The tally of tragedy keeps rising in South Asia’s tsunami:
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters) – Some 150,000 people are now known to have been killed by Asia’s tsunami, U.N. officials say, as helicopters and elephants are used to find and feed survivors and shift the rubble of razed towns.
Aid workers on Monday struggled to help thousands huddled in makeshift camps on Indonesia’s northern Sumatra island, where the tsunami claimed two-thirds of its victims eight days ago, and to reach remote areas after roads and airstrips were washed away.
"The current death toll … what we operate with are the confirmed people who are identified as dead … is around 150,000," said U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland.
"There are many, many more who have disappeared or who are missing or who are for us nameless as of this stage. And it is particularly in the Sumatra coast."
In other words: the toll is going to keep going up.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.