as of this posting (via Amazon)...

from The Washington Post...

Editorial
A Response to Enormity

Wednesday, December 29, 2004; Page A18

THE DEATH COUNT has mounted with a horrifying momentum. The first reports of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that devastated shorelines around the Indian Ocean spoke of 500 deaths. In Monday morning's newspapers the number had reached 13,000; by yesterday morning 25,000. This morning, the newspapers will deliver the sickening estimate of at least 55,000 deaths -- in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Somalia, Maldives and Burma, among other countries. The raw figures are attached to appalling stories: of 1,000 people killed in the Indonesian province of Aceh when a three-story-high wall of water slammed into a sports field during a match; of at least 1,000 people killed on a single train in Sri Lanka that was swamped with waves; of more than 700 dead at Thailand's Khao Lak beach resort, including hundreds of vacationing tourists. One senior Red Cross official in Southeast Asia put it succinctly: "The enormity of the disaster is unbelievable."

This tragic toll will go on rising in the coming days as more bodies are retrieved; even worse, it will grow by the tens of thousands unless one of the largest international relief operations in history can quickly be mounted. The World Health Organization warned yesterday that unless clean water and sanitation can be provided, as many people could die from communicable diseases such as cholera and malaria in the stricken areas during the coming weeks as from the earthquake and tsunami. Just behind disease comes the threat from exposure: There may be 1 million homeless in Sri Lanka alone. Scores of seaside fishing villages, together with their boats, have been obliterated.