Ask the guy who knows way too much about the tsunami

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve never done an “ask the guy…” thread before, as I always find them a bit self-aggrandising. However, lately I’ve seen a wee bit of ignorance about last year’s Indian Ocean tsunami (not on this board, I hasten to add - mainly in the media), so thought I would lay myself open to such charges, in order to assist in fighting it.

My credentials: nothing official, but I spent May, June, and some of July, helping out with tsunami relief on the island of Phi Phi in Thailand. During my time on the island, I assisted with the creation of a tsunami memorial museum, so did a lot of research into the subject. I am also friends with several survivors and bereaved. Since I left, I have been slightly obsessed with the subject, and have kept a keen eye on the subject in the media. In two weeks my wife is returning to assist with the anniversary memorial services, and I will be joining her a week after that.

As the anniversary approaches, I thought I’d offer my accumulated knowledge to address any queries anyone may have, to the best of my abilities.

2

There were so many dead, it made me wonder if they had to make mass graves. Was this necessary?

3

Unfortunately, sometimes yes.

Largely, four things happened with the bodies:

  1. They were either burned, or buried in mass graves, within a couple of days of the disaster, by survivors concerned with hygiene. I’m not sure if any of these graves have yet been exhumed.

  2. They were identified and reclaimed by their relatives at the time, and disposed of in accordance with local tradition.

  3. In places such as Thailand, where there’s a fairly advanced infrastructure, most bodies were collected by government/NGO workers, and stored in morgues for identification. This generally applies to any bodies that have been found in the weeks and months following the initial aftermath, up to this date.

  4. They are lying in deep ocean, or cut into small parts, or buried under tons of earth, and will never be found.

4

What was the total loss in life, including those who died afterwards from disease & malnutrition, who wouldn’t have if there hadn’t been a tsunami?

5

That’s a tough one, and probably not answerable. Mercifully, the disease aspect of the disaster doesn’t seem to have been as great as first feared - the greatest fear has been malarial mosquitoes, but they don’t usually like salt water to breed in, which is what was left behind by the water. The greatest threat was perceived to be poor sanitation, but I know of no figures. Malnutrition is also less of an issue, due to the tropical nature of the areas hit (with the exception of Somalia); food aid was also pretty efficient. An abundance of fruit is readily available in most areas, within yards of where the waters stopped:

Bill Clinton, July 14, 2005.

A third, and very real worry, is that of suicide. There have been many suicides reported, in many different cultures. No figures available. I personally know of several people who put themselves in harm’s way on a regular basis. A lot of other survivors are abusing drink and drugs to a horrendous degree.

The current official death toll stands at 231,452, but more than 50,000 are still missing. And many people had no papers/were illegal immigrants, so the actual total may never be known.

6

Sorry:

should read

I should add that dengue fever is also an ongoing problem; it’s usually non-fatal, but can kill people with compromised immune systems, the very young, and the very old.

7

I’m going to try and ask this correctly, bear with me if my terminology is skewed in some fashion…

Do you know what the distance between troughs was for the tsunami waves? While for normal waves it might be on the order of dozens of yards, I understand that for tsunamis it can be closer to 100 miles. I was wondering if it had been measured for this particular event.

8

That’s a very good question, and you have picked up on one of the main areas of miunderstanding I was talking about in the OP. Many people can comprehend the amplitude, in terms of comparison with wind-generated waves, but neglect the velocity and wavelength of the tsunami waves.

One of the problems with answering this question is that the fluid dynamics worked differently in each area the waves hit.

The velocity of the waves differed, too, depending on the depth of the ocean. They travelled around 1,000 km/h in deep water, with an amplitude of about 1 meter, but their speed reduced drastically as the depth of the coastal waters decreased (hence the vast amplitude and energy build-up), so the question is really related to time, not distance.

On the Thai coast, anecdotally, the coastal data is as follows - understandably, accounts can be a trifle confused:

Trough: 10 minutes. Wave: 15 minutes. Trough: 10 minutes. Wave: 15 minutes. Trough: 10 minutes.

The estimated speed of the wave at the coast was between 50 and 100 kph, so if we apply the same speed to the troughs, then we’ve got a minimum distance between waves of 8.33 km and a maximum distance of of 16.67 km, with the upper wavelength coming in at between 12.5 km and 25 km. (I don’t know if the waves should really be the same length as the troughs… but there was a lot of random movement at the fault line.)

In deep water, you can extrapolate the distances as about ten times greater.

9

One example of the misunderstanding Lieu correctly identified:

And to illustrate this, here is a picture recovered from the camera of a Canadian couple who died in Thailand (possibly Patong in Phuket, from the looks of their pictures). Bear in mind that the vast wave you see there did not stop coming for 10 to 15 minutes.

10

That pic’s terrifying and magnificent at the same time.

Thanks, jjimm, for the thread and excellent reply.

11

This is a good place to ask this: My daughter asked me about a rumor she heard in South America to the effect that the tsunami was a terrorist bomb. I told her you’d need a gross of nukes to cause that, but it made me wonder if there is some sort of measurement of the tsunami’s energy that would be easy to conceive (eg. equivalent to X 20 megaton H-bombs). Do you know ?

12

The figures we were working with was that the energy released was equivalent to 30,000 Hiroshima bombs. Looking it up now, the A-bomb exploded at Hiroshima was equivalent to 12.5 kilotons of TNT. Hydrogen bombs seem to be 1,000 times more powerful than the A-bomb. So the answer would be that it would take 30 H-bombs, or 375 megatons. That’s a hell of a lot of firepower for a terrorist group. It’s frankly unbelievable. Sadly, similar nonsense has been propounded by certain Islamist message boards, saying it was a CIA bomb that caused it.

On a personal note, we removed 23,000 tons of debris from one tiny little island - it represented 1% of the death toll, but probably 0.01% of the area actually hit. Yet we were pulling blocks of cement from the bay, up to 20 tons each, on a regular basis. That’s a hell of a lot of energy transmission.

13

Just don’t want the weekenders to not see this so a little nudge might be in order…

14

How did you get involved in the relief effort?
Very Noble act.

Jim

15

I didn’t really want this thread to be “look at me, aren’t I worthy”, but since you ask, I will tell.

We’d already planned to travel the world - resigned from our jobs, sold our house - when the tsunami hit. As we watched the horror unfold, we both felt that we couldn’t swan around Asia without helping in some way. We spent a couple of months in China and Tibet, but then went to Penang, Malaysia, and Phuket, Thailand, looking for relief work, but the governments had pretty much fixed everything up in both places. Then we got an email from a friend in Ireland saying that she’d heard Phi Phi was still in dire need of help, so we went. And it was. After the disaster, the Thai government had declared the island off-limits to everyone, and the residents were languishing in a refugee camp on the mainland. Because of this ruling, no NGOs arrived, and any islanders who wanted to return were relying solely on the grass-roots efforts of backpackers to rebuild. My travel journal charts our personal experience. My only regret is that we didn’t get there sooner.

Not at all. I assure you, anyone who went there would have done the same. And it wasn’t like we were in the wilds of Afghanistan or something: we were on one of the most beautiful islands in the world, with an incredible social scene amongst the volunteers and locals. Apart from the desperately sad aspects of being there, we had the best time of our entire lives.

16

jjimm,

I think it is great that you helped the victims, i know your help was greatly appreciated.
I live in the Philippines, and I have visited Thailand several times. What I keep hearing is that most of the money donated for the tsunami victims went straight into the pockets of wealthy politicians that own the luxury resorts, and that very little money ever went to the truly needy victims whose lives were devastated.
The luxury resorts were quickly rebuilt with donated money, but the poor man on the street received little help to rebuild whatever small business he or she had.
I keep hearing that Thaksin and his friends were able to pocket the vast majority of the money.
What was your impression ? Am I hearing these stories correctly ?

Thanks !

17

There is some truth to those statements, but it’s a little more complicated.

All of what I’m about to say is personal opinion, so don’t take it as gospel, and bear in mind that I wasn’t in an area that had NGOs in it, so I can’t speak with authority on that aspect.

The Thai government refused all financial aid. Thailand has a relatively strong economy in the area, and Thaksin decided that to accept financial donations send a bad message to the markets, and could have harmed the country in the long run. Therefore he couldn’t have been pocketing any money, because there wasn’t any to pocket.

The Thai government took a pragmatic approach towards regeneration: they targeted the areas of the disaster zone that were the greatest revenue-generators, because they needed economic recovery, and fast. This meant that the more impoverished areas - fishing villages and the like - got neglected.

In other places, such as Khao Lak, the devastation is so extreme that the authorities really don’t know where to start.

However, most of the luxury hotels were insured, and are therefore being rebuilt by insurance money rather than government donations. This was, of course, in stark contrast to the uninsured people near them, and looks bad, but it’s not necessarily theft.

Most of the people who lost their homes and businesses were tenants, and some of them were in unofficial or illegal tenancy agreements, so they had no rights, nor proof of residency, and many have been denied re-entry to their former residency. Add to this mix the landowners, some of whom indulged in land grabs due to poor land registration pracices, and some of whose land was being re-zoned - exclusion zones from the shore, for example - and the government offering chunks of other people’s adjacent land as compensation, who in turn are demanding compensation.

It’s a big fat mess. I’m not denying that a lot of corruption was and is being perpetrated, but it’s not as clear-cut as what you may be hearing.

18

Bumping this for the anniversary.

mrs jjimm is back in Thailand, assisting with the memorials. She’s been working very hard to clear the areas needed by the mourners: she and several other western volunteers have been preparing for the ceremonies from 8am until midnight for the past two days - including Christmas Day.

This morning multi-denominational services were held on the beaches worst hit. At the moment she’s participating in a candle-lit procession around the island. I spoke to her on the phone a couple hours ago. She sounded physically and emotionally exhausted. It’s tough to be around that much grief.