Coast
Guard patrols West Bengal coast
Kolkata:
The West Bengal Government in consultation with the
Eastern Naval Command has deployed the Coast Guard ship
'CGS Sucheta Kriplani' to patrol the coast of West Bengal
following Sunday's high intensity quake. Commandant, Coast
Guard, West Bengal, R K Wadhwa said from Haldia that district
magistrates of East Midnapore and South 24 Parganas had
been asked to warn fishermen from venturing out to the sea
and call back those already out on the waters. He, however,
said that the condition of the Bay of Bengal is normal now.
Meanwhile,
aviation sources in Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman
and Nicobar Islands, have confirmed that a large part of
the runway at the Port Blair airport has been submerged
this morning following Sunday's the devastating earthquake
that precipitated Tsunami waves across the southeastern
Asian coast. Only 5,500 of the 11,200 feet runway has been
declared safe for planes to land. Though Indian Airlines
has begun operating smaller aircraft like Boeing 737s, the
sources said the water is still being pumped out to ensure
a relaunching of of normal flight operations, including
the flights of larger aircraft like A-320s. Indian Airlines
has decided to operate special flights to Port Blair from
Kolkata and Chennai to evacuate tourists and other people
wanting to move out of the disaster zones. While three flights
would operate from Kolkata on Monday as against two normal
services, two services would be operated from Chennai as
against one. Only B-737s will be used for these operations.
Similarly on Tuesday, two services each would be launched
from Kolkata and Chennai as against one each. On Sunday,
the domestic airline carrier operated two flights from Kolkata,
including one A-320 which was stationed there at the time
of the quake. The second flight from Kolkata carried support
staff and some top officials to facilitate the passengers
stuck at Port Blair.
UN
special teams for Tsunami-hit nations (Go
To Top)
United
Nations: The United Nations is sending special teams
to countries hit by the killer quake and the tsunami waves.
Emergency supplies are on stand-by at the agencies global
supply hub in Copenhagen. The first teams were sent to Sri
Lanka, the worst hit nation by the tidal waves on Sunday,
television and news agency channels reported. On Sunday,
UN Secretary-general Kofi Annan in a statement said he was
saddened by the loss of life and property, and added that
the United Nations would provide all assistance necessary
to meet the needs created by this natural disaster. He extended
his condolences to the people and governments of the countries
affected as they cope with their catastrophic losses.
Fishermen
rescue tourists from Vivekananda Rock (Go
To Top)
Kanyakumari:
A group of fishermen has helped to save the lives of
over 500 people at the Vivekananda Rock Memorial. Undeterred
by the high tides, fishermen put their boats out into the
sea and went to rescue the stranded tourists after the deadly
Tsunami waves hit India's southeast coast on Sunday. The
fishermen made a number of trips to the rock memorial to
bring the stranded tourists to safety. "We just could not
watch people helplessly waving at us from the rock memorial
for help. We took the initiative first and police and others
came after that," said Lenin, a local fisherman. "Initially
nobody was there from the administration. So we did not
care for our lives and just plunged into the sea to save
them," said Praveen, a local fisherman. The fishermen scored
over the IAF helicopter, which was called to airlift the
stranded people, made several sorties to the rock memorial
but could not land there. The helicopters were only able
to drop food and water packets. It was then that the local
fishermen swung into action and virtually took over the
rescue operations and completed it successfully. It was
because of the daring act of the fishermen that these people
were brought to the shore safely. "We are alive today because
of the help of local people. The fishermen and boat operators
came and saved us," said Sanjay Garde, a tourist from Pune.
The administration has also acknowledged the role played
by the local fishermen. "More than 100 fishermen in Kanyakumari
helped me and we all worked together," said Mohan Shanker,
DIG, Tirunelveli Range.
Bodies
line south Indian hospitals after killer Tsunami (Go
To Top)
Nagapattam/Hyderabad:
Frantic relatives have started gathering around dozens
of bodies in hospitals across southern India, a day after
a Tsunami triggered by an earthquake in distant Indonesia
killed up to 4,000 people. People waded through the sea
of bodies the tiny ill-equipped hospital in Nagapattnam
while dozens more, rushed to get medical aide for those
injured. "Because it is a calamity and most of the bodies
are coming here and we have limited manpower. Most of the
bad cases are being sent to the Thanjavore medical colleged.
Even now we have 110 patients being treated here, of which
eight are children," S. Rajendran, chief of the local disaster
management team said. Vast swathes of the countryside were
submerged in one of India's worst natural disasters in living
memory as heavy waves and winds slammed Tamil Nadu and neighbouring
Andhra Pradesh, leaving thousands homeless and hundreds
of fishermen missing.
A
government official said at least 1,705 people had been
killed in Tamil Nadu alone and about 300 in neighbouring
Andhra Pradesh and Kerala states. Another 1,000 were feared
dead in the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands just off
the Indonesian island of Sumatra, near the quake's epicenter.
In Andhra Pradesh, about 700 fishermen were missing and
200 Hindu devotees who had gone to the beach for a holy
dip in the morning were feared dead. "Nearly 30,000 people
have been evacuated and taken to safer places. Four villagers
were inundated and about 700 people, 700 fishermen were
at sea when this information was collected," interior minister
Shivraj Patil told a news conference in Hyderabad on Sunday.
The tsunami, triggered by the world's fifth-largest quake
in a century, has killed at least 15,000 people across Asia.
India's armed forces have been called in to help in rescue
operations at home and in neighbouring Sri Lanka, which
bore the brunt of the tsunami. "The Sri Lanka government
had approached the Indain government for some kind of cooperation
in somekind of cooperation in dealing with the matters.
(We are sending one and two ships)," Patil said.
Tourists
begin leaving Tsunami-hit Sri Lanka (Go
To Top)
Colombo:
Tourists have started checking out of the hotels situated
along the coastal areas in Sri Lanka after Tsunami wrecked
havoc in the Island nation on the morning after Christmas.
In the seaside town of Kalutara, holidaymakers staying at
a luxury hotel on the seafront described a 8 metre wall
of water crashing onto the coast. As a result, many hotels
along the southern coastal belt - jam-packed at the height
of a bumper tourist season - were flooded. Railway tracks
were broken, buildings demolished and vehicles tossed around
like plastic toys as the floodwaters surged. Meanwhile,
lakhs of Sri Lankans took shelter in temples and schools
on Monday as the death toll rose to around 5000 and was
likely to increase. In the southern coastal town of Galle,
a major industrial hub submerged by a 9-metre wave, some
residents spent the night on the roofs of office buildings
and the local bus station. One of the tourists said: "We
were pushed against the wall. We tried to open the door,
we could not really. But, eventually we managed to open
the door. Then the flow just dragged us into a corridor,
it was a very, very small narrow corridor and the water
level was going up, up, up and basically we were carried
away within the flow and we had no way of breathing and
the only way was from the ceiling and we were carried away.
We managed to escape I don't know how. God knows." According
to government estimates, more than 800,000 people have been
left homeless. The final death toll could rise much higher
because hundreds of people washed out to sea have not yet
been accounted for.
CMG
meets to review situation (Go
To Top)
New
Delhi: The Crisis Management Group (CMG) today met to
review the emergency relief and rehabilitation operations
being carried out by the armed forces and the civilian administration
in the tidal-wave hit coastal areas in the country. Chaired
by Cabinet Secretary BK Chaturvedi, the meeting took stock
of the magnitude of the devastation and distribution of
relief supplies, including food packets, medicines and blankets.
Senior officers of the three armed forces attended the meeting,
besides officials from ministries of home, civil aviation,
shipping and other concerned departments. Earlier, yesterday
the CNG had worked out an emergency plan for relief operations
in tidal wave-hit areas and asked all ships and fishermen
in the sea to remain away from the coasts till further notice.
The Defence and Home ministries are co-ordinating supply
of relief materials to Andaman and Nicobar Islands and other
affected zones in Chennai and Andhra Pradesh.
India,
Lanka not part of warning system! (Go
To Top)
New
Delhi: The intensity of the massive tsunami and the
catastrophic death toll might have been reduced in India
and Sri Lanka had India and Sri Lanka been part of an international
warning system designed to warn coastal communities about
potentially deadly waves. The system alerts the nations
about the potentially destructive waves hitting their coastlines
well in three to 14 hours in advance. According to scientists,
seismic networks recorded yesterday's massive earthquake,
but without wave sensors in the region, there was no way
to determine the direction a tsunami would travel. The researchers
said a single wave station south of the earthquake's epicentre
registered tsunami activity less than 60 cm high heading
south towards Australia. This international warning system
was started in 1965, the year after tsunamis associated
with a magnitude 9.2 temblor struck Alaska in 1964. It is
administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Among
the member nations are all the major Pacific rim nations
in North America, Asia and South America, as well as the
Pacific islands, Australia and New Zealand, France and Russia.
However, India and Sri Lanka are not members of the warning
center. The Director of Pacific Tsunami Warning Center,
Charles McCreary said, "That's because tsunamis are much
less frequent in the Indian Ocean." The northern tip of
the earthquake fault is located near the Andaman Islands,
and tsunamis appear to have rushed eastward towards the
Thai resort of Phuket yesterday morning when the community
was just stirring. According to the researchers, the earthquake
broke on a fault line deep off the Sumatra coast, running
north and south for about 966 km or as far north as the
Andaman and Nicobar islands between India and Mynamar. "It's
a huge rupture," McCreary said. "It's conceivable that the
sea floor deformed all the way along that rupture, and that's
what initiates tsunamis". Large and destructive tsunamis,
like the one yesterday, typically happen only a few times
in a century. "It was a big tsunami, but it is hard to say
exactly how many waves there were or what happened," McCreary
said. The warning system analyses earthquake information
from several seismic networks, including the US Geological
Service. The seismic information is fed into computer models
that "picture" how and where a tsunami might form. It dispatches
warnings about imminent tsunami hazards, including predictions
how fast the waves are travelling and their expected arrival
times in specific geographic areas. As the waves rush past
tidal stations in the ocean, bulletins updating the tsunami
warning are issued. Other models generate "inundation maps"
of what areas could be damaged, and what communities might
be spared.
