Death toll approaching 120,000!!!

Been away from the forum for the last couple of days. Just too shaken by what happened over the weekend.

We have a guy in the office who lost 5 members of his family (mother, father, sister, brother-in-law, and 3 year old niece) in Aceh the north part of Sumatra. He was finally able to fly there yesterday and is coming back today. Their family home does not exist anymore - just disappeared. This was a proper brick and mortar affair not a palm leaf or straw shack. First the earthquake levelled evrything then the Tsunami washed away the rubble. No home, no bodies, no nothing. It’s just unbelievable.

A lady security guard in our apartment building is beside herself with grief and worry. Her husband is a police officer in the same Aceh province. No news of him since the tragedy. He too is presumed dead.

My wife and I have cancelled our New Year celebration. We even passed a note in our building requesting other tenants to consider doing the same and donate the proceeds of their New Year celebration budgets to help the victims instead. The response has been overwhelming. We explained to our 7 year old to rally her friends together and start a house to house campaign to gather whatever they can for the victims. We will be handing over our collections to the local Red Cross office.

There are about 4 victims for each member that we have on MTDN and this figure is expected to go up. There are coastal towns in India and Indonesia where between 20-25% of the local population has disappeared. 7.5% of Sri Lanka’s population has been rendered homeless. About 33% of the victims are expected to be children.

I just wanted to write a note to my extended family here to share this feeling of utter grief and helplessness with all of you.

Also, to request you to take some time and resources out to help all those suffering out there. I am sure there are local, regional or national avenues available in your respective countries to make donations for this disaster. I have researched a few useful international links and copied them below.

http://www.careinternational.org

http://www.careinternational.org.uk/newsroom/media_release.php?id=392

http://www.ifrc.org/helpnow/donate/donate_response.asp

http://www.msf.org/countries/page.cfm?articleid=C1D6EFBE-2016-4103-91407901A067D59D

http://www.savethechildren.org/radio_asia_earthquake.asp?StationPub=hp_radio_asia_earthq&ArticleID=&NewsID=

http://www.cafod.org.uk/get_involved/give_money/to_asia_disaster_appeal

http://www.oxfam.org/eng/pr271204_tsunami.htm

http://www.supportunicef.org/site/pp.asp?c=iuI1LdP0G&b=276341

http://www.worldvision.org.uk/waystodonate/makeadonation/default.asp?AppealRef=EDAQ

If any of you would like to copy or post this message (or parts of it) on other forums please feel free. I just want to get this message across to as many people out there as possible.

These are the latest figures of confirmed victims from BBC :

Sri Lanka: 18,706 dead

Indonesia: 27,174 dead

India: 4,371 dead

Thailand: 1,516 dead

Maldives: 52 dead

Malaysia: 44 dead

Burma: 30 dead

Bangladesh: 2 dead

Somalia: 100 dead

Kenya: 1 dead

Seychelles: 3 dead

Tanzania: 10 dead