Great Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake.

Three Years ago Today

A member of my family was supposed to be on Phuket on the day of the Tsunami
but had been dragged away on holiday by his partner.He lost his friends and co-workers
and it took us a while to ensure he was indeed alive..

Today is the third anniversary of the Great Sumatra- Andaman Earthquake
and a lot of help is still needed, unfortunately the links to the Isis site are not working
so I cannot offer a Grassroot perspective of what has been achieved and what is
still needed.

We heard it on the radio and knew straight away that it was bad. There were 36 hours
of trying to get through and get information, we were finally contacted from Japan.

229,866 people died in Indonesia, in Aceh.
Somalia was effected.
Burma/Myanmar was effected..
The Maldives were effected.
Malaysia escaped a lot of it.
Indonesia was devastated.
Sri Lanka was effected.
The Maldives were effected.

The earthquake measure between 9.1 and 9.3, and was one of the biggest recorded
on a seismograph.

These a lot of mainstream commeroration today and Wiki on the Tsunami is
available at:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthqua...dmass

There are appeals ongoing for aid and expertise mainly through the Red Cross.
An early warning system has been instigated and is operating.

Thanks to the people who got my brother home for a family funeral and
condolences to those who lost family at that terrible time. I decided not to
publish images of the commeroration. There are many civil society and NGO's
who report the recovery and aid situation without a media bias and will add in the links
over the next day or two.

The search engine at http://www.isiswomen.org has portals into the NGO and
Grassroot activity in the re-building effort.

Sumatra

Epicentre

Madonna of the Two Flames