A powerful 7.5 magnitude earthquake has hit the Mentawai group of islands.
Reports are still confusing and news coverage has been poor.
Some reports claim that there was no tsunami, while other reports talk about whole villages being washed away.
One thing that I can be sure about is that an Australian surf tour company is missing one of its ships, and radio contact was lost at the time of the quake.

Yeah.., Indonesian media also mentioned that at least 10 Australians are reported missing, they are aboard Southern Cross ship of Sumatran Surfaris company.
Surfers... talking about catching a big wave, they got Tsunami instead.

It is a dangerous sport, my deepest condolences for their friends and family...

Very large earthquake 7.5. Hope everyone is okay.

gosh .. i hope my yoga teacher wasn't on that surfboat.

I've been on the road for a couple of days and did not find much in the news about this disaster, but from what I gather the cruise boats in the harbour were smashed against each other and exploded, and many villages were washed away with hundreds of people still missing and feared dead.

400 dead, and not much news on the BBC about the tsunami at all!!!!!

And when a bunch of tourists get shot up in Manila's airport, people go mad at the CNN doing live coverage! What the **** is wrong with this world???

Yeah, when the Newcastle earthquake in Australia killed one man there was an uproar. But when hundreds die in an Indonesian disaster.............
I keep lobbying the local media to explore more issues affecting our nearest neighbour Indonesia, but they seem to be a very conservative and backwards lot.
Reminds me of a quote from the movie Balibo : "Nobody cares about a bunch of little brown people on an island somewhere."

Hopefully forums such as this (and the Indonesian Film Festival) can change their parochial scope.

Hey Ralf, it seems some surfers hv got their act together to start a relief fund for the Mentawai tsunami victims...

http://observers.france24.com/content/2010...ctims-indonesia

There are some Youtube videos of the destruction caused by the tsunami too. But there is a video by a chilean surfer that shows the live destruction of a surfie resort on the island here .. please check it out cuz it's a helluva freaken scary sh.it as all the hotel guests and staff narrowly escaped from the tsunami!!!

http://observers.france24.com/content/2010...nis-surf-resort


Imma gonna donate to SurfAid now.. please if u hv some money to spare, let's all donate too!

Thanks for the update Tangawizi and thanks for the donation.
I will also do my bit.

He said his office had not established a tsunami early warning system for Mentawai Islands, adding that even the most advanced equipment could not have processed warning signs fast enough to avoid disaster in the regency after the earthquake.
“The [epicenter] was very close and the tsunami arrived in just 15 minutes, so it was unnecessary,” Ade told the Post on Wednesday.
“The most sophisticated system currently available needs five minutes to process information from an earthquake before issuing a tsunami warning — and a issuing a command to respond to the field would take more than 15 minutes. It would have been too late for Mentawai.”

SurfAid is featured on the Australian TV show Getaway.
Jason Dundas was filming for this holiday TV show in mid October, and just five days after Jason and the crew left, the devastating earthquake and tsunami struck.
Jason returned to East Java and here is his story in his own words.

Amazing before and after Tsunami report... thanks for sharing...

It is heartwarming that international community through SurfAid shows that they're care about natural disaster that frequently hit Indonesia... they demonstrate the victory of human compassion, they are the coolest people in planet...
Resilience is a must for those people living soo close with tectonic fault and earthquake/tsunami prone zone. It's like continous cycle: life, destruction, death, rebirth, flourish, and probably future disaster will hit again... I'm sure for aeons many people in this place has gain wisdom in dealing with life.
Thank you all...