Anyone know if there's any validity to the 400,000 number?

[truthseeker1]

Two posts last Thursday that linked to the following article were redirected to a Yahoo article that had the "official" death quote of 120,000 instead of the Asian estimate of 400,000. Is the site this article was posted on (Bernama) not reliable??

Indonesia Needs Help, Death Toll Expected To Exceed 400,000

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 30 (Bernama) -- The death toll in Acheh, the region worst hit by last Sunday's tsunami, may exceed 400,000 as many affected areas could still not be reached for search and rescue operations, Indonesia's Ambassador to Malaysia Drs H. Rusdihardjo said Thursday.

He said the estimate was based on air surveillance by Indonesian authorities who found no signs of life in places like Meulaboh, Pulau Simeulue and Tapak Tuan while several islands off the west coast of Sumatera had "disappeared".

He said the latest death toll of more than 40,000 in Acheh and northern Sumatera did not take into account the figures from the other areas, especially in the west of the region.

"Aerial surveillance found the town of Meulaboh completely destroyed with only one buiding standing. The building, which belonged to the military, happens to be on a hill," he told reporters after receiving RM1 million in aid for Indonesia's Tsunami Disaster Relief Fund here Thursday.

http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v3/news.php?id=111574

First DU posting:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

Second DU posting:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[lib_1138]

1. I think when they add together all the individual tallies...

It starts to get to the 400K level.

I heard 120K in one country (Sri Lanka?) alone.

Sadly, I suspect this will go to 500K before too long. A tragedy. I have donated (and my company matched). Have you (I hope)?

[slutticus]

3. I heard that Indonesia itself is expecting 100,000+

[Lithos]

2. Don't know

However, the reported death toll at this time reflects, as I understand it, only the number of bodies found. This will increase as they get to the remote areas and as people who are currently missing are presumed dead.

L-

[Lucky Luciano]

4. The problem is that so many of the dead will never be accounted

for and it may very well be 400K dead. Who knows. Not to be callous and by being too mathematical about such a tragedy, but I think a good mathematical model to use for calculating the total dead might start with the following:

Consider the areas that were hit really hard like Indonesia, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. I say a good method to do this would be to extrapolate based on the number of foreign tourists who remain missing or who have not reported in any way a month after the tragedy - I will presume they died in the tsunami. Using similar beaches (like Ko Samui in Thailand or other parts of Sri Lanka not hit) do a statistical sampling of the percentage of people within 100m of the beach, between 100m and 200m, etc that are foreigners - all the way back to wherever the tsunami inundated the area. From the sampling, calculate the percentage in each region that are foreigners. Also use the sampling to estimate the total number of people in each region. Then consider the number of bodies of foreigners that were actually retrieved. Add the missing foreigners list to the total number of foreign bodies found. Then comparing this with the sample we took of about how many foreigners would have been expected to be in the regions at the time of the tsunami, we can get a percentage of the number killed. Then extrapolating this to the total population in the area (assuming that foreigners and locals alike had the same percentage chance of surviving), we may get a feel for the total number that were actually killed. The reason I use the foreigners is because they will be better documented as to how many are actually missing. It would be much harder to do this with the locals. I also assume that they have taken pictures of every single corpse - and that foreigners may be identified over the course of the next year by relatives at home by this process to reduce the number of missing so that the body count does not double count with those that are missing. There are a lot of assumptions here of course, but this is the only way I can think of to get a fair estimate on the extent of the tragedy.

My method does not work well in Indonesia, since Aceh province was a highly restricted area where foreigners were not allowed. The percentages in those area that were killed will have to be scaled up because of the proximity to the earthquake and can only be guessed by the populations known to be in the regions and whatever scaling factors get used.

What a sad thing this is.