One appreciates your sentiment, but I'm just gently pointing out that part of the problem is that the peoples surrounding the Indian Ocean are less familiar with tsunami than those rimming the more-tumultuous (& poorly-named) Pacific Ocean.

If you look at the animation graphic mentioned below, you'll get a good idea of the place on the globe, and the effects of the shock. Some hundreds were apparently killed even on the eastern African coast; people were swept away - but rescued safely - near the south-western corner of Australia; and there were four tides within a few hours on the island of Tasmania, off the south-*eastern* corner of it, which is off the edge of the picture.

I've heard no news of damage along the south coast of the Arabian Peninsula where you'd expect some (see graphic). *Maybe*, like the north-west coast of Australia, it is very sparsely settled.

> From: Toby Fiander
> Date: 29/12/2004 23:51:27
> To: SCIENCE-MATTERS -a- YOUR -d- ABC -d- NET -d- AU
> Subject: Re: tsunami graphic
>
> NOAA has quite a nice graphic of the tsunami, including a semi-realistic attempt at showing the reflection, diffraction between islands and so on.

> If you have a dial-up connection, it is going to take a bit of downloading, but it is probably worth it:
> http://pmel.noaa.gov/tsunami/Mov/TITOV-INDO2004.mov

Thanks for your comments. Nearly all the New Year celebrations around Australia are now organising a collection to go towards helping now, or rebuilding in the longer term.

There's a series of links to links to people helping over at Making Light (How to help/pass it on : December 27, 2004)
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005972.html