Indian Archipelago's Residents Beyond Easy Reach and Rescue

[housewolf]

Indian Archipelago's Residents Beyond Easy Reach and Rescue
By HARI KUMAR and AMY WALDMAN, NY Times

Published: December 29, 2004

CAR NICOBAR, India, Dec. 28 - This island is so flat that residents say water did not just wash in from the sea during the tsunami that struck on Sunday morning, but came up through cracks in the earth opened by the quake before it.

The earthquake and the waves it set off reduced the Indian naval base here to rubble, flattening homes, scattering household goods, and fillin gthe air with the stench of death. But it is the toll beyond the base, among the 350,000 people who live on the 36 habitable islands of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, that causes most concern.

The southernmost reaches of this archipelago - 572 islands in all, spanning more than 450 miles between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea - are less than 100 miles from Sumatra, Indonesia, the quake's epicenter. Like Car Nicobar, most islands had little natural defense, sitting barely above sea level.

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All of the 15 villages around this small island sit close to the sea. "Nothing is standing in my village except coconut trees," said Suraj Mandal, 21, a vegetable seller from the village of Malacca. The Andaman and Nicobar islands are home to six aboriginal tribal groups, some of whose numbers have dwindled to a few hundred or less. Their fates are unknown.

more...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/international/worldspecial4/29scene.html?oref=login

[NYC]

1. Very sad.

I can't imagine what the final death toll will be.

Bush has not yet interrupted his vacation of biking, brush clearing, and strolling to comment on this.

[ObamaFan2500]

2. I just don't understand why they were all in the same area..

Were they all on a dig at the same time? How many of them do they need at one time? Most of the ones I know work in Egypt, but i guess these ones are in India.