Asian Tsunami - Prayers, Drills Held to Remember

In Calang, Indonesia, survivors prayed at mass graves and mosques to mark the third anniversary of the Asian tsunami, while warning sirens sent hundreds fleeing beaches during a drill to test an alert network established since the disaster. The waves on the morning of Dec. 26, 2004, spawned by the mightiest earthquake in 40 years, killed around 230,000 people in 12 Indian Ocean nations, just under half of them in the Indonesian province of Aceh on Sumatra island. Coastal communities in Sri Lanka and India lost some 45,000 people between them. The waves also crashed into tourist resorts in southern Thailand, killing more than 5,000, half of them foreign vacationers. These was one of the most horrible disasters that I can remember seeing on television.