New Toll Puts Tsunami Casualties at 272,000

(Keeps changing)

By Discovery News - Jan. 13, 2005 — The tsunami-spawning earthquake in Indonesia affected Earth's rotation and shape, shaved the length of a day and shifted the North Pole, NASA scientists said on Wednesday. Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Benjamin Fong Chao, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., said in a press release that all earthquakes have some effect on Earth's rotation, though it's usually minuscule. Go DeeperGo behind the tsunami disaster in our feature.

"Any worldly event that involves the movement of mass affects the Earth's rotation, from seasonal weather down to driving a car," Chao said.

The recent earthquake, which struck the west coast of Indonesia on Dec. 26, registered a magnitude 9.0, the fourth-largest quake in a century, according to NASA.

The so-called mega-thrust earthquake happened when the India tectonic plate slid beneath the Burma plate beneath the Indian Ocean. The net effect of that movement was a slightly more compact Earth, the scientists said.

Because the shape of the Earth was changed slightly — it became minutely more elliptical — the earthquake also affected the way it spins on its axis, and the length of a day, the scientists said. The length of day was shortened by 2.68 microseconds.

Gross and Chao routinely calculate earthquakes' effects on polar motion. The North Pole was shifted by about 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) in the direction of 145 degrees East Longitude, they said, continuing a long-term seismic trend. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20050110/tsunamieffects.html

New toll puts tsunami casualties at 272,000
Indonesia restricts military, aid workers

Knight Ridder - By Tim Johnson - January 13, 2005 Banda Aceh, Indonesia — An official document posted here says that nearly 210,000 people in Indonesia are dead or missing from the Dec. 26 tsunami, a death toll that appears to be far higher than officials have reported publicly. Rescue workers think even that number may be low.
The Indonesia toll would bring the total of dead and missing from the tidal surge across the Indian Ocean to nearly 272,000, ranking the tsunami as the fifth or sixth deadliest natural disaster in about 250 years.

The new death toll came as Indonesian officials restricted the movements of foreign relief workers, U.N. employees and journalists in devastated north Sumatra, the Indonesian island that took the brunt of the tsunami's force, and said foreign military units would be allowed to work in the country for only a limited time.

Indonesia's vice president told the United States and other nations that have sent troops to deliver relief that their forces won't be permitted to remain in Sumatra longer than three months, and should leave as soon as their work is completed.

The blunt comments seemed to end what had been tacit Indonesian acceptance of a foreign presence in an area that has been off limits to foreigners for years. But it wasn't clear that the comments would have any real impact on rescue efforts. http://www.news-leader.com/today/0113-Newtollput-274059.html