Devastation

Here's a few graphic details from Channel NewsAsia:

With 80,763 dead, rotting corpses, smashed sewers, contaminated water and a lack of food and shelter, along with mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever and malaria, could wipe out weakened survivors in their tens of thousands, UN and other experts warned.

[ ... ]

By the hour the confirmed tolls ticked up relentlessly in other hard-hit countries, including Sri Lanka, India and Thailand, where the stench of death and mass burials combined with traumatic grief and looting to create an apocalyptic vision for overwhelmed relief workers.

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Half of the confirmed dead -- more than 45,000 -- were in the Indonesian province of Aceh, close to the epicentre of the biggest earthquake in 40 years which sparked the tsunami waves that devastated coastal villages and resorts across the Indian Ocean.

Sri Lanka has 22,493 dead, India more than 10,800, but the tragedy struck not only the poor eking out a living on Asia's coasts.

The rich holidaying on tropical islands once considered paradise also fell victim to the waves, with western tourists accounting for most of Thailand's 1,829 dead, officials said, with a further 5,000 missing.

A total of 99 Europeans were reported dead and another 2,811 were missing from: Austria, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.

[ ... ]

In Indonesia's Aceh province, fast emerging as the quake's ground zero, survivors scrabbled for food among mud and corpses. Great tracts of land remain under surging waters and there has been no word from many isolated communities.

The first shipments of international aid were arriving in the city of Banda Aceh, 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) northwest of Jakarta Wednesday, but with no trucks or fuel to distribute it, starvation loomed for thousands.

According to this report, cargo planes carrying food and water purification equipment arrived in Banda Aceh today while Indonesian military teams reached the coastal areas of western Sumatra and found little more than devastation. Thousands of decaying bodies were seen in town after town with homes flattened or torn apart. In Banda Aceh, the capital of Sumatra's Aceh province, bulldozers were rushing to push more than a thousand unidentified rotting corpses into a mass grave.

Relief and emergency supplies have arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka, but authorities are experiencing problems in distribution due to an ongoing civil conflict between Sinhalese and Tamil groups. Widespread looting has been reported in the vacation resorts of Phuket and Phi Phi in Thailand. A navy flotilla is underway to western Sumatra carrying food and medical aid, including 100 doctors. Tens of thousands of people remain missing.

This is just an ugly snapshot of a horribly ugly big picture.