Tsunami, a year later

While I was visiting my folks saw two shows, one specifically about the tsunami, the other one of the Discovery Channel "Here's what's going to kill you next!" shows. The second had good points, including a team scouting the sea floor around the fault area and finding some really amazing evidence of how strong the quake was and precisely how it generated the tsunami.

The first had a lot of video I hadn't seen before, and some of it was scary as hell. Most of the early stuff I saw either was from areas where the wave height wasn't that great, or you just couldn't tell because of angle, obstacles to view, etc. Some of this showed the proverbial 'wall of water' slamming in. One was from a beach where when the water pulled out, a lot of people went to the beach to see; you can hear the two people shooting it talking, finally one says 'tsunami', and finally someone realizes what's about to happen when they see the wave building in the distance and started yelling, too late. One guy who must not have believed what he was seeing was still standing on the beach when it hit him.

One from Banda Aceh showed a city street when the water started up. The first like a spill moving up, then deeper with timbers and cars and bicycles and people rushing along at(I'd guess) a good 20 mph. A couple of guys who'd been caught actually jumping along the mass of wreckage until they were able to jump onto some stuff trapped against a building and made it to safety.

I think the worst was someone shooting from the second or third story of a hotel; a half-dozen women were in the lee of a small building trying to hold on. The photographer zoomed in on one for a few moments; she was screaming and trying to hold on to another woman, then the photographer zoomed back out, and a few seconds later those two were swept away.

And then the aftermath. Women screaming and crying over the bodies of their children, men and women and children carrying bodies, children looking around for families they'll never see again. A guy sitting beside his bicycle. Apparently he'd been somewhere else when it hit and hurried home. You didn't really need the translation; "My family is gone. I'm the only one left. Why has God abandoned me?" The despair in that voice was enough to give you nightmares all by itself.

A quarter of a million dead. Something like 50,000 missing. People saying they'll not believe their family is dead until they see the bodies, which means never.

A few years ago an F5 tornado passed nearby, thanks to modern forecasting and chasers only a few died in a storm with winds of 319mph(I drove through an area that took the full brunt about two weeks later; pictures cannot do justice to the sight). The Gulf coast states take hurricanes every year, some of which can be terrible. Blizzards can still, forecasting or no, slam you with little warning. Rogue waves on the ocean can destroy ships. Earthquakes, almost always with no warning. Volcanos can sit rumbling and making people nervous for months and do nothing else, or can go from the first quakes to full eruption in days and kill thousands. Remember Nevado del Ruiz in Columbia? Actually not much of an eruption, but the mudflows it generated killed tens of thousands.

I can't remember who, but when I was little I heard or read someone saying about any body of water "If you don't respect it, it can kill you without a moments notice, and the water won't care". That pretty much goes for much of the planet and many of the creatures on it. Spiders and snakes and sharks and blue-ringed octopi and lions and hyenas and buffalo and fish and cattle and pigs and dogs and so on. But normally- make that 'usually'- they don't whack people in such numbers.

I still remember one picture from the days after the wave. One baby's hand sticking out of some rubble. I pretty much summed it up.

Note: Michelle Malkin has this link to Storm Track, which links to some of the videos.