noticias de maldivas

Para los que no entiendan el inglés basicamente relata lo siguiente: en Maldivas hay 43 muerto y 63 desaparecidos (por ahora) En Lohifushi, destino surfero por excelencia, han sufrido muchos daños, pero nadie ha muerto. Hay unos cuantos testimonios de gente que sufrió el maremoto, entre ellos un surfer que se encontraba en el pico y que relata como fue arrastrado por una corriente brutal segundos antes de que llegara el tsunami y como logró ponerse a salvo. Todo el mundo se refugió en el bar, la zona menos dañada. La laguna a salvo por el coral se quedaba de repente vacia de agua, viendose completamente el coral. Así sabían que otra enorme ola iba a llegar. Hasta pasadas varias horas no sabían que había pasado pues se cortaron las comunicaciones. Desde aquí, aunque se que no lo leerá jamás, le envio un abrazo a Anyad que seguro que tranquilizó a todos con su sonrisa y temple. Cuídate.

The tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean barely noticed the Maldives, tearing through the collection of low-lying atolls – submerging some of them completely for several minutes – dragging tourists from their hotel rooms and swimmers out to sea.
At least 43 people were confirmed dead and 63 reported missing in the popular tourist destination today, the government said. President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom declared a state of emergency.
Tourists described three-feet-high walls of water sweeping across their resort islands and into their bedrooms, with powerful currents dragging swimmers out to sea.
Mike Rigg, 33, a construction worker from the Wirral near Liverpool, was surfing at the resort of Lohifushi when the tsunami hit.
He said there was a six-feet-high surge in the waves and he was dragged along the edge of a powerful current, though he managed to stay out of the worst of it.
Finally he reached an area where he could stand and fought his way to shore.
He watched two scuba divers being rescued by a boat after being dragged by a current, and saw another motorboat unable at full power to make any headway against a violent surge of water rushing past the island.
Nicola Whiteford, 35, a structural engineer from London, said guests at Lohifushi huddled around the bar area, which was the only major part of the island that stayed consistently above water.
“The frightening thing was that before each wave, the lagoon emptied itself out and you could see the coral. So we knew another one was coming,” she said.
Ms Whiteford said that for hours after the disaster, survivors didn’t know what had caused the tsunami or what to expect, because radio communications were patchy and power cuts meant television wasn’t working.
Eloisa Cino, a 29-year-old costume designer from Rome, said she was relaxing in her beachfront bungalow on Sunday morning when the tsunami smashed down the wooden door, overturning furniture and scattering her belongings.
“We grabbed what we could and tried to run, but there was nowhere to run,” Cino said tonight as she waited to board a flight back to Italy.
The 50 by 300-yard Fun Island, south of the main Maldivian island of Male, was completely covered by water for several minutes before the sea subsided, Cino said.
Some walls of the brick bungalows were demolished, and five of the 100 people on the island were injured, one with a broken leg, she said.
Cari Webber, a 25-year-old student from Miami, had just checked into the Club Med Farukolhufushi and was walking to her room on the first day of a planned week-long holiday when the tsunami hit.
Electric power and plumbing were knocked out, and sewage mixed with seawater ran across the island. Webber fled to an upper storey of a resort building and huddled there wearing a life jacket for hours, fearing further surges.
Throughout Sunday night, resort staff patrolled the beaches looking out to sea. The guests were taken off the island by motorboat today.
Many tourists said casualties would have been much greater if the wave hadn’t struck in the daytime, when most people were awake and mobile.
Male’s airport reopened today after being closed most of Sunday. A half a dozen charter flights from Europe and India came to take tourists home. Hundreds of tourists packed the airport’s internet café and telephone booths informing families and friends they were safe.
Officials said Pakistan has dispatched a ship and helicopters to the Maldives to carry relief items to the islands.
Maldives, a chain of 1,192 coral atolls south-west of India with a permanent population of 278,000, thrives on tourism and attracted more than 600,000 visitors this year.
At the peak year-end holiday season, there are normally around 20,000 foreign tourists in the Maldives, travel agents estimated.
Local agent Mohammed Sunan predicted it would take months for the industry to recover.
He said at least four or five of the Maldives’s roughly 80 resorts had been inundated with water, causing extensive damage.