Links on the Tsunami and Diego Garcia

Tsunami puzzle: US warned its Navy in Diego Garcia of incoming Tsunami! (Why not the governments of Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India and Thailand too?) What has really happened to the US Air Force's heavy bomber airbase on Diego Garcia, a rather flat British island in the middle of the Indian Ocean? Colin Powell seemed terse when asked at Friday's UN press conference ("no information"). This atoll's average height above sea level is 4 feet. Known size of swell reaching DG: 6 feet. There is now a Diego Garcia thread on the Professional Pilots Rumour Network but as usual, it has deteriorated into personal feuding. "One thing is significant," comments reader W.B. "There are no posts from personnel actually on the island... Pprune usually attracts posts from U.S. and British military personnel. So I wonder if there is a ban on reporting the actual conditions there." [See too Diego Garcia Tsunamis update for a bland US Navy release] [and a less official link] and [The Truthseeker]. [Some reassuring emails] Washington was aware that a deadly Tidal Wave was building up in the Indian Ocean

More on the Diego Garcia enigma to which we first drew attention [link]: Independent Journalists on Line | an early New York Times interactive map confirmed "Diego Garcia hit" (go to Hour by Hour > Begin > then Hour Four). Did the tsunami tidal wave hit the forewarned but low-lying (3 to 6ft) British island with its USAF strategic bomber base or not? Why the official silence? Why no "lucky escape" interviews? Why is the Pentagon suddenly, and humiliatingly, pressing Turkey for air base facilities at Incirlik against Iraq?

NOAA has complete pictures of the progress of the tsunami from satellite pictures. If anyone can intreprete them we might be able to find out what happened to Diego Garcia.

Monday, January 10, 2005: reassuring news continues to flood the Internet:-

• Al-Jazeerah.info - Dalton,GA,USA US Diego Garcia Base Unharmed by Tsunami
• San Jose Mercury News (subscription) - San Jose, CA, USA GEOGRAPHY Protected US Diego Garcia Base
• Free Internet Press - New York, NY, USA TSUNAMI Barely Scratches Diego Garcia
• Socialist Worker - London, UK DIEGO Garcia undamaged
• The Herald - Glasgow,Scotland,UK TSUNAMI warnings
• Stars and Stripes - Washington,D.C.,USA DIEGO Garcia Navy base reports no damage from quake, tsunamis
• Guardian - UK US island base given warning
• Defenselink.mil - USA ON-GROUND Reality Drives Combined Support Force
• MSNBC - USA TSUNAMI spares secret US base
• Fake Tsunami picture used world-wide (and by scammers to attract money) (it was created two years ago in China) »»»»»

But still no real-time eye-witness reports from the atoll.