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Indonesian Earthquake, Waves Kill 14,000 Across Asia (Update4)
Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The death toll rose above 14,000 after an earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the world's biggest in four decades, caused tsunami waves that devastated coastal towns from Thailand to India.
Yesterday's magnitude 9.0 quake generated waves as high as 10 meters (33 feet) that struck tourist resorts in Thailand, Malaysia and the Maldives. Sri Lanka reported more than 5,000 dead, while in Indonesia at least 4,448 were killed, prompting the governments of both countries to declare national disasters.
``The numbers are going to rise for a couple of days,'' said Megan Chisholm, senior emergencies officer at CARE Australia, an aid group with staff in most of the affected countries. ``I don't think we'll really know the full extent of the damage for a couple of days yet, until access to all places is achieved.''
Further waves and aftershocks may cause more flooding over the next few days, officials in India and Malaysia warned. Since the earthquake struck at 7 a.m. local time yesterday, there have been another 25 aftershocks, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
``After such a great earthquake, there would be aftershocks for days,'' said Wong Wing Tak, senior scientific officer at the Hong Kong Observatory. ``It could generate even more waves. With the tsunami waves, you should take caution for a longer time. It could at least take one or two days.''
In India at least 4,278 people are dead following the freak waves that hit the country's south coast, according to updated death tolls reported by the Press Trust of India.
`Thousands of Children'
Freak waves may flood coastal cities in India for the next two days, said A.K. Shukla, head of the Indian Meteorological Department.
``The power of this earthquake, and its huge geographical reach, are just staggering,'' said Carol Bellamy, executive director for the United Nations Children's Fund, in a statement. ``Hundreds of thousands of children in coastal communities in six countries may be in serious jeopardy.''
As many as 200,000 may have lost their homes in Sri Lanka, President Chandrika Kumaratunga said.
Peak Season
In Thailand, at least 392 people were killed by tsunamis, which struck during the south coast's peak holiday season. Thousands more were injured on popular resort beaches including Phuket and Krabi.
``From yesterday morning to now we have treated about 500 patients and 290 of those are still in a serious condition,'' said Tiyanooch Ananpakdee, communications manager for Bangkok Phuket hospital, via telephone from Phuket. ``People turned up at the hospital just in their bathing costumes with no shoes, possessions or money. We are providing food and shelter but the beds only go the seriously injured.''
Most of the casualties are foreign tourists, and many are being treated for bone fractures, Ananpakdee said.
Australia's Prime Minister John Howard said about 5,500 of the country's citizens are holidaying in the affected countries. At least one Taiwanese tourist is dead and three are injured out of about 470 that were holidaying in Phuket, said Wu Chao-yen, director of Taiwan's tourism bureau.
A New Zealand woman who was holidaying in Thailand is dead, according to the country's government.
``We're still missing about 10 or 20 people who were out on the islands,'' said Giancarlo Giacomelli, an Italian, 29, who is room division manager at Phra Nang Inn, a hotel at Ao Nang beach, 25 kilometers from Krabi, which sustained limited damage. ``One huge wave came in. It was the time when people were going to the islands. Many of the boats went under water and some people died.
Malaysia, Maldives, Bangladesh
In Malaysia, at least 53 people were killed, the Star newspaper reported. Popular holiday spot Penang was hardest hit, officials said.
A further 32 people were killed in the Maldives, including a British tourist, Agence France-Presse reported. About 100 islands in the Maldives, an archipelago of more than 1,000 coral isles, house resorts that cater to about half a million tourists each year. Tourism makes up almost one third of the nation's economy, according to data from the Asian Development Bank.
Two people were drowned in Bangladesh, India's northeastern neighbor, and one baby was washed away by the waves, said Abdul Baset, spokesman for Bangladesh's High Commission in Singapore. He said he expects an update from the government later today.
``The death rate was low compared to the gravity of the earthquake,'' he said. ``People have been told to avoid the coastal areas because it may occur again.''
Further Tremors
The earthquake was centered 1,605 kilometers (1,000 miles) northwest of Jakarta at a depth of 10 kilometers, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Since the first tremor struck yesterday, there have been a further 25 after-shocks, one of 7.3 magnitude, according to the survey's Web site. The latest was centered near the Andaman Islands, off India, at 6.19 a.m. local time.
In India, the threat from tsunamis isn't over, officials said.
``We expect the big waves to lash Chennai and parts of Tamil Nadu for the next two days,'' A.K. Shukla, head of the Indian Meteorological Department, said in an interview from New Delhi.
The Malaysian Meteorological Service has warned of further high waves along its northern coast.
Death Toll Rising
The toll will rise further as more bodies are found, Doti Indrasanto, head of the Center for Health Emergency Preparedness said in a phone interview from Palembang in South Sumatra.
``We cannot yet determine the economic loss of the disaster, for sure it's going to be huge and we welcome help from everyone,'' Indrasanto said.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono today declared three days of national mourning for the quake victims. Vice President Jusuf Kalla is heading a national team to coordinate help from Medan, the provincial capital of North Sumatra, southeast of Aceh.
Sri Lanka has declared a state of disaster, with more than 5,000 killed on the island and more expected, according to Harim Peiris, spokesman for President Chandrika Kumaratunga.
``That's the estimate as of now,'' Peiris said. ``The count is going up all the time.''
The southern state of Tamil Nadu was the hardest hit in India, with more than 600 dead, Home Minister Shivraj Patil told reporters in New Delhi.
``The entire coastal area of northern Jaffna to Colombo has been severely affected, and we have asked (for) international help to evacuate people,'' M.A. Hasan, information spokesman for the Sri Lankan government, said in an interview from the capital of Colombo.
International Aid
The U.S. said it's already providing aid to Sri Lanka and the Maldives and is prepared to give assistance to other affected countries. Canada has also pledged assistance.
Australia's government will give A$10 million ($7.7 million) to the quake zone, it said in a statement. Australia has two military plans on standby to ferry emergency supplies such as bottled water and tarpaulins to the affected countries, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. The government has also sent consular staff from Kuala Lumpur to Sri Lanka's capital of Colombo.
Massive Scale
The Indonesian quake is the second in the world this year of magnitude 8 or greater on the Richter scale. A magnitude 8.1 temblor was recorded on Dec. 24 in the Southern Ocean between Australia and Antarctica by the U.S. Geological Survey.
Magnitude 8 earthquakes are capable of causing severe loss of life if centered near heavily populated areas. An 8.1 quake in Mexico City in 1985 killed about 9,500 people.
The biggest earthquake since 1900 was a 9.5-magnitude temblor in Chile in 1960, according to the U.S. Geological Survey Web site, followed by two earthquakes in Alaska and one in Russia's Kamchatka region that ranked 9 or above. More than 30,000 people died when an earthquake measuring 6.6 devastated the Iranian city of Bam on Dec. 26, 2003.
Indonesia's 18,000 islands are prone to earthquakes because the nation sits along the Pacific ``ring of fire,'' a zone of active volcanoes and faults in tectonic plates.
``Often you get these scale disasters individually,'' said CARE's Chisholm. ``For them to all happen together in these different countries makes it quite an extraordinary event of quite massive scale. | 
