banerjee said.
(Source: Deepika Global)
An Australian medical specialist says a large amount of donated supplies to the tsunami-affected region of Banda Aceh in Indonesia will never be used. Jan Rice, who specialises in wound care, travelled to the area with AusAID, the Australian government aid program, three months after the disaster, to help staff at the general hospital. Ms Rice says some of the goods donated were not used because drugs were out-of-date or supplies such as breast implants were inappropriate for the devastated area.
She says the hospital was overwhelmed by the volume of donated medical supplies which it sent to a nearby storeroom. "So ceiling to floor of donated boxes in various states of disrepair because the humidity's 120 per cent and cardboard obviously softens," she said. "So if there were heavy items in the box, then the bottom would've fallen out of it and then the box would've been carried into an area and then just dumped in there."
(Source: Radio Autralia via ABC)
She says the hospital was overwhelmed by the volume of donated medical supplies which it sent to a nearby storeroom. "So ceiling to floor of donated boxes in various states of disrepair because the humidity's 120 per cent and cardboard obviously softens," she said. "So if there were heavy items in the box, then the bottom would've fallen out of it and then the box would've been carried into an area and then just dumped in there."
(Source: Radio Autralia via ABC)
From Australian Broadcasting Corporation:
The Indonesian island of Sumatra, smashed by a tsunami and shaken by an enormous earthquake in the past six months, is now at risk from two potentially major quakes, one of which could generate waves 10 metres high, seismologists warn.
The research team is headed by the same expert who predicted with uncanny accuracy a quake that struck Sumatra on March 28, barely three months after the December 26 temblor, one of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded.
The Indonesian island of Sumatra, smashed by a tsunami and shaken by an enormous earthquake in the past six months, is now at risk from two potentially major quakes, one of which could generate waves 10 metres high, seismologists warn.
The research team is headed by the same expert who predicted with uncanny accuracy a quake that struck Sumatra on March 28, barely three months after the December 26 temblor, one of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded.
In a series of relief distributions across the Tsunami affected areas, HelpAge India has been reaching local food and provisions to older people. When the Tsunamis struck Southern India, Angammal’s 100-year-old partially blind mother was swept away from her home in coastal Chennai, only to be brought back once the water receded. But not all older people were as lucky.
HelpAge India initially provided immediate relief and medical care and it is now meeting the rehabilitation needs of older persons and their families with various occupations, such as fishermen, small/marginalized farmers, agricultural laborers, petty traders, rural artisans, small service providers and other daily wage earners. The various areas of Tamilnadu where work is going on are Chennai, Cuddalore, Tiruvarur, Nagapattinam, Kanyakumari. Counseling and guidance is also being provided to help older people and their families to access government programmes, thus securing their registration to entitlements.
The specific objectives are:
HelpAge India initially provided immediate relief and medical care and it is now meeting the rehabilitation needs of older persons and their families with various occupations, such as fishermen, small/marginalized farmers, agricultural laborers, petty traders, rural artisans, small service providers and other daily wage earners. The various areas of Tamilnadu where work is going on are Chennai, Cuddalore, Tiruvarur, Nagapattinam, Kanyakumari. Counseling and guidance is also being provided to help older people and their families to access government programmes, thus securing their registration to entitlements.
The specific objectives are:
- To provide relief assistance to 3500 tsunami affected older persons for two months.
- To provide sustainable livelihood activities along with basic counselling and medical care to 3500 older people and their families.
- To adopt 500 older persons under the Adopt-A-Granny programme for a period of three years.
- To organise community based disaster preparedness meetings.
Contact :
Nidhi Raj KapoorDirector for Communications
HelpAge India, C-14 Qutab Institutional Area, New Delhi 110016
Nidhi.Rajkapoor@helpageindia.org
tel: 011 26868689 fax : 011 26852916
This past semester a group of students at Boston University's College of Communication completed original survey research regarding Americans' response to the tsunami disaster. They investigated who gave, how much they gave, how much trust they have in where they gave, and a variety of other issues relevant to the charitable giving community.
PRWeb has more on the study, led by Professor James McQuivey, former VP at Forrester Research. A few excerpts ...
PRWeb has more on the study, led by Professor James McQuivey, former VP at Forrester Research. A few excerpts ...
- Donor demographics. Surprisingly, a younger, less affluent group of donors rose to fund tsunami aid than normally participate in charitable giving. For example, the youngest donors gave an average of $324 each, nearly five times that of the oldest donors.
- The role of television vs. the Internet. While television remains the dominant source of tsunami information, the Internet is considered the easiest to use and facilitated donations by 20% of those who gave.
- Trust in charitable organizations. Despite much hand wringing in the media about whether money donated will really reach those in need, 83% of donors believe a majority of what they gave will be delivered as promised. Furthermore, they believe that seventy-five cents of each dollar donated makes its way to those affected by the disaster.
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