Dear Andy and friends: The first tsunami wave attacked Veerampattinam, one of our fishing villages near Pondicherry, at about 9.15 am yesterday and two people lost their lives. Immediately, within minutes, the volunteer at the Veerampattinam knowledge centre started appealing to the people to withdraw to safer places through the public address system and further loss of life was averted. There were two more waves at about 1040 and 1200 hours. At Nallavadu, another fishing village, also no loss of life is reported, although huts close the shore were washed away and a few boats were lost. The worst affected was Moorthikuppam, the whole village inundated with sea water.
Every day our knowledge centres provide weather information - from CNN, Accuweather, the local Met office and US Navy satellite (wave height information). We are not, unfortunately, equipped to predict earthquakes and tsunamis. Many friends around the world have sent messages expressing concern and anxiety. We are unable to answer all of them individually. Through this message, we assure all of you that we are doing all that we can. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andy Carvin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, December 26, 2004 9:45 PM Subject: [DDN] thoughts and prayers for our South Asian/ SE Asian colleagues > Hi everyone, > > I was horrified to wake up this morning and learn about the devastating > earthquake and tsunami that struck south asia and south east asia > earlier today. I see that Tamil Nadu in India was particularly hard-hit, > home to our colleagues at the Swaminathan Foundation and the Open > Knowledge Network's Pondicherry telecentre project, among others. The > Pondicherry project focuses on providing weather data to local > fisherman, and it appears that hundreds, if not thousands of them have > been killed today. I know we have list members in Sri Lanka, Thailand, > Maldives, Malaysia and Indonesia as well; I hope all of you and your > families are safe. If anyone has word on the sitution of fellow DDN > members, please let us know. > > Our thoughts and prayers are with all of you who are being affected by > this tragedy. > > -- > ----------------------------------- > Andy Carvin > Program Director > EDC Center for Media & Community > acarvin @ edc . org > http://www.digitaldivide.net > Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com > ----------------------------------- > _______________________________________________ > DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list > DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org > http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide > To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
