Dec. 30, 2004
ALAN MCEWEN
The Scotsman

THOUSANDS of people fled for their lives today as fresh tsunami alerts were issued across the Indian Ocean.

Panic gripped the southern coast of India, neighbouring Sri Lanka and Thailand after authorities warned people to flee coastal areas following a series of mild aftershocks.

Officials said tremors in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, near the epicentre of the quake that caused Sunday's tsunami, would "likely" cause high waves and began evacuating residents living within two miles of the coastline. Sirens blared on beaches in Tamil Nadu as people ran away crying: "Waves are coming! Waves are coming!"

Television footage from Nagappattinam, where more than 4000 people died, also showed shocked residents running through the streets.

"We got into a truck and fled," said 40-year-old Gandhimathi. "We took only a few clothes and left behind everything we had."

Police ordered hundreds of vehicles carrying relief supplies and rescue workers not to enter the area.

"We have issued an alert for all the areas which have been hit earlier," an Indian home ministry official said. "It is for a precautionary measure based on some information we have."

Similar warnings were issued for southern Kerala state and the Andaman and Nicobar islands.

Military officials in Sri Lanka urged residents of coastal areas not to panic. But thousands still fled miles inland, although there were no immediate signs of turbulent seas. At a lagoon near Arugam Bay on the island's eastern coast, locals jumped off a naval ship ferrying aid and waded to the beaches as rumours of new giant waves swept the devastated community.

"People were scared. There was talk on the radio of a tsunami and I jumped into the water," said AM Jaufer, the head of a local travel company.

Others climbed on to the roofs of their houses as authorities urged residents to move to higher ground as a precaution.

"There is total confusion here," said Rohan Bandara in the coastal town of Tangalle.

Tsunami sirens in southern Thailand sent people dashing from beaches, but only small waves followed the alarms.

The alerts came as the death toll from the tsunami soared towards the 100,000 mark today amid fears the number of British victims could rise steeply.

Britons responded to pleas from aid agencies by giving £16.5 million to try to ease the suffering of countries battered by the tsunami.

While at least 50 Britons are feared dead, heart-rending details of victims whose family holidays ended in death and disaster continued to emerge.

Sharon Howard, 37, of Hayle, Cornwall, was lying in a Thai hospital coming to terms with the loss of her two sons and fiancé. She was engaged to diver David Page, 44, on Christmas Day. A day later she lost him and her sons Taylor, six, and Mason, eight.

Moulana Mazahir, 45, from Harrow, London, fears he lost 50 of his close relatives when the tsunami destroyed his home town of Hambantota in Sri Lanka.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said the total number of dead could reach 100,000, while the World Health Organisation warned that diseases could double the number killed by the waves.

The British death toll has risen sharply after Thai authorities said 43 Britons were killed when the waves surged through the nation's busy southern tourist resorts.

Embassy officials in Phuket admitted the total could still rise "steeply" in the coming days as the large number of bodies of Westerners are identified. As coastline searches continued throughout the region, thousands more bodies were discovered.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw defended the Government's response to the crisis as the Department for International Development announced £15m in aid.

He also said Prime Minister Tony Blair was right to carry on with his Christmas holiday in Egypt.

Governments worldwide have pledged more than £183.5m to help victims of the disaster, which also left millions homeless in almost 11 countries from south-east Asia to Africa.

Buckingham Palace announced that the Queen would make a "substantial" donation to the relief effort.

People wishing to make donations can follow the instructions contained in the Disaster Emergency Committee advert on this page.

The official death toll this morning was 87,475 - including nearly 48,000 in Indonesia alone.

Entire towns in Indonesia, near the epicentre of the earthquake, were wiped out with huge loss of life. The devastation is centred on Aceh province on Sumatra Island. Authorities there said current figures did not include a full count from Sumatra's west coast, which had not yet been fully surveyed and where more than 10,000 deaths were suspected.

In Thailand, international teams and more than 13,000 nationals were today mounting the country's largest ever rescue and relief operation.

They face a race against time to both hunt for the missing and identify hundreds, possibly thousands, of rapidly decomposing bodies.

Teams from Australia, Japan, Germany and other countries fanned out across still corpse-strewn areas of southern Thailand, where officials said almost 2000 people died in Sunday's disaster. "We have to have hope that we'll find somebody," said Ulf Langemeier, chief of 15 German veterans of earthquake disasters carrying out searches today.

More than half of Thailand's confirmed deaths occurred in Phang Nga province, and police there say as many as 3000 bodies may yet be found among the five-star hotels as well as poor fishing villages.

In Sri Lanka, reports of measles and diarrhoea were beginning to emerge, leading to fears of an epidemic.

But aid agencies taking part in the largest relief effort in history continued to struggle to get food, water and medicine to survivors. US President George Bush said the US, India, Australia and Japan have formed an international coalition to co-ordinate worldwide relief and reconstruction efforts. "We will prevail over this destruction," Mr Bush said.

The United Nations has launched its own appeal for £95m. UN emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland said it could take days to reach survivors and confirmed that some areas had yet to be reached.

He said: "It will take maybe 48 to 72 hours more to able to respond to the tens of thousands of people who would like to have assistance today, or yesterday."

The British ambassador in Thailand, David Fall, said it was not yet possible to say how many Britons had died, but that hundreds may still be missing.

Christmas is the peak season for British visits to Thailand, with as many as 750,000 in the country, many of whom usually stay at resorts hit by the tsunami, such as Phuket.

Mr Fall said: "We are talking, at the least, in the 20s of deaths, injured in the hundreds - we know that because people have been coming through hospitals. Missing? It is very difficult to say - scores, though it may reach into the hundreds."

The disaster is stretching relief groups to the limit. Organisations used to dealing with one or two crises at a time now have a dozen or more disaster zones.

If diseases such as cholera and dengue fever break out, they could kill as many more, World Health Organisation officials have warned.

Paramedics in southern India were vaccinating thousands of survivors against cholera, typhoid, hepatitis A and dysentery, and authorities sprayed bleaching powder on beaches where bodies have been recovered.

Sri Lanka reported 24,297 dead and India more than 13,000 deaths. A total of more than 300 were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya.

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