8.9

An 8.9 earthquake hit near sumatra sunday morning. Then the tsunamis hit, India, Sri Lanka, The loss of lives kept growing. Started at 3300, then 11000, today it's 21000. Condolences to all that have been hit. It is truly a sad day.

The Indonesian government has declared a national mourning period. The MUI (Islamic Ulama Council) has also said that they are concerned. Concerned or 'prihatin' is an Indonesian word usually used by politicians to make a statement without actually doing anything useful). In this case however the MUI has opened an account to help the region.

The lack of a tsunami warning system was touted as a factor in the large number of deaths. I'm not sure whether a warning system would have helped Indonesia, seeing as it was so close to the epicenter of the quake. A person with the Indonesian geological system claimed it was too expensive however.

I'm not quite sure about the extent of damage to the sumatra region. I have only heard it from the news. I know (from reading the news) that many of the damages to the region was caused by the earthquakes and not the tsunamis itself. As for the Tsunamis, I'm not sure how deep inland they came.

Anyway on to the recovery process. Help is coming, both from overseas, and also from inside the country. Hopefully the help will be given to those who need it and not corrupted by those in power. If all goes well, the help will be organized and we will be able to quickly rebuild.

Hopefully plans will be created to create a warning system for natural disasters in Indonesia (Indonesia is very susceptible to natural disasters). Warning systems should be created to detect earthquakes, tsunamis, or volcano eruptions.

There is a lot of work ahead of us.