Earthquakes cannot be stopped and so there was no way to stop the deadly tsunami either that killed more than 14000 people. But if only we had better communication systems maybe few lives would have had survived the disaster. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center at Los Angeles, had detected the undersea tremor at least an hour ago before its killer tidal waves reached to the west coast of Thailand and Malaysia. But officials at the center could not send a tsunami warning even with best of their efforts. “There was no official alert system in the region” said Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's center in Honolulu. "We tried to do what we could. We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world," he said.
The world's biggest since 1964 and the fourth-largest earthquake since 1900 that stuck the Indonesian island of Sumatra early on Sunday was of 9.0 magnitude. Within minutes it has transformed the lovely beaches across Southern Asia into a landscape filled with death, cries and moans. Relatives are looking for their lost family members and hoping not to find them amongst the mounting dead bodies.
Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga said that this is the worst natural disaster ever in Sri Lankan history and they just don’t know how they will deal with such a huge devastation. The officials have quoted a figure of 4,500 but the figure could rise as soldiers find more bodies from sea.
Indonesian soldiers are looking on tree tops and wreckages to get out dead and survivors.
The dead bodies are now rotting in waters and it smells fishy in the area. The rotting bodies are contaminating water supplies and are a threat to survivors. The earthquake had hit the coast of northern Sumatra island killing at least 4,448 people there.
At least 3,300 people have are dead in India where the earthquake hit the southern coast. The villagers fear another earthquake.
Tsunami is a Japanese word that means "harbor wave." It is usually caused by an under sea earth quake. The waves set by this kind of motion in earths crust are usually small at the point of origin but as they reach the shallow waters of the coast they rise in height. The can reach up to 30 to 50 meters in height while traveling at 500 miles an hour.
