Talk:2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami/Archive 3

message: I am wondering about the usage of the word Wounded and variations at multiple places in the article. Typical English usage for wounded refers to injuries inflicted by weapons or acts of militaristic aggression. I suggest a change to injure, injuries, injured, etc. (Note, it seems that American English dictionaries may be more ambivalent on this issue, which is why I am not making the edit directly myself.) Dictionary Defs gcom 18:15, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)
American English usually makes the same distinction; injured is definitely more appropriate in this context. Tverbeek 18:19, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Word usage: Injured vs Wounded

message: I have asked the same question in the Dutch wikipedia: Should a mention of this be made: 
From the Nation Newspaper:
Warning rejected to protect tourism
Published on December 28, 2004
Minutes after the earthquake hit northern Sumatra at 7.58am on Sunday, officials of the Meteo-rological Department, who were at a seminar in Cha-am, convened an emergency meeting chaired by Supharerk Tansrirat-tanawong, director-general.
They had just learned that the Bangkok office had reported a quake measuring at 8.1 on the Richter scale, which was much lower than the
level officially recorded later.
“We didn’t think there would be subsequent seismic waves, because a similar quake of 7.6 on the Richter scale, which hit Sumatra on November 2, 2002, did not affect Thailand,” said a member of the department who asked not to be named. 
........
“We hesitated for a while whether we should issue a warning or not. It was discussed but we didn’t have a chance to do it.”
Supharerk denied that tourism factored into the discussion at the 11th hour. “I think we have done our best,” he said.
Precisely at 9am that Sunday, waves as high as 3 to 10 metres hit the main southern coastal provinces of Phuket, Phang Nga, Krabi and Ranong.
Pravit Rojanaphruk
The Nation 
See: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2004/12/28/headlines/index.php?news=headlines_15908069.html
And another article with some background:
*http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2004/12/28/business/index.php?news=business_15906961.html
Waerth 02:25, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Warning rejected to protect tourism

message: Okay please do not just make up numbers :-) "Estimate" does not simply mean current casualties multiplied by 2. How can there be an estimate of 80,000 dead in Indonesia when the confirmed detah toll is slightly less than 37,000 with another 1200 officially missing? At least, cite some sources please!
Also, please note that I have removed the total number for injured; there's really no numbers for injured people to be found in the news reports so the column is, at best, total guesswork.
Finally, I removed the border: collapse thing as it was causing problems for me, and the table looked quite odd (mozilla). -- Nils 14:36, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Estimates et al. 

message: I have been unable to find any information on damage to Diego Garcia and the Chagos Archipelago. Has anyone heard anything at all?
:DG seems fine: . Mark1 04:41, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Was just about to post that one myself. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:43, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diego Garcia and the Chagos Archipelago 

message: Hi.  Has anyone noticed that the number of deaths has been doubling daily for the past couple of days?  I know that this tragedy has certainly claimed many, many lives, but it seems to be a tendency in grave tragedies, such as this one, to exaggerate the figures, at least at first.  If I remember correctly, in the days following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the world press "informed" that over 6 thousand people had died.  It didn't take long for everybody to find out that the actual number was about half of that.  Now, yesterday we had 23 thousand dead, today it's 51 thousand?  I don't know, that may even turn out to be accurate, but I'm not quite confident in that.  Maybe we should be more careful in reflecting those numbers?  At the very least, we should make it clearer in the article that those figures are for now speculative, since the actual number is difficult to calculate given the mayhem caused by the disaster.  Any thoughts?  Regards, Redux 18:18, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: That would be an opinion, IMO. If we can cite someone else as saying it, sure, but until then, we report what others report, not what we think. No original research. Johnleemk | Talk 18:25, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: The "preliminary numbers" idea is a good one.  Ideally, people are not just changing the grand total.  I've been trying to find country-specific news articles to alter the country sections, and only occasionally moving the figure up to the table and calculating a new total.  Numbers that aren't grounded in country sections info just should not be used.  And  the 9-11 analogy rings a little hollow as the death totals are moving in opposite directions.  There was speculation of 60K dead early on 9-11, while in the first 24 hours of this article there was a line "If casualties reach 25,000..." And the fact that the reported Indonesian number is about half of what might be credibly extrapolated from the hard count in Banda Aceh makes me think that the numbers are not outrageous.  BanyanTree 21:20, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: It's possible you're right.  I am certainly taking the numbers with a grain of salt, but it's hard to say what an appropriate solution would be.  I have an different worry: since so many of the affected areas do not have accurate census numbers (especially the insurgent-affected areas of Sri Lanka and Indonesia, and regions in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands), we're never going to get hard total numbers like was possible with 9-11.  The "missing" numbers we're reporting are never going to reach zero, and we're going to end up with a "Y confirmed and an additional Z suspected deceased".  Though I do admit that a section on how the numbers changed would be interesting eventually.  BanyanTree 23:30, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I hope it turns that you're right, Redux, and the numbers end up being lower than the figures we're currently seeing.  However, I see the situation here as being significantly different than the figures that were reported in the aftermath of 9-11.  There, the initial estimates were based largely on conjectures about how many people might have been in the buildings.  As we learned more about how many people were there to begin with, and how many got out safely, the death toll estimates came down.  In the current situation, the initial estimates were quite low, and have been increasing as confirmed deaths are reported from across the vast area affected by the tsunamis.  I agree that there is often a tendency in the media to sensationalize figures, but I think here we are seeing almost the opposite - a conservative bias in the reporting that is causing the total numbers to increase as information slowly becomes available from ever-more-remote areas. Jpo 23:41, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)
That's another aspect of the issue.  How reliable are those reports coming from remote areas?  I mean, countries such as India and Sri Lanka already have dificient infrastructure in regular conditions (no offense).  Now, after all that destruction, how can we expect reliable data in so little time?  I've seen testimonials given by people who are there (usually via telephone), and everybody says that the tsunamis wreaked havoc all over Asia and the governments were unprepared to handle such a large-scale tragedy.  So I gather governments are releasing figures based on speculation and assumption (to a certain extent), which the media retransmits with a coat of absolute certainty that I do not believe could exist in only two days (doesn't that resembles what Jpo said about early estimates in 9-11?  Figures based on estimates, at least to a certain extent.  Sure the body counting has already begun in Asia, and that didn't quite happen in New York - most of the bodies were not even found, as they were "cremated" in the building, but again, mutatis mutandi, given the very different sizes of the two tragedies.  They can count the bodies in Asia, but the task is just overwhelming and could not be performed accurately in such little time).  To complicate matters further, some of the affected areas are touristic resorts, and those always have a fluctuating population (tourists coming and going, and even locals who come in and out to render services or small jobs).  Even with the manifests from the local hotels, it's just impossible to say how many people were actually at any given beach when the tsunamis came.  In that scenario, I can't see how any of those countries could provide a reliable estimate of victims in a matter of hours.  I don't agree that information is "slowly becoming available".  If anything, I'd say it's becoming available a little too fast (and thus tends to be inaccurate) given the size of the affected area and the generally deficient local infrastructure.  Regards, Redux 00:25, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ever expanding death toll 

message: Great WIKI folks--very well maintained.
Though the 'discussion' is primarily about working on the page as apposed to the content of the page, I just HAD to voice my opinion somewhere. I'm quite sad that we spend hundreds of millions every day in Iraq, yet can only muster a measly $35 million to help those around the Indian Ocean.
We Americans should do more.
: Why not leave nationality out of it and say the world should do more to help out?
US$ 35 was just an immediate sum until needs are better known.
The US is reported by its officials to have given 40% of the international foreign aid last year, even if Europe is bigger.
:It has already been widely reported on December 31 that the US is increasing its aid from $35 million to $350 million. -- Curps 11:00, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't forget statistics never show the amount of privately funded aid that US citizens give.  The 40% of international aid only includes the money from governments. Not included in the figures are money from charities, and food and supplies and etc aid.  If you include public and private aid given by US citizens, the total aid given world wide each year from the US would be between 60% and 80%, depending on the year. This also does not include the money used within the US itself.Lokifer 11:11, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  America should do more 

message: Reports of 'probably hundreds of thousands' dead in Sumatra alone, mainly on the west coast where several towns apparently totally destroyed. Not sure how to fit this into the article - MPF 22:13, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Just wait for more solid information. This is Wikipedia, we can be a day late with information. -- Cyrius|✎ 22:51, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, let us not engage in speculation. -- Nils 11:19, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: BBC News 22.00 UTC 30 Dec