CBS Evening News open - 2004-12-26

Channel: malgent

Transcript

Language: English (original, YouTube automatic captions)

[0:00] The leader in weather coverage

[0:03] >> from all of us at News Channel 5. Happy

[0:06] holiday.

[0:09] >> Tidal wave. An offshore earthquake of

[0:11] near biblical proportions kills

[0:13] thousands of people across South and

[0:15] Southeastern Asia. The challenger who

[0:17] was poisoned seems headed for victory in

[0:19] the presidential rematch in Ukraine.

[0:23] >> Well, it's been a Christmas nightmare.

[0:25] >> Glitches and Grinches ground thousands

[0:27] of holiday travelers. And shoppers play

[0:31] Scrooge. Retailers total up their

[0:34] unhappy returns.

[0:40] >> This is the CBS Evening News

[0:44] with John Roberts.

[0:48] Good evening. John Roberts is off

[0:50] tonight. I'm Mika Brazinski. We begin

[0:52] tonight with the still developing story

[0:54] of the most powerful earthquake of the

[0:56] past 40 years. The quake with a

[0:59] magnitude of nine struck off the

[1:00] Indonesian island of Sumatra, triggering

[1:03] massive tidal waves that swept from

[1:05] Thailand in the east across the Bay of

[1:07] Bengal to India and Sri Lanka and even

[1:09] to the east coast of Africa. 11,000

[1:13] people or more reported dead, including

[1:14] at least three Americans. Many of the

[1:16] victims lived outside the range of the

[1:18] International Tsunami Warning System.

[1:21] Barry Peterson has the latest on a

[1:23] disaster whose full dimensions are yet

[1:25] to be known.

[1:27] From desperately poor fishing villages

[1:29] to fancy beachfront resorts, it was a

[1:32] typical Sunday morning that turned

[1:33] deadly without warning.

[1:36] It started with an undersea earthquake

[1:38] in northern Indonesia, measuring 8.9 on

[1:41] the RTER scale. The world's worst

[1:43] earthquake in four decades. It generated

[1:46] tidal waves that literally fanned out

[1:49] across the Indian Ocean. Some waves

[1:51] hitting more than a thousand miles from

[1:53] the earthquake's epicenter. To the west,

[1:56] it was Sri Lanka and India that took the

[1:58] brunt of the destruction. To the north,

[2:00] Bangladesh was also hit. Many of the

[2:03] worst hit areas were poor fishing

[2:05] villages. The water smashed everything

[2:07] in its path and left behind shorelines

[2:10] littered with boats, debris, and bodies.

[2:14] Most of the Maldiv Islands are barely 3

[2:16] ft above sea level. The tidal waves were

[2:19] higher, and many were instantly flooded.

[2:22] Also hard hit, Thailand's holiday resort

[2:25] island of Phuket. The Christmas holiday

[2:28] is among the busiest time of year in

[2:30] this area, and resorts were crowded,

[2:32] streets busy, beaches full of people

[2:34] enjoying the morning sunshine. Experts

[2:37] say unless there are significant

[2:39] aftershocks, there will be no more tidal

[2:42] waves. The worst, they hope, is over.

[2:45] There are still several million people

[2:46] across the region who may be displaced

[2:49] because homes and businesses were

[2:51] destroyed. It will take some people

[2:53] years to recover

[2:56] and some will never recover. They are

[2:58] already grieving for their loss. Others

[3:01] still cling to hope for the missing who

[3:03] may have been washed out to sea. Some

[3:06] almost surely lost forever.

[3:09] Barry Peterson, CBS News, Beijing.

[3:13] >> The tidal waves are called tsunamis

[3:15] caused by earthquakes underwater. The

[3:17] tremor causes the water at the surface

[3:19] of the ocean to rise up in a hump.

[3:21] Tsunamis can travel up to 500 m an hour

[3:24] and be more than 50 yards high when they

[3:26] hit the shore. Survivors in Thailand

[3:28] said there was no warning of the

[3:30] impending disaster.

[3:32] >> All of a sudden, the first tidal wave

[3:34] came in. It was very fast, very serious,

[3:36] and then it was followed by a number of

[3:38] successive waves. Thankfully, it was I

[3:40] think only because it was quite early in

[3:41] the morning that the vast majority of

[3:43] tourists and occupants of the hotel

[3:45] weren't actually down on the beach. We

[3:47] didn't realize.