Updated 30/12/2004

The death toll continues to rise past 80,000 and towards the figure of 90,000 that I gave yesterday. Sadly even this figure is likely to be exceeded. One UN official here in Phnom Penh that I talked to mentioned that there may well be 80,000 dead in one Indonesian province alone. There is still no word from the Andaman and Nicobar islands where 40,000 people are still missing. The likely death toll must rise therefore to 120,000.

Many of the wounded have no access to medical supplies and their open wounds are festering and rotting in the harsh asian sun. Where there are such facilities, bodies are being bulldozed into mass graves, there is no longer the luxury of time to try and identify the dead. Where there are no bulldozers, people are growing weak with hunger and reduced to drinking contaminated sea-water. No aid has reached the vast majority of the victims despite the biggest relief mobilisation of its kind ever seen, it's a race against time and for most the result does not bode well. Red Cross officials estimate that double the current number dead may succumb to disease - cholera, dysentry, dengue fever and malaria over the coming days. There are five million people desperate for food and water, strung along the vast stretches of coastlines that bore the brutal brunt of the tsunami.

In Thailand there are some 1,500 Swedes, 200 Finns, 200 Danes and hundreds of Norwegians unnacounted for. This is a disaster of truly international proportions, with South Korea, Japan, France, Germany, South Africa, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Australia, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, Portugal, Israel, Chile, Spain and the United States all reporting their citizens both missing and dead along with the local peoples. The government is sending fleets of refrigerated lorries to contain the corpses in the hope that they can eventually be identified, but this will prove difficult for forensic scientists as many were only wearing bathing costumes and have little or no identification about them. Estimates of the number of dead in Thailand are now 3,000 and will more than likely top 4,000.

In the debris of such elemental destruction, stories of hope, few and far between as they may be, emerge to strengthen the resolve of rescue workers. In Malaysia, a 20 month old baby was found safe and sound floating on a mattress two days after the tidal wave struck. In Thailand, a two year old boy that lost his mother and grandmother was found sitting alone among a pile of debris. The boy was covered in angry welts from mosquito bites, and nobody at the hospital could understand him. Luckily, the boys uncle saw his picture on the hospital's website and flew out immediately to be re-united with him. And in a seperate vein, wildlife experts are astounded to find very little evidence of corpses of wild animals. It seems that they must have somehow sensed the impending destruction and fled to higher ground; how they knew is beyond comprehension, as indeed is this whole disaster.

It's frustrating sitting here so close and yet so far. Relief workers here in Cambodia are being diverted to Thailand on request, and I've volunteered to help out in whatever way I can, even if it is just answering the phone or running errands in their absence. It's not much I know, but at a time like this it feels better to be doing something rather than just being numb at the horror of it all.

yechydda,

Note: donations to the DEC Tsunami earthquake appeal can be made here:

Updated 29/12/2004:

The quake death toll has now exceeded 68,000 and is likely to rise even further with tens of thousands still missing and some regions yet to be contacted. The figure could now rise as high as 90,000 fatalities. The WHO warn that water borne diseases from a lack of clean water could double this amount; diseases such as cholera, dysentry, diahorrea and malaria will take their toll, such water borne destruction which providing ideal breeding grounds for mosquitos.

Many of the dead are the old and the young, parents unable to cling onto their children and watched them swept away. People are being buried in mass graves througout the region as the fear of disease from rotting corpses necessitates prompt action.

In Thailand the death toll now exceeds 1500, feared to rise top 2000, many of them Western tourists lodging in beach front property deliberately constructed close to the sea. The astoundingly beautiful shorelines are now lined with corpses that arrive every hour, swept back from the sea that claimed them just a few days earlier. Islands such as Phi Phi and Ko Lak were particularly badly hit.

In Indonesia, I fear for Bukit Lawang and the orang-utang sanctuary there, its location in North Sumatra close to the epicentre of the quake. Bukit Lawang was devastated by mud-slides and floods just over a year ago when it was practically wiped out with over 300 people losing their lives. I knew people that worked at the sanctuary there, and fear for their lives and the family with whom I stayed. News from Penang is more comforting, for some reason it hasn't appeared to have suffered too badly, the people I know there appear to be safe. I have no way at present of finding out about my friends in Phuket, Thailand, I can only hope that they are safe.

Around the world many countries have mobilised their relief systems, dozens of planes are in the air as I speak, the US has two aircraft carriers steaming towards the region all trying to get precious aid to the victims of this disaster. The UN is coordinating the effort and one can only pray that they reach the devastated areas in time.

At times like these there are always the oddest of images that stick in ones mind, and the image of a mosque in a coastal village in Sumatra, will stay forever. The mosque was the only village that survived the earthquake. On the front of the mosque is a clock. The clock shows the time of 8.27. This was the time when the earthquake struck, and the clock stopped, forever marking the moment.

Updated 28/12/2004: