<p>Roby, Momrath,
I am going out of town today but signed online for a moment and am reading the terrible news out of Indonesia. Please if you sign on, please post so we know you are all ok. Thinking of you and those you know in Asia.</p>
<p>Susan</p>
<p>I also want to know that Roby, Momrath and families are safe.</p>
<p>Mini:
Was Madurai affected?</p>
<p>Thanks for the concern. </p>
<p>Jakarta is fine. The quake took place north west of Sumatra, the northernmost island of Indonesia. The small island of Nias, off the coast- a popular dive spot, reportedly was wiped out. There is only spotty news from Sumatra- the fact that not even the military can get word out is not a good sign...the reports of 400 dead are probably just the tip of casualty report. It will take a while for anyone to know, of course. In the best of times the infrastructure is minimal. The northernmost part of Sumatra, Aceh, has basically been under military control for years, it is the scene of a lot of separatist activity.. </p>
<p>Given that everyone from here scatters for the holiday, certainly there are people we know in Phuket, Penang, etc...maybe even Sri Lanka which is a semi-popular tourist destination. Hopefully people got to higher ground. The south east coast of India near Chennai was affected. This is the rainy season (we have had 3 nights in a row of torrential downpours) so the ground is already wet, there was already floooding in some of the region...</p>
<p>I believe that Momrath might be headed to Bali early in the week, but she is probably in town here in Jakarta now...</p>
<p>I think the next few days will likely bring some very bad news locally, it will be interesting to see how the new Indonesian president responds.</p>
<p>Thoughts and prayers are with you all over there. Sounds like it will be a while before the true degree of devestation and casualties is known.</p>
<p>thank you for posting, Roby. I had gotten online to check on you and Momrath, too. What a terrible tragedy!!! Much prayer and caring thoughts to all, and especially that the rest of the world (starting with us) gets help to the people who need it as soon as possible.</p>
<p>OMG, I just read up on this devastating event! I'm soooooooooo glad that you are fine, Roby, and I'm hoping that momrath is fine also. My thoughts and prayers go out to the thousands who have been killed/injured and to their families. I can't even imagine this. ~berurah</p>
<p>It is analagous to trailer parks getting hit in the tornadoes and such in the U.S. The tourist areas notwithstanding, these are just some of the poorest places on earth. The notion of "rescue services" as you would imagine in the states is just completely unthinkable in most of these areas. People will eventually just pick up and do the next best thing they can do..and service/government agencies will come in to try to rebuild a bit. In Aceh province it is hard to imagine what might happen. There is so much distrust of non-Moslems there and there are virtually no outside NGO's in operation any more, I believe. </p>
<p>If the kids were in school, they would be spending all their free time in the all too frequent bucket brigade in the next few days to start to create relief packages from donated goods. </p>
<p>Our "Boxing Day" brunch conversation focused today on the amazing difference in life opportunities all related to the complete accident of where one was born....But then, events like this remind us that no matter, we are all vulnerable...</p>
<p>Madurai wasn't affected, as it is well inland. However, the areas in which my Indian parents have been doing land reform/development activities, housebuilding projects, and two of the three places where we care for about 220 kids have been directly hit. (One of the things we have been attempting to do is prevent industrial shrimp farming from destroying the coastal mangrove forests, the chief protection against these events - so far without much success.) I also have friends in northern Sri Lanka which apparently got hit harder than anywhere else. I expect we will find 25 years of work down the tubes.</p>
<p>D and I are supposed to fly out Tuesday night. We will be monitoring the situation carefully - I expect we will be dragooned into relief activities. My sister is a pediatrician, and brother a doc in Cambodia who is flying in on Thursday. Will make for quite the "college break" experience - assuming we go.</p>
<p>Robrym, Thanks for letting us know how you are - I have been thinking of you all morning and wondering how you and Momrath were. It is hard to figure out where things occurred from the news report.</p>
<p>Mini - Good luck with your trip to India. I know you were anxious about getting there and now it sounds like you will have your work cut out for you when you arrive.</p>
<p>Still following carefully. 1,100 already found dead in the district where our projects are. I'm most worried about the kids we've got in the orphanages. What will happen first is supplies of semi-safe water (that's the best we have there these days) will be destroyed entirely. There will be no fuel for cooking rice. There will be malarial mosquitos; if we are lucky, this won't be followed by outbreaks of typhoid and cholera, and then typhus. I expect the students at Gandhigram Rural University, where I was headed and where my second home is, will be called out to assist relief efforts. If we can get there, that's who we'll join. But my strong suspicion is that they will close Madras and Madurai airports to commercial traffic, and we won't get there at all.</p>
<p>I just got off the phone with my sister, who runs the pediatric wing of a public hospital just south of Madras. She has told the two of us in no uncertain terms to COME. My family is safe - my 91 year old father is resting at her house, and my mother (who is 78) was already working on flood relief projects when the wave hit, and is now in Madras helping to coordinate relief efforts.</p>
<p>I have no idea what we will be doing, but having had a relationship with these folks for almost 30 years, I understand an order when I receive one, and we are being met at the plane.</p>
<p>As the pictures and information roll in it is clear that tremendous, sustained effort will be needed in many locations. Safe travels, please take care of yourselves and bring antibiotics with you.</p>
<p>I don't generally watch TV news and didn't get the impact of this until this morning's papers. Good luck to you in your efforts, Mini. And good thoughts for Roby & Momrath.</p>
<p>Godspeed to you and your family Mini. Please know that I'm holding everyone to everyone affected in the light. I am saddened by the fact that the US news isn't covering this more aggressively. </p>
<p>Mini, do you have a fund set up to receive the donations? To whom should we make out the checks?</p>
<p>Good news, and bad news to report. Good news - I received an e-mail from my mother's office and they reported they escaped with only minor damage -- and since one of the orphanages we have is there, the kids at this one at least are safe.</p>
<p>The bad news is that in just two villages/towns 12 kilometers to the south, they already have counted 7,000 dead. The press of course never comes close to these places - this is where poor people live. And the entire fishing village of Cuddalore (which is a major marketing center) is wiped out.</p>
<p>I have just returned from a trip to all this news and I am so happy to hear of your safety robyrm-- I did not realize you were in Indonesia. Has Momrath checked in? </p>
<p>Mini, Good luck on your mission. We know of a great charity, Direct Relief, that will be getting medical supplies over there too. Stay safe!</p>
<p>Direct Relief is a great organization. They are soliciting donations if anyone is interested <a href="http://www.directrelief.org%5B/url%5D">www.directrelief.org</a>. D and I have done volunteer work there and they are an amazing group of people.
Mini take care on your trip.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure Momrath is in Bali. Which has been safe. The new statistics from Sumatra are no surprise (as many as 25,000 dead I heard this morning), but the numbers are probably much higher. The lack of on the ground NGO groups has negatively impacted the speed with which relief services have come to be. There has not been, for example, a Red Cross presence there for ?months as the government had clamped down on the presence of any foreigners-- due to the separatist insurgency. </p>
<p>We are still waiting to hear if anyone we know was affected in any of the "tourist" locations outside Indonesia. Because there had been such signficant travel warnings for Indonesia, I think people had probably chosen Phuket instead of Bali in some cases...</p>
<p>Here is the link to the website of the Phuket international hospital. It has lists of dead individuals, sick and wounded patients, with nationality, ages, and so on. </p>
<p>No familiar names at first pass on the list of those hospitalized.. We had stayed at the Sheraton Lagoon during this week 3 years ago- it is one of the 5 hotels in the area hardest hit. We had kayaked around Phi Phi, hadn't stayed there..I can't help but think of the "pattern" of daily life at these resort areas. In the early morning you see mostly families with the youngest children on the beach, adult couples walking. The teenagers are still in bed. </p>
<p>It is interesting, of course, that the first "face" of the tragedy has been that little Swedish boy...in that probably of the 35000 counted dead thus far, maybe 1000 will turn out to be "European" in extraction...and of those as yet uncounted, probably even a higher percentage will be non-European...</p>