tsunami angst

Two days ago, a massive tsunami was triggered by a 9.0 earthquake beneath the India Ocean. It's been devastating to every country it touched, and I just can't stop thinking about it. With each uptick in the death count, I boggle anew. We're at 77k now, but I think it'll be over 100k before too long. I have been reading eyewitness accounts from India on the BBC website. It's strange to be able to picture it all so clearly in my mind's eye. The news reports all refer to Chennai by its old British name, Madras, but it's all the same thing. Reading about the closure of the East Coast Road (the one so blessedly smooth) and the beaches in Pondicherry (a gorgeous little formerly-French town) gives me the chills. It doesn't seem fair that a people who struggle so mightily with so much have to deal with this too. I wish I was there, and that I could help.

Amazon's got a big Red Cross donation notice front and center of the home page, but I expect that'll only be featured so prominently for a few days so I'm going to link to the donation detail page instead. I think the # and $ donations shown might be an all-time total for Red Cross through Amazon, rather than just for this event; they did a similar thing for 9/11.

I can't tear myself away from tsunami news, but I can't bear the awful coverage from the major news outlets. Thus, I'm sharing alternative sources.

There are stunning before & after satellite images of Sri Lanka and Indonesia are online at Digital Globe. There's also a blog of SMS reports from the free media in Sri Lanka at ChiensSansFrontiers. There's a (warning: HUGE) file of satellite & infrared images of India on the gov't website as well. The best source for comprehensive info at the moment seems to be Wikipedia.