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Friday, December 31, 2004

Giant Waves Kill Few Animals

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Dec. 30) -

Wild animals seem to have escaped the Indian Ocean tsunami, adding weight to notions they possess a ''sixth sense'' for disasters, experts said Thursday.
Sri Lankan wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast seemingly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found.
''No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit. I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening,'' H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka's Wildlife Department, said Wednesday.
The waves washed floodwaters up to 2 miles inland at Yala National Park in the ravaged southeast, Sri Lanka's biggest wildlife reserve and home to hundreds of wild elephants and several leopards. ''There has been a lot of anecdotal evidence about dogs barking or birds migrating before volcanic eruptions or earthquakes. But it has not been proven,'' said Matthew van Lierop, an animal behavior specialist at Johannesburg Zoo.
''There have been no specific studies because you can't really test it in a lab or field setting,'' he told Reuters.
Other authorities concurred with this assessment.
''Wildlife seem to be able to pick up certain phenomenon, especially birds ... there are many reports of birds detecting impending disasters,'' said Clive Walker, who has written several books on African wildlife.
Animals certainly rely on the known senses such as smell or hearing to avoid danger such as predators.


The notion of an animal ''sixth sense'' -- or some other mythical power -- is an enduring one which the evidence on Sri Lanka's battered coast is likely to add to.
The Romans saw owls as omens of impending disaster and many ancient cultures viewed elephants as sacred animals endowed with special powers or attributes.
The tsunami was triggered by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean Sunday. It killed tens of thousands of people in Asia and East Africa.

08:31 12-30-04

WHEN THE EARTH MOVES


WHEN THE EARTH MOVES
Why Thais avoided
tsunami warning
Meteorologists decided against it
'out of courtesy to tourist industry'
Posted: December 30, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern


© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Thailand's foremost meteorologists, meeting in a crisis session before the tsunami hit, decided not to issue a warning out of courtesy to the tourism industry, according to a report in the Thai paper The Nation. Minutes after the earthquake in the Indian Ocean Sunday morning, Thailand's top meteorological experts met to consider the danger posed to the coast. But the economic impact on the nation's tourism industry dissuaded them from warning those most in danger.


According to the report, the experts considered the fact that there had not been any dangerous floods in 300 years. There was a consensus that the Indonesian island of Sumatra would be a cushion for the southern coast of Thailand. The experts also reportedly believed the quake was an 8.1 on the Richter scale, rather than a 9.0. A similar sized quake hit the same area in 2002 with no flooding at all, according to the report. Among the meteorological experts, only four had expertise in earthquakes, according to The Nation. We finally decided not to do anything because the tourist season was in full swing, a source told the paper. The hotels were 100 percent booked. What if we issued a warning, which would have led to an evacuation, and nothing had happened. What would be the outcome? The tourist industry would be immediately hurt. Our department would not be able to endure a lawsuit.


All Planets lined up to pull on Mother Earth
See Five Planets in the Sky at Once
From Dec. 18 to early January, you can see Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in the sky just before dawn. You'll have to wait until 2016 to see them together so easily again. Get a chart and more info. -

Plus pull of the full moon the Full Moon
Full Cold Moon on Dec. 26

Restoring MangrovesTo Know It for the First Time – Place, Environment and Ecology Coastal forests are key to preventing future disasters and restoring life and livelihood around the Indian Ocean
A half-century ago, if you approached a point on the shore along the rim of Indian Ocean, you probably would have come upon endless acres of mangroves. Swampy rainforests hugging the edges of both land and sea, Indo-Pacific mangroves are storehouses of biodiversity, home to the world's richest variety of salt-tolerant trees, ferns, and shrubs. Hundreds of different birds live in the trees, which also shelter migratory species. Mangroves are rich in sea life - from plankton, to mollusks, to shell and fin fish - and well-populated with crocodiles, monkeys, wild cats, lizards, sea turtles, and more.
Mangroves also insulate coastlines and coastal communities from the abuses of the ocean - erosion, storms, and waves.
Fast forward 50 years: on December 25, 2004, if you approched the shore along the rim of the Indian Ocean, you would have been much more likely to come upon a shrimp farm, urban landfill, or tourist resort than a rainforest. In the past half-century, over half the world's mangroves - estimated to have covered 22 million hectares (54,340,000 acres) of tropical and subtropical coastlines in the middle of the last century - have been lost to development, oil exploration, pollution, inland irrigation, and especially shrimp aquaculture, an export industry frequently underwritten by international development lenders like the World Bank and the Inter-Asian Development Bank.
From Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta to southeastern India's Goadavari-Krishna mangroves, to the Sundarbans mangroves along the India-Bangladesh coast (hometo nearly 700 endangered tigers), small pockets of mangroves have hung on, sometimes as protected areas, all highly endangered.
But in this terrible time after the tsunamis, place, environment, ecology and economics have combined to illuminate the simple sense of reforesting the mangroves.
(more...)
Continue reading "Restoring Mangroves"
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Hoping the Best for all of you in 2005

 

 


 


 

 

 

 

Alone and yet no absence
For thoughts are racing here
Within the sands of beauty
Our hearts are what we hear
The beating in a rhythm
In vast and precious place
A moment of reflection
That each of us embrace
Time for us to gather
Thoughts that give us pause
Seek the peace that's needed
Whenever there's a cause
For you will find within you
The peace is always there
Upon the desert landscape
A homily of prayer.

 

 


~ Francine Pucillo ~
©used with permission, Dec., 2004.

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Nature's Destructive Force




Bazuki Muhammad, Reuters Swede Olof Carlsson, right comforts his Thai girlfriend, Oi, and her relatives during Wednesday's cremation of a loved one, who was killed by the tsunamis. Previous (2 of 8) Next



Death Toll Increases to 117,000
· False Alarm Sparks Panic in India [Details]
· Huge Rush of Donations From U.S. [Details]
· Millions of Survivors Lack Basic Supplies [Details]
· Final Toll May Never Be Known [Details]
· New Congress to Work on Aid [Details]


Physical Effects

Reuters








Experts now worry the tsunami's destructive effects will spread into disease and deprivation among the survivors left in its wake.

  Interactive: Effects and Threats
· Did Wildlife Know to Flee?



Beawiharta, Reuters An Acehnese girl cries with her mother near the ruins of their house in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
· Story: Indonesian Island's Coastline Decimated Previous (1 of 11) Next

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Tsunamis in Asia - The Morning After

WorldChanging: Another World Is Here view in new window - ... ONLINE CULTURAL COVERAGE December 26, 2004 Tsunamis in Asia - The Morning AfterBig Systems - Global Institutions, Governance and History

An update on the devastating earthquake and tsunamis that hit Asia yesterday. Latest news suggests that the earthquake measured 9.0 on the Richter scale. Note: we'll be updating about the quake, it's aftermath and it lessons thoughout the day on the main page.

a map of the tsunami.jpg

Continue reading "Tsunamis in Asia - The Morning After"
Posted by Dina Mehta at 09:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (4) | Other weblogs commenting on this post

Quakes and Tsunami's - American Rescue

BBC - Science & Nature - Hot Topics - Natural Disasters ...

Killer Tsunami

Killer Tsunami

Tidal waves wash through houses south of Colombo, Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan coast was hit especially hard. (Gemunu Amarasinghe, AP)

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Killer Tsunami

An man cries as he holds the hand of his eight-year-old son, who was killed. They were near the Indian city of Madras. The death toll attributed to the tsunami that rocked countries bordering the Indian Ocean now stands at 44,000 and continues to climb. (Arko Datta, Reuters)

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Killer Tsunami

Tidal waves wash through houses south of Colombo, Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan coast was hit especially hard. (Gemunu Amarasinghe, AP)

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Killer Tsunami

When the waters receded from Southern India, they left a scene of almost unimaginable devastation. (AFP/Getty Images)

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Killer Tsunami

Beachside gift shops lay wrecked along the shores of Phi Phi Island, Thailand. (Roslan Rahman, AFP/Getty Images)

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Killer Tsunami

A man sits atop the wreckage of his home in the city of Cuddalore, India. (Arko Datta, Reuters)

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Killer Tsunami

Foreign tourists look at damage on a resort island in southern Thailand. Many foreigners are thought to have been killed. (AFP/Getty Images)

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Killer Tsunami

A video grab shows a wave coming ashore in Penang. (Retuers)

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Killer Tsunami

Still waterlogged were areas near Banda Aceh, a large city in Indonesia. (Enwaer Xinhua, AP)

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Killer Tsunami

A scene of devastation from downtown in the Sri Lankan city of Galle. At least 12,000 were killed in Sri Lanka alone. (Elizabeth Dalziel, AP)

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Killer Tsunami

An Indonesian woman covers her noseagainst the stench of death. (Beawiharta, Reuters)

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Killer Tsunami

Bodies were being taken to a mass burial site near Madras, India. (Prakash Singh, AFP/Getty Images)

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Killer Tsunami

The tidal waves were also devastating to marine life. (Andy Wong, AP)

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Monday, December 27, 2004

Earth Teach Me

Earth Teach M

 Earth teach me stillness as the 
grasses are stilled with light. 

E
arth teach me suffering as 
old stones suffer with memory. 

E
arth teach me humility as 
blossoms are humble with beginning. 



E
arth Teach me caring as the 
mother who secures her young. 

E
arth teach me courage as the 
tree which stands alone. 

E
arth teach me limitation as the
 ant which crawls on the ground. 



E
arth teach me freedom as the 
eagle which soars in the sky. 

E
arth teach me resignation as the 
leaves which die in the fall. 

E
arth teach me regeneration as the 
seed which rises in the spring. 



E
arth teach me to forget myself as 
melted snow forgets its life. 

E
arth teach me to remember kindness 
as dry fields weep in the rain. 


A Native American prayer from the
Ute, North American