If you’re looking for news on the tragic tsunamis and resulting devastation in south east asia, NBC news has some valuable information including factsheets and maps. BBC news is also a good resource.
Having been in the region just a few weeks ago we found the news particularly shocking. Our deepest sympathies go out to any whose family and friends have been affected.
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My sister was there for the first half of December, staying at Kau Lak (sp?). She reckons there’s a 60% chance that she and her whole family would have been washed away if it had happened when they were there. Many of the things they saw aren’t there any more, many of the people they talked to are dead. We were planning to go over in March, but the resort we wanted to go to just isn’t there.
It makes the tragedy that much more real when you are in some way associated with the place. Though Koh Samui and Bangkok (where we stayed on our honeymoon) are unaffected we can so vividly imagine the way of life on other islands etc that it really brings the tragedy home.
What does "tsunami" mean?<br><br>——————————————————————————–<br> Tsunami is a Japanese word with the English translation, "harbor wave." Represented by two characters, the top character, "tsu," means harbor, while the bottom character, "nami," means "wave." In the past, tsunamis were sometimes referred to as "tidal waves" by the general public, and as "seismic sea waves" by the scientific community. The term "tidal wave" is a misnomer; although a tsunami’s impact upon a coastline is dependent upon the tidal level at the time a tsunami strikes, tsunamis are unrelated to the tides. Tides result from the imbalanced, extraterrestrial, gravitational influences of the moon, sun, and planets. The term "seismic sea wave" is also misleading. "Seismic" implies an earthquake-related generation mechanism, but a tsunami can also be caused by a nonseismic event, such as a landslide or meteorite impact.<br><br>——————————————————————————–