"The quake Sunday, the biggest in 40 years at 9.0 on the Richter scale, ruptured the Indian Ocean seabed off Indonesia's Sumatra island, sending huge waves thousands of kilometres (miles) to kill and destroy in countries around southern and southeast Asia and even in Africa."
~ Asian disaster toll surges past 55,000 as relief operations stall from Asia Pacific Yahoo News – Banda Aceh, Indonesia (AFP) Wednesday Dec29,2004. |
 These fatal tidal waves struck a vast area of southern and southeast Asia in the morning of 26th December 2004, a day after Christmas. The catastrophe has caused a large number of casualties, made people homeless, children become orphans and a lot of people lose their loved ones. It has devastated the property and a lot of people are suffering from the damage, the poor sanitary environment and the grief.
Read the news headlines and their first paragraphs below to find out what happened at that time, how the
tsunamis
occurred and why heavy casualties resulted as well as the emergency relief operating now from all over the world. For details, click on the headlines. You will also find satellite imagery of the devastated areas, an animation explaining the formation of tsunamis and a video clip of a tsunami survivor.
While we are all celebrating the coming of the New Year and wishing our dreams to come true, let's not forget far away in southern and southeast Asia there are a large number of people waiting for our help and comfort. Learn the vocabulary and finish the exercise. Give your consolation here and help by donation. Furthermore, HKedCity is launching an appeal to raise money for the victims of the disaster. Donate your pocket money of a week to the needy. For details, click here (in Chinese only).
| Compiled by: |
HKedCity Content Team |
Updated on 4 January 2005
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