25 June, 2005, 23:09 GMT 00:09 UK

Sri Lanka's slow tsunami response

By Dumeetha Luthra
BBC News, southern Sri Lanka





Sri Lanka's government has been accused of incompetence and overwhelming bureaucracy in dealing with the post-tsunami reconstruction effort.

Despite receiving pledges of more than $3bn, charities complain of a lack of co-ordination and no clear plan.

More than 30,000 people died in the tsunami and half a million were made homeless in Sri Lanka.

The overwhelming need is for shelter, but so far across the country only around half of the temporary homes are up and only a few thousand of the 90,000 permanent homes needed have even begun construction.

'Huge delays'

Six months ago, the only way to walk along the coastline in the southern town of Galle was to walk on the rubble of people's fallen homes.

They [the government] are very slow and I guess a little incompetent

Malindi Langasinghe
Aid information centre, Hikkaduwa

Controversial aid deal
Call to action

Now that's been removed. The debris has been cleared away and in its place has sprung up a chaotic mixture of wooden shacks and tents.

Slowly the tents are going, but a lot of the transitional shelters that are replacing them are nothing more than huts.

"Six months on people definitely should have been moved out of tents. There is no reason why they should be living in tents," says Malindi Langasinghe from the aid information centre in Hikkaduwa.

He says the ban on rebuilding within 100 metres of the sea is causing huge delays.

It was instigated to provide a buffer zone, but the government now has the task to find suitable alternative land for new homes.

"It's just that government has not been able to identify the land. They say that they have problems, that there isn't any land. But I don't think that's the reason, I think that they're very slow and I guess a little incompetent."

'Chicken farm'


In the Patharajagama camp, the transitional shelters are an example of how a knee-jerk and unplanned response to relief has left more than 300 people living in dire conditions.




It's overcrowded, with too many huts in too small a space. No 72 Patharajagama Camp is Buddheka de Silva's home.

It's a sweltering tin box. The walls and the roof of its one room, the size of a garden shed, are made from corrugated metal sheets.

Mr de Silva, who lives here with his wife and two young children, thinks he'll be here for at least another year.

There's no electricity. It's hot, airless and cramped.

"I tell you it's very hot inside," he says. "It's like living in a chicken farm."

Some charities can't understand how this camp was allowed to be built - they refer to the shacks despairingly as the microwaves.

That's the irony of the relief effort.

There's plenty of cash, the projects have been found, but government bureaucracy has left many charities still waiting for approval and the money unspent.


Red tape

People are tired of waiting and are accepting help, even if the result is sub-standard.

Jagath Chandra's brother has just had a house built with help from a private organisation.


Things are improving here - it is taking time

Jake Zarins
Project Galle 2005

The family concede the house isn't legal, but say they don't have many alternatives.

As well as the more traditional charities, the rebuilding process here has been characterised by small independent organisations such as Project Galle 2005.

They've just finished some permanent homes in the village of Katagoda.

The advantage is they can sidestep the red tape that has paralysed the larger agencies.

Jake Zarins, one of the co-ordinators, says: "Things are improving here.





"It is taking time and there are a variety of factors causing that - some of them governmental, some of them just the lack of co-ordination between the groups, because there are a lot of groups working here.

"Many are doing similar things. The fact of the matter is, that as a charitable trust, we don't have the same constraints as the NGOs [non-governmental organisations].

"We can actually just identify a problem and go on to solve it."

'Small consolation'

Galle's district co-ordinator for the post-tsunami reconstruction agency, the Task Force for Rebuilding the Nation, is Ananda Amaratunga.

He told me construction has started for about 200 houses, although he admitted, 6,000 are needed.

He defends the government's progress.

"This is the initial stages. When you take the initial stages, it takes time - then only it gathers momentum."

It's small consolation for the families facing another rainy night without a proper home.

There's no doubt Sri Lanka faces a huge task - but it has the money to do it.

If it doesn't speed up the process, charities say Sri Lanka's coastline could become a coastal slum.

And Sri Lanka's survivors will remain victims.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4618683.stm

Saturday, 25 June, 2005, 02:48 GMT 03:48 UK

Tsunami aid 'went to the richest'




Six months after the Asian tsunami, a leading international charity says the poorest victims have benefited the least from the massive relief effort.
A survey by Oxfam found that aid had tended to go to businesses and landowners, exacerbating the divide between rich and poor.

The poor were likely to spend much longer in refugee camps where it is harder to find work or rebuild lives.

Oxfam has called for aid to go to the poorest and most marginalised.

They must not be left out of reconstruction efforts, the charity said.

.....................

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4621365.stm

Sunday, 26 June, 2005, 11:27 GMT 12:27 UK

Tsunami remembered six months on

People around the Indian Ocean have been marking six months since the earthquake and deadly tsunami that devastated a string of countries.
In Indonesia, which was worst hit, UN and World Bank officials joined local leaders and civilians for a ceremony.

About $13bn (£7bn) was pledged in aid from around the world, although the pace of rebuilding has been slow and thousands of people remain homeless.

The tsunami hit in December, killing at least 200,000 people in 13 countries.

The United Nations has said that reconstruction work across the whole affected region will take up to five years, and could cost $9bn.

Donors thanked

At a ceremony in the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh on Saturday, Bo Apslund, co-ordinating........................


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4623345.stm

Monday, 27 June, 2005, 03:39 GMT 04:39 UK

Malaysian tsunami funds queried
By Jonathan Kent
BBC News, Kuala Lumpur





Malaysia's anti-corruption agency has announced it is looking into nine alleged cases of misuse of tsunami relief funds.
The country's deputy prime minister has promised that the government will not interfere in the investigation.

The move follows a BBC report which found that many of those affected by the disaster were claiming not to have received proper help.

Malaysia escaped the worst of the 2004 disaster, reporting only 68 deaths.

Fewer than ten thousand people are thought to have suffered damage to property.

Money 'misappropriated'

In the wake of the tsunami, Malaysians raised millions of dollars which were given to the government to help victims.

But six months on, complaints that the aid has not got through are widespread.

A BBC investigation uncovered repeated allegations that money was being kept by middle-men entrusted to distribute it.

The government responded to the report by saying that all the money it had collected had been handed out to those affected.

It has now emerged that the Penang state branch of the country's anti-corruption agency has received a number of complaints that funds had been misappropriated.

Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister, Najib Razak, said the probe would be extended to other states if there was evidence of wrongdoing.

Along with Penang, the neighbouring state of Kedah bore the brunt of the destruction.

However, Malaysia was largely protected from the main force of the tsunami by the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

The west coast peninsular of Malaysia is thought to have been hit by a secondary wave travelling more slowly and with less force than those that struck nearby Thailand.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4625341.stm

Tsunami ceremony honors victims

Donors, locals promise recovery

By TINI TRAN
Associated Press
6/26/2005


Associated Press
An Acehnese dancer performs during ceremonies Saturday marking the six-month anniversary since the tsunami struck.


ULEE LHEU, Indonesia - Gathering in the shadow of a tsunami-battered mosque, local leaders and international donors took stock Saturday of the disaster that wiped out vast stretches of Indonesia's Aceh province, saying rebuilding efforts were picking up after months of delays.
The ceremony marking six months since the Dec. 26 disaster was also a time to remember the dead, with prayers from the Quran and memories of a young tsunami survivor, Nada Lutfiah, who lost her parents in the calamity.

The fourth-grader had received a letter from a third-grader in Michigan expressing hope that her family had survived. But she wrote back with the awful truth.

"Unfortunately, my family - father, mother, brother and sister - are gone," Lutfiah said, reading from her letter. "Now, I'm alone."

Amid the grief, efforts to rebuild Aceh have been plagued by political squabbling, donors' concerns about corruption, challenges in implementing a new finance law and government delays in releasing guidelines for rebuilding.

But officials said Saturday the situation was improving.

"Now it's time to look forward," said Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, director of the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency for Aceh and Nias. "Finally, things are happening on the ground."

He said $2.8 billion has been disbursed by foreign donors and $1.9 billion in projects have been approved by his agency.

Officials from the World Bank, the United States, Australia and Japan, among others, noted the scattered signs of progress in Aceh: dozens of new homes going up in destroyed villages and a pier being rebuilt in one town.

"We're at a stage now (that) within the next month or so we'll really begin to see recovery and reconstruction changes physically in Aceh," said Bo Asplund, the top U.N. official in Indonesia.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which pulled out of the province in March in a dispute with the government, used the occasion to say it was returning.

However, the rosy picture painted by officials has been lost on the few residents who have returned to the coastal area of Ulee Lheu. Once it was home to several thriving middle-class neighborhoods. Six months after the disaster, it's still little more than piles of dirt, bricks and trash.

Ulee Lheu's Baiturrahim mosque, where the officials gathered Saturday, is almost the only standing structure along this coast on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh. Nothing has been rebuilt for miles except a prayer hall. There is a smattering of tents.

The mammoth quake and tsunami killed more than 178,000 people in 11 countries, and about 50,000 more remain missing. The focus has shifted from emergency relief to longer-term recovery. Donors and aid agencies are seeking to rebuild basic infrastructure and renew broken lives.

Indonesia was the hardest hit of all the countries, with more than 131,000 dead and half a million left homeless. About 250,000 Acehnese survivors remain in tents awaiting promised housing and other services.


http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20050626/1073190.asp

Six Months After Tsunami, Rebuilding Just Beginning

http://www.wkkj.com/script/headline_newsmanager.php?id=415938&pagecontent=nationalnews&feed_id=59



[image]http://diendan.vnthuquan.net/upfiles/1124/B223A9818BA447EF9920B2BEAF4CC204.JPG[/image]

Attached Image(s)

Asian Tsunami Survivors Look Back at 6 Months of Suffering
By VOA News
26 June 2005




Nations around the world are remembering the catastrophic tsunami that devastated a string of Indian Ocean countries six months ago Sunday.

The event was touched off December 26 by an enormous underwater earthquake off the coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island. The quake triggered massive waves that pounded coastlines in scores of countries, including Thailand, Sri Lanka and India and as far away as Somalia.

The disaster claimed more than 175,000 lives and left nearly 2 million people homeless.

Indonesia, which suffered the worst damage and heaviest casualties, held a ceremony Saturday to mark the half year since the earthquake and tsunami.

Elsewhere, survivors are recalling their stories and mourning those who lost their lives in the event.

The United Nations says the next six months will focus on reconstruction in affected countries - including rebuilding thousands of homes, buildings and infrastructure. Aid efforts will also look to putting thousands of people back to work.

U.N. estimates say reconstruction will take five to 10 years.

So far, the international community has pledged about $7 billion for reconstruction efforts.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-06-26-voa10.cfm

Asian Tsunami Reconstruction Moves Forward, Challenges Remain
By Heda Bayron
Hong Kong
20 June 2005

Bayron report - Download 702k
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Thailand Tsunami Recovery Gallery

Six months after the Asian tsunami - the biggest humanitarian disaster in decades - millions of survivors still face the challenge of rebuilding their homes and finding jobs. International aid agencies, governments and survivors themselves are struggling to keep the reconstruction momentum going.




For many of the survivors of the December 26 tsunami, daily life remains an uphill battle.

In Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Indonesia's Aceh province, thousands of families still live in tents and camps.

Many complain that they have gotten little official help to rebuild their homes and businesses. Governments and aid agencies ask for patience, saying that reconstruction must be well planned, so that new communities can thrive in the years to come, and to avoid wasting money.

Fishermen in Thailand repair their boats in time for the fishing season. They say they received little government help to regain their livelihood.




The tsunami, triggered by a massive earthquake off the northern tip of Indonesia, swept across the Indian Ocean, sweeping away lives and communities in 12 countries - from Indonesia to Somalia on the east coast of Africa. Governments say more than 170,000 people died or disappeared, although many aid agencies and survivors say the toll may be close to 300,000. The victims came from all over the world - at least 2,000 tourists from Europe and North America were lost from the region's beaches - making this a global disaster.

Quick action by charity groups and governments, aided by regional military forces, including the U.S. Navy, to rush in emergency food and medical care, meant that those who survived the waves found food and shelter within days.




But the process of actually replacing what was lost is slower, although survivors and aid workers say progress is being made. In Indonesia's Aceh province, the hardest-hit area, international aid has helped build temporary houses, schools and infrastructure.

Gianfranco Rotigliano, the United Nations Children's Fund representative for Indonesia, says that while far more must be done, much has been achieved.

"If we consider where we are, what was the situation before the tsunami and the programs that this country had in the past, what has been done has been remarkable to me," he says.

Before the tsunami, most of Aceh had been off limits to foreign aid groups because of a long-running separatist insurgency. That meant aid agencies were starting from scratch once they were allowed in after the tsunami.

One of the biggest achievements since then, he says, was that emergency workers prevented more deaths from hunger or disease. That meant they could quickly focus on meeting the region's other needs.

UNICEF has helped build 200 temporary earthquake-safe primary school buildings in time for the new school year starting in July. Over the next three years, UNICEF pledges to spend $90 million to repair or rebuild 500 permanent schools.

For thousands of survivors all over the region, regaining their livelihoods is the biggest problem, particularly for fishermen who lost their boats in the waves.

In the Thai village of Khao Phi Lai, a group of fishermen in early June excitedly inspected 200 new boats donated by United Arab Emirates.

This 70-year-old Thai fisherman says he couldn't imagine what he would do without a boat. He says earning a living has been hard for him especially because of his old age.


In Hambantota district in the badly hit Sri Lankan town of Galle, a town official, M.A. Piyasena, says rebuilding efforts are just beginning. Five thousand houses are being built with international help.

"By building houses and a school, people will move there," he says. "With new roads, buses will come, that will be the start of a new city.

But some townspeople hesitate to move into the new houses, saying they sit too close to the sea. Big waves, they say, cannot reach the tents in the camps.

In some areas, roads had to be rebuilt so that trucks could bring in construction materials. In others, whole towns must be built from the ground up, and governments are moving cautiously. Officials say they want to draft plans to create the schools, roads and water systems that will allow communities to thrive long into the future.

Mr. Rotigliano of UNICEF says residents must have a say in reconstruction if it is to succeed.

"The fact that communities have a voice is I think very important," he said. "They find out that they can decide on their own life, decide where they want the school, how big it would be, where they want the health center. This brings them back to normal civil society life, if I can say so."

..............

http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-06-20-voa39.cfm

The mosque was the only building left standing in Lampuuk village after December’s earthquake and tsunami hit Indonesia's Aceh province. A once thriving community was reduced to rubble by the force of the waves.



About 250 people have returned here so far. Some are still living in tents. Others have built themselves shacks using wood salvaged from the wreckage



Many survivors say they prefer to continue living in government-built barracks in nearby Lam Lhom village for the time being, until the weather improves or permanent houses are built.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/asia_pac_aceh_village_six_months_on/html/1.stm

People in the work teams, wearing their matching T-shirts, earn about $3 a day clearing rubble and debris from the land.



Zulkifli buys scrap metal from local people who have collected it from the debris, and sells it on to dealers coming from Medan, a 12-hour drive away.



Sweet Acehnese coffee sells for less than 10 cents a glass. Traditional cakes are on sale too, made each evening by women in Lampuuk.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/asia_pac_aceh_village_six_months_on/html/4.stm

They estimate the land will not be suitable for rice-growing for at least another six months, possibly 12.



All the schools in Lampuuk were destroyed, so the children now go to one in a nearby village. They are taken each day in a minibus donated by a former Lampuuk resident now living in Italy.




This travelling salesman from West Sumatra has turned up hoping to sell make-up, moisturisers, perfume and watches.


Words and pictures by the BBC's Becky Lipscombe.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/asia_pac_aceh_village_six_months_on/html/7.stm

Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System Taking Shape

By Ron Corben, Bangkok
29 June 2005

Corben report - Download 629k
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A Thai official is silhouetted by a map showing an earthquake site during the demonstration of the quake system at the disaster warning center on the outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand

Countries around the Indian Ocean are setting up tsunami warning systems to try to avoid a repeat of the massive loss of life last December 26. The United Nations is coordinating efforts to establish a regional network over the next year.

Loudspeakers and shrieks of horror were often the only warnings people had last December when the tsunami engulfed communities and lives along the shores of the Indian Ocean.

A magnitude nine earthquake off Indonesia's Aceh Province triggered the massive waves, which took just 30 minutes to make landfall in Aceh. Two hours later, it had raced across the Indian Ocean to devastate communities in Sri Lanka.

In all, more than 200,000 people died or disappeared in the tsunami, across 12 countries.

Almost immediately, coastal residents along the Indian Ocean questioned why they had not received adequate warning. In Thailand, the chief of the bureau of meteorology was fired and the government quickly joined regional commitments to establish a tsunami warning system.

UNESCO officials recently discussed details of such a system in Paris, with representatives of all the Indian Ocean nations.

Salvano Briceno, who heads up the United Nations disaster reduction unit, says "It has been agreed so far that it would not be a single center but rather a network of centers - given the complexity of early warning systems."

Officials hope the network will include centers in all 27 Indian Ocean countries.

Mr. Briceno says good progress has already been made on the technical infrastructure for early detection of tsunamis, but he says there is more to the job. "Early warning systems cannot just stop at the technical part… but rather they should also help in mobilizing the populations and in triggering all the disaster management capacities in each country," he says.

Thailand is working hard to do its part.

In May, the Thai government opened a $2.5 million national disaster warning center north of Bangkok, with links to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, Japan's Meteorological Agency and the U.S. Geological Survey.

It is one of several such centers in the region acting together as an interim Indian Ocean network, until the planned one is in place.

Within minutes of an alert from Hawaii's facility, officials in Thailand can warn the public through messages to mobile phones, telephones, faxes, and the news media.

The center is also linked directly to sirens on Phuket Island, which was badly hit in December. There police and navy personnel stand ready to evacuate residents and tourists.

Samith Dharmasaroja, a meteorologist and a government adviser, says the Thai center hopes to sharpen its capabilities. "We are satisfied with our performance right now but we have to improve our center. We have to upgrade our center to become a regional warning center - this is our goal in the future. Right now we can give an early warning 20 minutes after the tsunami occurs, but we will improve our warning to less than 10 minutes, so people have enough time to escape," he says.

The Thai government says upgrading the national disaster center will take six months to a year.

The United Nations says it aims to have all the national warning systems operating as a network by July 2006 at cost of up to $50 million.

But UNESCO's regional representative in Jakarta, Stephen Hill, says that is a bit optimistic. "This is a longer-term project - there are some estimates a basic system may be in place by perhaps the middle of next year, but it is really going to take a bit longer to really put into place and train the people beyond that," he says.

There also has been some division among governments over which country should host the main warning center and how it should be set up. That debate has slowed the project.

Indonesia was the country hardest hit by the tsunami. More than 160,000 people were lost there - most of them in Aceh Province.

Mr. Hill says an effective warning system will go a long way toward easing the public's concerns. "In Aceh, people need to be prepared or feel that they're prepared, to give them confidence. I mean, people are really scared and you can see this - they're really afraid and so it's very easy to generate panic from almost nothing," he says.

Indonesia, he says, remains vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis because it sits near major fault lines in both the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Those fault lines ensure that it is not a question of "if" another earthquake or tsunami will strike the region - only a matter of "when".

The warning systems now being developed will provide a vital grid of communication that was absent when the tsunami struck six months ago.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-06-29-voa8.cfm

Tsunami warning system ready by July 2006: UNESCO Thu Jun 30,11:29 AM ET



PARIS (AFP) - A detection system to warn of tsunamis like the one that devastated the coasts of south Asia last December will be operational by July 2006, the United Nations science and culture organisation ( UNESCO) said.

.......

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050630/sc_afp/asiatsunamiunesco_050630152925

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton (R), a Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary General for Tsunami Recovery, speaks with Jan Egeland, Under Secretary General for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, before Clinton's address to a meeting of the United Nations Economic and Social Council at the U.N. headquarters in New York July 14, 2005. The meeting assessed some of the lessons learned from the relief effort following last December's devastating earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean. (Mike Segar/Reuters)

Tsunami areas must 'build back better' -Clinton

By Irwin Arieff
Thu Jul 14, 7:24 PM ET



UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The unprecedented outpouring of aid for the Indian Ocean tsunami must be used to "build back better" and not simply restore what was there before, former U.S. President Bill Clinton said on Thursday.

Nearly seven months after the disaster, the international community was entering the most challenging phase of the relief effort, with many survivors still living in difficult circumstances and increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of help, said Clinton, a U.N. special envoy for tsunami recovery,

"We have at least 230,000 reminders from December 26th as to why we need to make sure this recovery process accomplishes more than just restoring what was there before," Clinton told a U.N. conference seeking to draw lessons from the relief effort to date.

"Can we honestly say that we are on track to building back better?" he asked.

More than 240,000 people were killed in last December's earthquake and tsunami, with another 50,000 still missing and presumed dead, according to the latest U.N. figures.

The damage has been estimated at $94 billion, and a stunning 158 million people were driven from their homes or otherwise affected by the disaster, Belgian Ambassador Johan Verbeke said as he opened the session.

To keep the recovery on track, affected governments, international agencies and private relief groups had to quickly resolve any remaining policy disagreements, agree on programs and closely coordinate their efforts, Clinton said.

FRUSTRATING TIMES AHEAD

"It will be a complex and frustrating time. There is impatience already, and there is exhaustion. Recovery in each country will need a customized response and will move at different speeds," he said.

Clinton also urged governments to assess risks from natural disasters before they occur and take preventive measures.

In the tsunami-hit areas, it was "clear the human toll would have been lower if there had been adequate early warning and (if) other prevention strategies had been in place," he said.

Ann Veneman, head of the U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF, said the rapid initial global response had helped avert widespread death in the period following the tsunami, when health and sanitary systems broke down.

"The bottom line is that children did not die from preventable diseases linked to the crisis, and nearly all children were back in school within two months of the tsunami," she said.

To "build back better," her agency was now helping improve health care and water facilities and build 325 new schools that would be better equipped than the ones destroyed by the tsunami, she said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050714/ts_nm/quake_un_dc_2Xin mời: Bill Clinton

Eerie Underwater Recording of Deadly Indonesian Earthquake

Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Senior Writer
LiveScience.com
Fri Jul 22, 2:45 PM ET

Sound from last December's huge tsunami-causing earthquake was picked up by underwater microphones designed to listen for nuclear explosions.

Scientists this week released an audio file of the frighteningly long-lasting cracks and splits along the Sumatra-Andaman Fault in the Indian Ocean.

The spine-tingling hiss and rumble is an eerie reminder of the devastation and death that is still being tallied in the largest natural disaster in modern times.

At least 200,000 people are thought to have died as a result of the magnitude 9.3 earthquake, the tsunami, and the lack of food, drinkable water and medical supplies that followed.


The audio recording of the quake starts out silent. A low hiss begins and the intensity builds gradually to a rumbling crescendo. Then it tails off but, frighteningly, builds again in waves as Earth continues to tremble.


The audio file [here] is sped up 10 times to make it easier to hear. As it was recorded, the sound was at the lower threshold of human hearing, but it could have been noted by someone paying attention.


"If you were diving even hundreds of miles away you could hear this," said study leader Maya Tolstoy of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "You would hear it as sort of a 'boom.'"


Future help


An analysis of the recording suggest a new way to monitor earthquakes in near real-time, providing critical information about an earthquake's intensity and potential hazard that could supplement seismograph data, which typically requires hours and even days to properly analyze.


"We were able to constrain some details such as the speed and duration of the rupture more accurately than traditional seismic methods," Tolstoy said. "Moreover, we found the earthquake happened in two distinct phases, with faster rupture to the south and slower to the north, almost as if there were two back-to-back events."


Tolstoy told LiveScience that the recorded sounds raced from the rupture more quickly than the tsunami wave. The entire quake's sounds took about 45 minutes to reach the hydrophone. Were a system set up to use such data, analysis might be done in about 15 minutes, Tolstoy said.


The tsunami took hours to reach some locations.


An analysis of the data is detailed in the July/August edition of the journal Seismological Research Letters.


Sound travels


It is not surprising the sounds were picked up.


An earthquake releases energy of varying types. Its seismic waves -- those that shake the ground -- are technically just a variation on sound waves. And sound travels well in water. Whales can hear each other call from more than 1,000 miles away.


Tolstoy said people at sea have heard the rumblings of distant volcanoes when the sound hits the hull of a ship.


And this was no small earthquake. It ruptured the planet along 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) of fault. Scientists estimate the Indian plate slipped 33-50 feet (10 to 15 meters) under the Burma microplate. The fault shook for at least eight minutes. A typical large earthquake lasts 30 seconds or so.

Earth's very gravity balance was altered and the North Pole shifted by an inch.

The recorded data was provided in March to scientists by the International Monitoring System of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Tolstoy and her colleague, DelWayne Bohnenstiehl, converted the data to make the new audio file.

Tolstoy hopes that in the future scientists will gain easier and earlier access to such data.

"There is an opportunity here to make a contribution to international disaster monitoring, as well as help us better understand earthquakes and tsunamis and potentially mitigate these events in the future." she said. "It makes sense to let others listen in."

The sound file is here.

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A spectrogram of the data shows energy released, with red being the most. A peak in energy is seen about 300 seconds into the event. Credit: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20050722/sc_space/eerieunderwaterrecordingofdeadlyindonesianearthquake