Wednesday, December 29, 2004
December 29, 2004THE VICTIMS
Experts Say Accurate Toll Is Hard to CalculateBy DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Rapidly climbing death estimates from the earthquake-generated waves that struck a dozen countries Sunday are likely to be highly inaccurate for some time, despite the best efforts of aid officials to nail them down, experts said yesterday.
Estimates of the dead climbed to 57,000 yesterday, which would make the tsunami toll the worst in recorded history.
But because so many nations were struck, with such long, populous coastlines, an accurate count of the dead is nearly impossible.
Yesterday, teams began to reach remote parts of Sumatra, the Indonesian island closest to the earthquake's epicenter. Communications from some areas are still out, including on small islands that waves may have swept over.
Also, experts explained, inhabitants of coastal villages and urban waterfront slums are usually subsistence fishermen and farmers who are the least likely to be counted by census takers. The only records of tourists swept away are likely to be hotel registers, which may themselves now be on the ocean bottom.
Three areas hit by the tsunami are war zones with little government: the Aceh region of Indonesia, regions of Sri Lanka controlled by rebels and the coastline of Somalia.
Thousands more may die if cholera, malaria or other diseases break out in areas without fresh water or sewage disposal, or in refugee camps, United Nations officials warned.
No world agency is officially charged with collecting death tolls or checking them.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs issues daily situation reports, which often include estimates of the dead and displaced.
"But we don't do head counts ourselves," said Jamie McGoldrick, coordinator of the office's Geneva bureau. "We rely on government sources, and we go with the figures we're given."
News agency reports from the affected nations also relied chiefly on figures provided by government disaster centers.
The best way to check those figures may be the United Nations workers in each country. United Nations doctors are on teams with local health departments and the Red Cross, and report up parallel chains of command to United Nations representatives, who work with government ministers.
But aid workers are less interested in counting the dead than the living, who line up for food, water and blankets, Mr. McGoldrick pointed out. There is less urgency to account for bodies washed out to sea or buried in mass graves.
Alfred Ironside, a spokesman for Unicef, said India and Sri Lanka were the most likely to be able to report accurate estimates because they have networks of thousands of local health offices reporting data to state offices and then to the Indian capital, New Delhi.
It is normal for figures to fluctuate widely in the first few days after a disaster, experts said.
One day after an earthquake destroyed Bam, in southern Iran, one year ago, the initial estimates of the dead were about 25,000. The estimates rose slowly as freezing weather set in, and Iran's Interior Ministry officially set its estimate at 41,000, a figure widely quoted for three months. In March, the number was revised downward to 26,271, because many people had been counted twice in the original chaos.
The lowered estimate, Mr. McGoldrick said, grew out of efforts by the Red Cross and Red Crescent to figure out why so many people were in their refugee camps.
In the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, up to 10,000 people were initially feared dead after planes struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The figure of 6,000 settled in the public consciousness until weeks of careful counting revised it downward to about 3,200.
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December 29, 2004REACTION
A Tragedy in Asia Affects All Corners of a Closer WorldBy CRAIG S. SMITH
ARIS, Dec. 28 - The tsunami that struck over the weekend spread a ring of destruction through nearly a dozen countries. Those are the places most directly affected, and on a calamitous scale. But the disaster has rippled far beyond South Asia, making it truly a tragedy felt across the globe.
Among the tens of thousands of people missing or dead, thousands are believed to have come from outside the region, including many who were spending their holidays at Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian beach resorts.
Reported deaths now cover at least 40 nationalities, reaching from South Africa to South Korea, with surprising concentrations of people still unaccounted for from European countries.
Those still missing include 1,500 from Sweden and 700 to 800 from Norway, 300 from New Zealand, more than 200 each from Denmark and the Czech Republic, 100 from Germany, 100 from Italy and 188 Israelis.
The disaster's reach is an unsettling reminder that globalization has brought the world closer together in unexpected ways so that people now share the pain as well as profit from far-flung places. Even for people who have never left home, otherwise abstract calamities in distant lands now frequently have a familiar face.
Only a hundred Europeans have been confirmed dead so far, leaving anxious relatives and friends to await word from distant lands where often-sketchy communications were either overloaded or knocked out altogether after the devastation struck.
There is little way to know for now whether many of those missing have been killed or are merely cut off. Meanwhile, stories of desperate searches and unlikely reunions have begun to trickle in from abroad.
Vacationing children who lost their families in the disaster are slowly being identified.
A Swedish boy, 7, was found at a shelter in a Buddhist temple in Phuket, Thailand, on Monday. Marie Gulbstrand, a doctor from Stockholm, told The Associated Press that the boy has identified himself as Karl Nilsson and that his parents and two brothers were swept from their hotel by the surging water.
A 10-year-old German girl pictured on the Phuket hospital Web site has given her name as Sophia Michl and says her parents are Norbert and Edeltraud Michl. Both are missing.
Olinto Barletta, an Italian tour operator, made the rounds of Phuket hospitals on Tuesday waving an Italian flag to track down compatriots who had survived the wave, according to the Italian news agency ANSA. He told the news agency that he had found about 50 Italians alive but that many of them had missing friends or relatives.
A dozen Italians have been reported dead, mostly in Thailand. But more than 2,000 Italians were vacationing in Sri Lanka, about 1,500 on the Maldive Islands and another 1,000 in Thailand and in Indonesia when the waves struck, according to an Italian tourism association.
The situation was worse for Sweden and Norway.
"It could be the most serious catastrophe of modern times to hit Norwegians abroad," Norway's foreign minister, Jan Petersen, told the country's public television station, NRK.
Johan Murray, a spokesman for the Swedish Foreign Ministry, said 20,000 to 30,000 Swedish tourists were vacationing at Thai beach resorts when the disaster struck.
"Thailand is one of the most popular places for Swedes to go during Christmas and New Year's," he said. "Only six Swedes have been confirmed dead, but we think many, many more people have died."
Winter-fleeing visitors from across Europe and northern Asia book rooms in the region's beachside hotels for the high season in December and January. Many of the best resorts operate at total occupancy during the year-end holidays.
Premiums paid for proximity to the sea meant that some of the region's wealthiest tourists were the most vulnerable.
At the Sofitel Magic Lagoon resort in Khao Lak, one of the worst-hit areas on the Andaman Sea coast, the three-story bungalows closest to the water were entirely gutted.
The resort's French operator, Accor, said Tuesday that 35 bodies had been recovered from the ruins and that more than 200 of the hotel's 415 guests were still missing. A hotel spokesman said that the hotel did not know the nationalities of the dead or missing, but that more than two thirds of the guests were German.
The Thai deputy interior minister, Sutham Sangprathum, said Tuesday that more than 700 foreign tourists had been identified among the dead in southern Thailand.
The French Foreign Ministry confirmed the deaths of 10 citizens and reported 18 missing and presumed dead because they were seen being swept away. Britain listed 18 deaths and the United States 11.
The dead included relatives of the well known and the unknown.
The British actor Richard Attenborough lost two members of his immediate family in Thailand, including a 14-year-old granddaughter, who was found dead, and her mother, Mr. Attenborough's daughter, who is missing. The mother-in-law of Mr. Attenborough's daughter is also missing, according to a statement released by a family friend.
The former German chancellor Helmut Kohl was evacuated Tuesday by helicopter from a hotel in Sri Lanka.
The fashion photographer Simon Atlee was swept away in the Thai resort of Phuket while his companion, Petra Nemcova, a Czech model who appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue last year, survived after clinging to a tree.
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today's papers40,000+ in AcehBy Eric UmanskyPosted Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2004, at 1:02 AM PT
Everybody still leads big with the tsunamis, with the Wall Street Journal topping out the death count at nearly 70,000 and almost certain to go much higher. Indonesian officials report 32,500 dead but say it doesn't include one particularly hard hit region of Aceh. USA Today, citing unknown wires, said 10,000 have died in that region's main town. The New York Times says the U.N. has "unconfirmed reports" that the number in just that part of Aceh is closer to 40,000.
According to early morning reports caught by a few of the papers, 28 policemen in Baghdad were killed when they raided an apparently booby-trapped house. Another two dozen Iraqi soldiers and police were killed in an assortment of attacks yesterday.
A reporter for Indonesia's official news service took a helicopter tour of Aceh's hardest-hit area, Melulaboh. "There are no longer any signs of life along 240 kilometers," he said. "All that is left from houses and offices are only foundations." The Washington Post says a helicopter tried a rescue mission but couldn't find a dry place to land.
Indonesia allowed some foreign reporters into the largely destroyed capital of the normally closed Aceh. The Los Angeles Times said authorities "appeared unprepared to organize even the most basic services." Gas is in such short supply, says the LAT, ambulances are being allocated a gallon per day. Hundreds of government workers died, and those that didn't are focused on helping their own families. "There is not anyone to bury the bodies," said one U.N. officer.
The Post also reports from Aceh's capital and quotes one researcher estimating the tsunamis were about 50 feet high. People tried to outpace the waves in cars and often didn't make it.
The NYT reports from the Indian Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which were only about 100 miles from the quake's epicenter. The islands were "barely above sea level," and rescuers are having a hard time getting into the capital, let alone outside it.
The NYT mentions that contrary to conventional wisdom, corpses don't need to be buried ASAP in order to avoid epidemics. "The data shows that corpses are not a reason to have draconian measures that would undermine the ability of loved ones to identify bodies and go through burial," said one top researcher. Still, considering the lack of proper sanitation and clean water, one top WHO official said, "There is certainly a chance that we could have as many dying from communicable diseases as from the tsunami."
After a U.N. official criticized wealthy countries' "stingy" overall aid numbers, the U.S. more than doubled its initial tsunami aid package to $35 million and promised much more. Secretary of State Powell also pointed out that no country gave more aid last year than the U.S. As the NYT mentions far down, proportionally the U.S. is "among the smallest donors" annually.
Noticing that President Bush is resting in Crawford on vacation and hasn't commented on the tsunamis, the Post stirs the pot on Page One: "AID GROWS AMID REMARKS ABOUT PRESIDENT'S ABSENCE." The "remarks" really aren't all that; the highlight being one "senior career official" (?) saying, "It's kind of freaky."
A "White House official" defended Bush and also took a moment to slam President Clinton, who has urged a coordinated relief effort. "The president wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts," said the official. "He didn't want to make a symbolic statement about 'We feel your pain.' "
In yesterday's worst attack in Iraq, 13 cops were killed when insurgents overran a police station in Tikrit. Another five were killed in one of a handful of suicide car bombings. Eight Iraqis working for a U.S. security contractor were also murdered. And the deputy governor of the Anbar province was assassinated.
The Post has a dispatch from the former Saddam stronghold, saying until yesterday "it was one of the most peaceful and orderly cities in Iraq." The local American commander has been waging a successful unconventional war that includes serious community building and hosting a "call-in radio show."
The NYT says there were "several" other fatal attacks, "although they were not officially confirmed." (Presumably because of that lack of imprimatur, the Times doesn't give numbers.) The paper says the Iraqi government is keeping mum: "The authorities in central Iraq provided no totals for the day's losses, and they have declined to say how many security officers have been killed this year."
In the first of a three-part series, the Post says Osama would have a really hard time getting hold of a nuke. And even if he did, he'd have a hard time transporting it covertly and even more trouble bypassing safeguards. What's more likely, says the Post inside, is a dirty bomb, which would cause more panic than destruction.
The NYT fronts the latest CIA shakeup: The agency's chief has apparently fired the head of the analytical branch. That's the unit that writes the president's daily briefings. Page One play aside, this might be a simple justified termination: The department has taken heat for not exactly nailing down the precise nature of Saddam's weapons program. And an internal inquiry earlier this year found the department has "never been more junior or more inexperienced."
Most of the papers front the death of Susan Sontag, whom the Post describes as "among the foremost thinkers about the meaning of art, politics, war, silence and humanity."
She changed positions over the years, including renouncing communism and calling for leftists to support intervention in places like Rwanda and Bosnia. Sontag explained during one interview she felt "moved to support things which I did not think would be necessary to support at all in the past. Like seriousness, for instance."Eric Umansky writes "Today's Papers" for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@hotmail.com.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111517/
Everybody still leads big with the tsunamis, with the Wall Street Journal topping out the death count at nearly 70,000 and almost certain to go much higher. Indonesian officials report 32,500 dead but say it doesn't include one particularly hard hit region of Aceh. USA Today, citing unknown wires, said 10,000 have died in that region's main town. The New York Times says the U.N. has "unconfirmed reports" that the number in just that part of Aceh is closer to 40,000.
According to early morning reports caught by a few of the papers, 28 policemen in Baghdad were killed when they raided an apparently booby-trapped house. Another two dozen Iraqi soldiers and police were killed in an assortment of attacks yesterday.
A reporter for Indonesia's official news service took a helicopter tour of Aceh's hardest-hit area, Melulaboh. "There are no longer any signs of life along 240 kilometers," he said. "All that is left from houses and offices are only foundations." The Washington Post says a helicopter tried a rescue mission but couldn't find a dry place to land.
Indonesia allowed some foreign reporters into the largely destroyed capital of the normally closed Aceh. The Los Angeles Times said authorities "appeared unprepared to organize even the most basic services." Gas is in such short supply, says the LAT, ambulances are being allocated a gallon per day. Hundreds of government workers died, and those that didn't are focused on helping their own families. "There is not anyone to bury the bodies," said one U.N. officer.
The Post also reports from Aceh's capital and quotes one researcher estimating the tsunamis were about 50 feet high. People tried to outpace the waves in cars and often didn't make it.
The NYT reports from the Indian Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which were only about 100 miles from the quake's epicenter. The islands were "barely above sea level," and rescuers are having a hard time getting into the capital, let alone outside it.
The NYT mentions that contrary to conventional wisdom, corpses don't need to be buried ASAP in order to avoid epidemics. "The data shows that corpses are not a reason to have draconian measures that would undermine the ability of loved ones to identify bodies and go through burial," said one top researcher. Still, considering the lack of proper sanitation and clean water, one top WHO official said, "There is certainly a chance that we could have as many dying from communicable diseases as from the tsunami."
After a U.N. official criticized wealthy countries' "stingy" overall aid numbers, the U.S. more than doubled its initial tsunami aid package to $35 million and promised much more. Secretary of State Powell also pointed out that no country gave more aid last year than the U.S. As the NYT mentions far down, proportionally the U.S. is "among the smallest donors" annually.
Noticing that President Bush is resting in Crawford on vacation and hasn't commented on the tsunamis, the Post stirs the pot on Page One: "AID GROWS AMID REMARKS ABOUT PRESIDENT'S ABSENCE." The "remarks" really aren't all that; the highlight being one "senior career official" (?) saying, "It's kind of freaky."
A "White House official" defended Bush and also took a moment to slam President Clinton, who has urged a coordinated relief effort. "The president wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts," said the official. "He didn't want to make a symbolic statement about 'We feel your pain.' "
In yesterday's worst attack in Iraq, 13 cops were killed when insurgents overran a police station in Tikrit. Another five were killed in one of a handful of suicide car bombings. Eight Iraqis working for a U.S. security contractor were also murdered. And the deputy governor of the Anbar province was assassinated.
The Post has a dispatch from the former Saddam stronghold, saying until yesterday "it was one of the most peaceful and orderly cities in Iraq." The local American commander has been waging a successful unconventional war that includes serious community building and hosting a "call-in radio show."
The NYT says there were "several" other fatal attacks, "although they were not officially confirmed." (Presumably because of that lack of imprimatur, the Times doesn't give numbers.) The paper says the Iraqi government is keeping mum: "The authorities in central Iraq provided no totals for the day's losses, and they have declined to say how many security officers have been killed this year."
In the first of a three-part series, the Post says Osama would have a really hard time getting hold of a nuke. And even if he did, he'd have a hard time transporting it covertly and even more trouble bypassing safeguards. What's more likely, says the Post inside, is a dirty bomb, which would cause more panic than destruction.
The NYT fronts the latest CIA shakeup: The agency's chief has apparently fired the head of the analytical branch. That's the unit that writes the president's daily briefings. Page One play aside, this might be a simple justified termination: The department has taken heat for not exactly nailing down the precise nature of Saddam's weapons program. And an internal inquiry earlier this year found the department has "never been more junior or more inexperienced."
Most of the papers front the death of Susan Sontag, whom the Post describes as "among the foremost thinkers about the meaning of art, politics, war, silence and humanity."
She changed positions over the years, including renouncing communism and calling for leftists to support intervention in places like Rwanda and Bosnia. Sontag explained during one interview she felt "moved to support things which I did not think would be necessary to support at all in the past. Like seriousness, for instance."Eric Umansky writes "Today's Papers" for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@hotmail.com.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2111517/
