December 31, 2004

A woman gives a description of being sucked into the waves and mud in Sri Lanka In the comments section of this blog, a woman named Dalian recounts losing her husband (and then finding him)in this emotional comment to a blog.
posted by Starc 19 years ago
  • I just read this one over at Metafilter. There will be some incredibly harrowing accounts coming in. Glad to hear they found each other again! Not sure where, on the page, my link will end up, but look for fandango_matt's 'email from a friend's friend'. Scary stuff.
  • Just goes to show.
  • Good gracious. Amazing to hear about it from such a personal individual perspective.
  • [off-topic] If you want to link to a particular post on these filters, copy the link embedded in the timestamp. [/ot]
  • Well monkeys, I'm not sure what it's worth without a link, but my neice has been front-page and local news material over the last 48 hours. She was snorkelling in Thailand when the tsunami swept in, and was washed out to sea on the wave's backwash. Thai fisherman plucked her out of the water, some hours later.The village she was staying in was destroyed, and some of the members of her dive party perished on the rocks. She survived by floating face down in the ocean, using her snorkel, and waiting to be rescued.
  • Preliminary reports coming out of Indonesia are offering seemingly hyperbolic accounts of at least 400,000 dead. The trouble has been the erasure of islands, whole islands, and in many cases, entire ethnic grooup.s
  • That's amazing, P-Boy. She was incredibly lucky. You and your family must be so relieved right now!
  • everyone is getting into the relief effort, even recovering anorexics.
  • PareidoliaticBoy, that's astonishing and terrifying (as is Starc's link, and fandango-matt's post that Darshon linked to). So glad that your niece made it. Starc, your point about entire cultures vanishing is a good one. I remember my social anthropology supervisor at university had spent years studying a tiny, unique tribe on an island in the Indian Ocean - I've been trying to remember its name for days now - but it's almost certain that a large number of them will be dead now. Many of the islands in the Andamans and elsewhere were home to similarly unique, often largely untouched cultures. Wikipedia says that no single tribe has been entirely destroyed, but undoubtedly the policies of non-interference can no longer be maintained if they are to survive in the long-term. The larger tribes , especially, will no doubt endure, but their highly individual characteristics will surely be altered forever.
  • Such loss.
  • The policy of non-interference was actually on its way out recently. The Indian government, as well as the Indonesian government, were beginning to relay supplies to them, though without human contact. I was told by a friend in New Delhi that if people even came close to the islands before, they got pierced with poison arrows. Shock.
  • I know this is newsfilter, but this picture just tore me up. I just cannot imagine the kind of agony so many of the survivors are having to deal with now. Not to speak of what the rescuers/aid people are having to see and experience. The guy in that photo looks like he's carrying a pretty heavy heart. This makes me so sad.
  • per my earlier comment, tribespeople shoot at helicopter with bow and arrow.