Phuket tsunami photo gallery

December 27, 2004 8:14 AM

Phuket tsunami photo gallery. Crazy stuff. And the aftermath.
posted by zorro astor (39 comments total)

Terrifying. I hope this guy is OK.
posted by grateful at 8:25 AM on December 27, 2004

!
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 8:43 AM on December 27, 2004

I can't believe how high the water got.

Scary, yet amazing photographs.
posted by SisterHavana at 8:52 AM on December 27, 2004

Next time I go to the beach, I'll try to remember that there's a one in a billion chance that the ocean will rise up and devour me.
posted by goethean at 8:53 AM on December 27, 2004

Amazing pics. Strange how there is such destruction below and the balcony where the pics are being shot from is completely untouched.

Makes my little problems seem pretty insignificant.
posted by fenriq at 8:53 AM on December 27, 2004

does anyone else lose their breath when they see these pictures?
posted by Hands of Manos at 9:03 AM on December 27, 2004

These waves must have been travelling for hours before they reached the shores. Why was there no warning?
posted by beno at 9:10 AM on December 27, 2004

beno, that's what alot of people have been asking since it happened. No warning at all. Just a huge wave of water engulfing tourist areas and sweeping people away.
posted by fenriq at 9:24 AM on December 27, 2004

Why there was no warning. Science knows, but communication infrastructure is not in place.
posted by Nelson at 9:27 AM on December 27, 2004

beno - from what little knowledge I gathered about tsunami's...the waves don't swell up until they hit the shallow water. And, according to someone CNN talked to, there was no warning detection devices in place due to lack of funds.

maybe Dubya could have given some money to that instead of money to blow up Iraq? [/bitch]

I'm not baiting/trolling for a response on that last sentence...it just kinda pisses me off when I think of all the money we've spent in Iraq and for all the supposed causes it contained. I will graciously and humbly stand to be corrected if needed.
posted by Hands of Manos at 9:27 AM on December 27, 2004

See comments this previous MeFi thread.
posted by yoga at 9:28 AM on December 27, 2004

beno, a wave doesn't look like anything when its travelling through the deep ocean. It's only as it approaches the incline of the shore that it mounts up and becomes the big-shouldered bully we know and love.
posted by Faze at 9:30 AM on December 27, 2004

A) It doesn't look like a tsunami when it's traveling in deep waters, it just looks like another 2-3 foot wave. The wave's energy would eventually dissipate itself if it didn't hit an immovable object - AKA land.
B) Most people who lived in these areas had no warning because they were in very remote or poverty-stricken areas, no phones etc. (Clearly not the case in these photos. That poor guy was probably the one the management told to go get as many deck chairs as possible before the wave came in.)
posted by pomegranate at 9:31 AM on December 27, 2004

maybe Dubya could have given some money to that instead of money to blow up Iraq? [/bitch]

I denounce Dubya as virulently as anyone, but the Indian government is pretty damn corrupt, too.
posted by goethean at 10:06 AM on December 27, 2004

maybe Dubya could have given some money to that instead of money to blow up Iraq?

Yea, Hands of Manos, this disaster is definitely the fault of the U.S. government. Your other handle is saqi the paki, isn't it? Reflexive suspicion of the US gov't is as much an undiagnosed mental disorder as chest-thumping psuedopatriotism, it just manifests a little differently. See also: here and here. Nitwits.

I'm not baiting/trolling for a response on that last sentence

Yes, you were. Give us a little credit.


In other news:
Asian officials conceded Monday that they failed to issue broad public warnings immediately after a massive undersea earthquake in Indonesia, which could have saved countless lives from the subsequent giant waves that smashed into nine countries as far away as Africa.
posted by dhoyt at 10:23 AM on December 27, 2004

It's definitely not what I picture when I read the words "wall of water," which get used in pretty much every story about a tsunami. More like a giant Tongue of Destruction.
posted by coelecanth at 10:29 AM on December 27, 2004

Cost of installing a basic tsunami early-warning system:
"tens of millions."

Current cost of removing Saddam Hussein from power:
over $147 billion and rising.

But let's not get into global human priorities here. Apples and oranges, or something.
posted by digaman at 10:31 AM on December 27, 2004

re: corruption.

India is near the botton on the Transparency International scale. It is below Iraq and roughly equal to Russia.

BTW, Russia was also recently declared non-free by the folks that try and reduce such ephemeral judgements to binary pronouncements
posted by wah at 10:34 AM on December 27, 2004

err, below Iran.

and...

Apples and oranges, or something.

Man vs. Man
vs.
Man vs. Nature

Two different fruits...to some. BTW, you don't want to see how much it would cost to end hunger. Or how the Sunnis in Iraq are leveraging democracy.
posted by wah at 10:41 AM on December 27, 2004

BTW, you don't want to see how much it would cost to end hunger.

Why not?
posted by Kwantsar at 10:53 AM on December 27, 2004

maybe Dubya could have given some money to that instead of money to blow up Iraq?

You are a fucking idiot. Not everything is about you and your irrational distaste for the President of the United States.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 11:03 AM on December 27, 2004

"BTW, you don't want to see how much it would cost to end hunger."

Probably about the same as the US spends annually on porn....
posted by lerrup at 11:09 AM on December 27, 2004

S@L - Irrational, no. Irrelevant to the subject at hand, yes. Kudos for your restraint and civility though.

Nelson - Thanks for the link. Makes you wonder how prepared the US would be for an enormous natural disaster of our own.
posted by chundo at 11:11 AM on December 27, 2004

Flickr has some good photos (good meaning that you get a feel for the scope of it all) from various people.
posted by Danf at 12:04 PM on December 27, 2004

Who pays for porn?

Is the coffee crop in Sumatra okay?
posted by keswick at 12:19 PM on December 27, 2004

Donations for disaster relief via the American Red Cross are currently being accepted. (choose "international response fund" as your target). I apologize to non-US MeFites as I don't know the sites for your local chapters. Other suggestions are welcome.
posted by thedevildancedlightly at 12:29 PM on December 27, 2004

Relief assitance also via the Portland-based Mercy Corps, which does amazing work. They've been known to refuse to leave areas other organizations bail from, and in Iraq refused a Defense Dept. grant because it came with talking-to-the-press restrictions.
posted by theonetruebix at 12:58 PM on December 27, 2004

Sadly enough, they estimate that one-third of the casualties will be children. Also while reading this article it seems that thousands had crowed the beaches to see the larger than normal waves. That news spread quickly enough it seems to bring them to the beach, I just wish the news to seek shelter and higher ground had reached them as well, truly sad.
posted by Gooney at 2:10 PM on December 27, 2004

http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/ attempts to collect info like where to send money, aid organisations, helplines, infolines, email addresses, phone numbers, news updates etc.
posted by dabitch at 2:28 PM on December 27, 2004

TORRENT of death . . . wildlife photographer Hellmut Issels stood on his hotel balcony overlooking Phuket's Patong Beach to capture images as the Boxing Day tsunami surged with sickening fury, sweeping up people and flattening everything before it. He captured several images of one young man, bottom picture, caught in the powerful white wash. It was believed that man's body was found 1km away.

Killer waves sweep away 23'000 lives
posted by bobo123 at 5:41 PM on December 27, 2004

There's going to be allot of dirt poor, homeless, jobless people wallowing in sewage and dead bodies for quite awhile. I urge everybody to give a little something -
I gave to Oxfam, but these are good too -
Save the Children
CARE Australia and CARE USA
World Vision International
MercyCorps
Doctors Without Borders

posted by RemusLupin at 7:38 PM on December 27, 2004

I doubt this thread is still hot, but if any of yall still reading recall this thread a couple days ago, which talks about man-made islands off the coast of Dubai ... judging by the amount of beach that got eaten in these tsunami pics ... what happened to The Palm(s), The World? Those "islands" couldn't have possibly weathered this well.
posted by fourstar at 8:12 PM on December 27, 2004

... being in the Persian Gulf, is it too land locked (?) to suffer anything major?
posted by fourstar at 8:21 PM on December 27, 2004

i think they were well out of the way, altho i just heard that there were tidal surges in Mexico, and San Diego higher than normal--India pretty much blocked it i believe, in terms of Dubai.
posted by amberglow at 8:57 PM on December 27, 2004

this map might help visualize it all.

Even Myanmar (an incredibly closed place) announced that they had deaths from this--it must have been big there too.
posted by amberglow at 8:59 PM on December 27, 2004

Okay, WTF??? Watching NBC news with Brian Williams reporting 80,000 dead now??? That's pretty drastic from everyone else reporting 23,000 and upwards. Did I miss something? It wasn't my imagination, others in the room heard it, too.
posted by codeofconduct at 9:24 PM on December 27, 2004

I think that's probably a top estimate, after all the info is in. It more than doubled just from last night to tonight after all, and there are still communities/people in each of the countries affected that haven't been accounted for.
posted by amberglow at 9:26 PM on December 27, 2004

It's going to turn out to be one of most devastating events in recorded history, is what i'm hearing, both in lives and costs.
posted by amberglow at 9:27 PM on December 27, 2004

How come no stories out of Bangladesh? They always get hit hard by stuff like this.
posted by zorro astor at 3:39 AM on December 28, 2004