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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees

Stories of Survival

Aired December 27, 2004 - 19:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


ANDERSON COOPER, HOST: Good evening from New York. I'm Anderson Cooper.
More than 22,000 dead, and the body count is climbing.

360 starts now.

The wave of destruction, tens of thousands swallowed alive. The death toll still rising. Tonight, live reports from the worst-hit areas and chilling stories of survival against the sea.

The crisis continues. Decaying bodies, contaminated water, and now, fears of an epidemic. The latest what's being done to prevent a new catastrophe.

Tens of thousands without food, water or shelter. How soon will help reach those in need, and what you can do to help.

Why was there no warning? Even with hours to prepare, why weren't more alerted about the deadly waves? Tonight a 360 investigation into what could have been done to save thousands of lives.

And could it happen here? Is America vulnerable to tsunamis? Tonight, the hard facts about these killer waves.

ANNOUNCER: This is a special two-hour edition of ANDERSON COOPER 360, Wave of Destruction.

COOPER: Good evening again.

If you ever wondered why the ancients feared and worshipped the sea, why they humbly offered it their prayers, their sacrifices, this is why.

The sea, propelled as it was by a massive earthquake yesterday in South Asia, can rise up in great and terrible waves and wipe away whole villages.

At this hour, CNN has confirmed more than 22,000 deaths, and that toll is certain to rise. In 10 countries, but most of all in Sri Lanka and India and Indonesia and Thailand, there is chaos now, and grief, and widespread disbelief among those who survived that they survived, and that so very many others did not.

Here's what is happening right now. Relief efforts and evacuations and airlifts are under way. Epidemic disease is now a very real threat in some places. Tourists from America and many other countries are trying to make their ways home. And hundreds thousands of others left without homes, without anything but their lives.

This is a special two-hour edition of 360, and we are covering all the angles tonight.

We'll follow the course of devastation with live reports from the hardest-hit areas, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand. Soon the sun will be rising there, and there are so many people unsure what this new day will bring.

We're also going to be investigating why there was no warning in places that should have had at least an hour's notice of the killer waves coming.

Many questions to answer tonight, many stories to tell you.

We begin with a man on vacation with his family. CNN Beijing cameraman Brad Olsen was in Phuket, Thailand, getting some R&R when the tsunami hit. He'd been on the beach the day before and had gotten sunburned, so he decided to take his family to the jungle instead. That decision might just have saved him and his family their lives.

He's still in Phuket. He's been working the story for us. He joins us now live by phone.

Good to have you on the program. I'm glad you're safe.

You've been speaking with eyewitnesses all day since this tsunami hit. How did they describe it?

BRAD OLSEN, CNN BEIJING CAMERAMAN: They said it was just massive. The -- most people were standing on the beach, and then they just heard screaming and yelling. They looked up and saw a wall of water coming at them.

Most of the survivors managed to run to higher ground, and those that didn't manage to run to higher ground were simply washed away. That's what they said. Some of the people who sucked out to sea on the small island where I was at managed to swim back, but they said it took them typically 20 minutes, and that's a long time to swim if you're not a good swimmer.

COOPER: Brad, it looks so calm and peaceful behind you now. When you got down to the beach for the first time after the waves hit, I mean, what struck you most?

OLSEN: That it was so calm and peaceful, like there were a few people standing around, and it's obvious a large wave had come through. And there were just people standing around on the shore where I was. And the thing that struck me was that the hundreds of small boats that had been ferrying tourists back and forth between the small islands around the Onang (ph) Resort where I was, were just gone. You know, there were a few smashed up on the shore. But otherwise, there were none, and previously there had been hundreds of them.

COOPER: Brad, I know you were there with your family. You got them safely on a plane back to Bangkok. You're staying in the area to work. I know you took a helicopter to Phi Phi, which is an island off Phuket, an island that really didn't get any rescue workers for those first several hours. How bad was it there?

OLSEN: It was really, really bad. We hit -- it seemed that the tourist village there was at the end of a bay. And the bay, I think, channeled the force of the wave through the tourist village. And the wave penetrated very deeply, probably a couple hundred meters, and just flattened it.

The survivors there said that, again, a wall of water just came screaming through the village, knocking down trees in its wake, and anyone who wasn't able to get out of its way was crushed, basically, under debris and tons of water.

One man I talked to who was helping organize the survivors' relief effort said he managed to survive by climbing a water tower. And he'd brought up a couple other people with him.

But basically, I think the people who survived were just lucky. Either you were in the right place or you were in the wrong place.

COOPER: You know, Brad, I know you can't see the pictures that we're looking at right now. We're looking at pictures of people loaded into helicopters. They look like Thai government helicopters or medical evacuation helicopters. But what we're seeing is, it looks like a lot of sort of just the tourists themselves, the local people, who are doing the rescue working, who are carrying these litters with bodies on them. What sort of help are people getting there?

OLSEN: Well, for the first six hours, they said, there was no help whatsoever. They tried to land some helicopters, but they just couldn't get them in on the beach. And four heroic survivors organized the rest of them into a rescue brigade. They managed to clear debris off some tennis courts to make helicopter landing pads.

They set up a triage center for the wounded, the injured, and they set up stretcher brigades, using doors from hotels to stretch -- ferry people from the devastation area into the evacuation area.

They said they were able to operate for about two hours before sunset, and the helicopters couldn't land anymore. And then they had to carry all the wounded back up into the hills, into the jungle, in case another tsunami came.

The next morning, the helicopters resumed, and the rescue operations resumed. When I was there, I asked them how many they'd gotten out, and they said about 150, many of them very serious, and they were quite pleased that none of them had actually died while in their care. They did a terrific job organizing themselves.

COOPER: And Brad...

OLSEN: And if it hadn't been for those four leaders (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- Yes?

COOPER: Brad, in Phuket now, I mean, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) you were saying, I'm sorry to interrupt you, because there's a delay here. You were saying if it hadn't been for those four leaders, a lot more people would have been injured. I'm sure that's true.

What does Phuket like right now where you are? I mean, as I said, it looks very calm behind you. What do you see around you?

OLSEN: Well, behind me up on the hillside, it is very, very clear. There's a lot of yachts sitting in the harbor here. Most of the big boats like that weren't really affected.

But if you get down onto the shoreline, you can see that a massive wave has rolled through. And then if you go down into the village, the tourist villages along the beach, there's a lot of devastation on the seafront.

I think here, the wave didn't penetrate as deeply as on Phi Phi Island, because the development is a lot more dense, and it's made out of concrete and rebar. So it went very deep up into the streets, but it's not as deep, not as many buildings were destroyed, I think, as on Phi Phi Island, where I spent most of my time looking around.

COOPER: Well, Brad, I'm glad you were able to get your family out. I'm glad that you and your family are safe and sound. And we appreciate all the work you've been doing. Brad Olsen, thanks very much, on his vacation in Phuket in Thailand.

Now, more than 1,000 miles west of where Brad is in Phuket, poor villagers and well-to-do tourists in Sri Lanka were just waking up when the monster wave hit there. Now, more than 10,000, both the poor and the wealthy, were killed on that island, and hundreds of thousands more -- and that is a conservative estimate, I should tell you -- hundreds of thousands are without homes, or, for that matter, services of any kind right now.

CNN's Hugh Riminton is in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, at a church that is serving as a refuge. He joins us now by phone.

Hugh, what's the situation where you are?

HUGH RIMINTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's just approaching daybreak here, Anderson. This is the second night that they've been out. About a million people are away from their homes, displaced from their homes. About a quarter of that number, 250,000, there or thereabouts, really have no homes to return to. They're in these coastal areas that have just been utterly devastated.

And the rest are staying away from the coastline, plainly fearing a return of the waves.

Some people have started, just even in the course of last night, started to drift back towards their places. Maybe their fear is starting to drift off a little bit, but it's still very acute.

COOPER: How far -- you're in Colombo, the capital. How far are you from the areas that were hardest hit? And how hard is it to get to those areas, to communicate with those areas?

RIMINTON: Well, the area that was hit, Colombo -- sorry, Sri Lanka is an island rather like a teardrop, a sort of an oval type of a shape. There was really only about a quarter of the island that wasn't affected by the tsunami, and that was up in the northwestern corner.

So most of the island was, in fact, hit. The hardest hit in terms of taking the brunt of the tsunami was on the southeastern side. Perhaps by luck, that is one of the less-populated areas. The most densely populated area, along the western coast, where Colombo, the capital, is, but there have been plenty of deaths north and south of Colombo, particularly south, and on its way round.

There is one town, a town called Ampara (ph), in which, according to the extremely conservative police numbers, 1,516 people died, are confirmed dead, in that one small town of Ampara the southeastern edge. There are, in the immediate surrounding district, 120,000 people on police figures that are without homes. And that just gives an indication, one little snapshot, of one part of this island.

COOPER: Hugh, you know, I mean, it's a big story like this, and you were -- as you're speaking, we're looking at some of these pictures. We just saw a man carrying a small child out of wreckage. Clearly the child had been killed. People looking at their devastated homes trying to figure out what to do next.

The questions now will become, why wasn't there warning? Sri Lanka had some two hours from the time the earthquake hit to the time the waves actually hit the island of Sri Lanka. Clearly, some people must have known this tsunami was coming. Why weren't the people in the beach areas told? Any ideas, Hugh?

RIMINTON: Look, the only thing I could say to that, I'm sure there will be quite a deal of considered inquiry into this as time goes by, is that this is -- it's difficult to apply, if you like, Western notions of warnings, and civil defense procedures in what is still a third-world country, and it's still emerging from a generation of civil warfare. Its infrastructure is not first-world infrastructure.

The other thing to remember is that it's a fair distance away from the actual epicenter. They might have imagined that they were -- that nothing that dramatic would happen this far away.

The other thing, of course, is that tidal waves move at tremendous speed in big water. So they slow down and rise as they come to shallow water, as we know, and that's when you start getting the height of them. But they can move at up to 400 miles an hour across deep water.

I don't know how much warning they had, how they would have got that information across in this extremely decentralized society -- it's very much a village-based society -- and how you'd have got people, you know, warned to get up off the beaches. And even how they'd respond to it, because when the first people, even in the resorts, when they saw the first waves, lots of people's reaction was to go down to the beach and have a look at these strange waves coming in.

COOPER: Well, Hugh, you raise some good points there. We're going to continue looking at this question, though, a little bit later on in the hour. Hugh Riminton in Colombo, Sri Lanka, right now, stay safe. Appreciate you joining us for that.

Hugh was talking about the speed of this tsunami. Let's put that in perspective for a moment, because the speed is just extraordinary. When it hit the land, it actually had slowed down. Scientists say it likely was going about 30 to 40 miles per hour.

But listen to this. When it was traveling across the Indian Ocean, it was going about 12.5 times faster than that, about 500 miles per hour.

In perspective, the typical cruising speed for a Boeing 737 jet is 530 miles per hour. Some perspective.

360 next, the wave of destruction. We'll take you live to Phuket, Thailand, to hear from the survivors who made it through the devastation.

Plus, a little boy lost and found, his mother still missing. Find out how his family identified him from half a world away. A happy ending to this little boy's tale.

Also tonight, desperate rescue efforts, and corpses piled on the beaches. The latest on what's being done to prevent an outbreak of disease.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: It is hard to imagine.

The enormous story of the Asian tsunami, in the end, really, comes down to a great number of small stories, the stories of individuals, men and women and children like you just saw in those pictures who saw and survived what so many others did not.

We're covering all the angles on this tragedy tonight in this two-hour special edition of 360.

CNN's Aneesh Raman has found some of those remarkable small stories of survival to tell.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The moment a tropical resort became a scene of horror, a massive wave, one of many, roaring into Patong (ph) Beach on Phuket Island, an Australian tourist on a rooftop capturing the beginning of a catastrophe, a wall of water engulfing buildings, surging into the streets, carrying people, vehicles, and more, one snapshot of a disaster that has ravaged a continent.

Not far away, 26-year-old Belgian tourist Ilyana Livieu (ph) was among thousands of vacationers enjoying a break in the tropics.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I was trying to spend the day on the beach. And suddenly, all the water went away, and everyone was just looking at it, and saying, Where is all the water? And then suddenly, it was all coming at us, and people just start to run and scream.

RAMAN: In seconds, pristine tranquility turned into a hellish fight to stay alive.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The building was collapsing, so I had to jump to another building. And then a second wave came in, a third wave came in, and people injured, I saw dead bodies floating. And so then, at a moment, we decided with a couple of people just to run for it.

RAMAN (on camera): As tsunami waves devoured the coastlines of Phuket and Phi Phi Island, tourists like Ilyana desperately scrambled for higher ground. Whatever remained on the shore now evidence of severe destruction.

(voice-over): Destruction Ilyana avoided. She is now at this hospital, along with hundreds of other survivors from at least 20 countries, all in shock.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I hope to be back for a new year with my family. We'll never forget this Christmas.

RAMAN: But at least, she has somewhere to go. Many who live here are still missing family members and have no home left.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RAMAN: And Anderson, as we began this, the second full day of massive rescue and relief operations, that is the dual challenge for the Thai government, helping these tourists who desperately want to get home, as well as helping the locals who desperately need to rebuild.

COOPER: Aneesh, was there a warning in Thailand? There was about an hour, from my understanding, from the time the earthquake hit off the coast of Indonesia, off the coast of Sumatra, to when it actually hit Thailand. Did anybody know this thing was coming there?

RAMAN: Nobody that we spoke to. And the other thing to keep in mind is, really, to get into the mind of the tourists that were here on Phuket Island. They're in a foreign land, they're amidst a language they don't speak. And the transition for them was quite eerie. They're here on a holiday retreat the day after Christmas, tranquility. These beaches are widely regarded as some of the best in the region. And in a matter of moments, destruction just came at them, 30- foot-high waves, 30 to 40 miles an hour.

The stories that I spoke with -- the people on the ground, just hours after these waves had come, I was still in Bangkok, were chilling. The people on the island at that moment just had no idea what to do. They didn't know if more waves were coming. They didn't know where to go. At that point, severe structural damage was still a possibility. They weren't sure whether to stay in the hotel they were at or whether to continue going forward.

They didn't really know the lay of the land. And the locals here had never seen anything like this, so they were as petrified as the tourists. They were running -- they were some of the earliest running to higher ground. So really, everyone caught off guard here, Anderson.

COOPER: The grandson of the king of Thailand killed as well by the water.

Aneesh Raman, thanks very much for your story. Appreciate it.

Hans Bergstrom of Sweden is a survivor too, but he cannot tell his own story. He's only 20 months old. That's him. In Phuket, in the chaos of the tsunami, Hans was separated from his parents. A couple took him to the local hospital. Shortly after his picture was posted on the Internet, he was identified by relatives and reunited with his father and grandfather.

It is a small story of success, his is, but Hans Bergstrom's mother and grandmother have yet to be located.

Around the world, aid groups are rushing to help victims of the tsunami. The International Red Cross has launched an emergency appeal for immediate relief. There are other aid groups as well, such as UNICEF, Christian Aid, and CARE, that are also sending help. MedAir, which provides emergency assistance to international travelers, is making its clinics and doctors available to all tsunami victims.

Carol Guanieri (ph) is a nurse and manager of the MedAir clinic in Bangkok, Thailand. She joins me now on the phone with an update on the situation there.

Appreciate you joining us, Carol. What kind of injuries have you been seeing?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're seeing a lot of people with fractures, a lot of people with wounds, and wounds that are going to become infected. We also are seeing a lot of people that are drinking -- that drank a lot of the water, so they're having lung congestion, they're having problems breathing. Those are the main things that we're seeing.

COOPER: You're saying you're seeing people with wounds. Were they hit by debris that was being carried along in the water, or, I mean, were they slammed against something? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, again, they were hit by the debris, they're badly bruised, they've got bad cuts, the wounds got infected. Yes, they were running away, they were running into trees, into cars hit them, pieces of wood from floating from houses, yes. They've been badly hit.

COOPER: I'm told there's no clear number at this point of how many people are walking into hospitals for treatment. How are local hospitals, I mean, dealing with this onslaught of injured? Can they, can they deal with it?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know, they're overwhelmed, but they're actually doing a great job. They have doctors and nurses from all over the country coming down to help them. The (UNINTELLIGIBLE) are coming in, the local communities are doing a great job. They're having donations. You know, people are bringing food in, clothing for the people. Everybody is really pulling together to help out through this crisis.

COOPER: How do you get to islands? I mean, Ko Phi Phi, some of these other islands off Phuket, which, you know, a lot of travelers go to, a lot of tourists go to, particularly they want to go to the ones that are farther out, that less tourists go to, so it's more of an isolated area. Are, are, I mean, do you have a sense of everyone who's out there, who, are, is everyone's needs being met? Or are there still people you simply can't account for, people that are still in desperate need?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, there's -- yes, the people that are here are just devastated. A lot of them are still missing family (UNINTELLIGIBLE) people. They've lost everything, they lost their passports, they lost all their documentation, they lost all their clothes. They're just devastated. They really (UNINTELLIGIBLE) really working hard to deal with everything.

COOPER: Carol Guanieri, we appreciate you joining us. I know it's been a very busy day for you, and we do appreciate you taking the time with us. Thanks very much, carol.

Asia has seen more than its share of deadly earthquakes. In fact, the top three deadliest earthquakes since 1900 have all been in that region. Here's a 360 fast fact. The third-deadliest earthquake was in Tsinghai, China, May 1927, 200,000 people were killed in a 7.9- magnitude quake. The second-deadliest, the same number of people killed in an 8.6 quake in Gansu, China, in December 1920.

And the deadliest, a magnitude 7.5 quake hit Tangshan, China, in July 1976. It killed at least 255,000 people.

Coming up next on 360, the wave of destruction. Right now, desperate rescue efforts under way. So many still missing, so many of them little children. We'll go live to Sri Lanka for the latest.

Also ahead, why weren't more people warned? It took some two hours for the waves to hit Sri Lanka. Some are saying that was enough time to give local authorities a heads-up. Why didn't they get that warning? Some tough questions that need answers ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Our special edition of 360 continues.

It's so hard to imagine what it must have been like for those people unlucky enough to be on the beach when the waves began. After all, it seemed like an ordinary weekend day. Some tourists were snorkeling, others walked along the shore, kids were playing games on the water's edge.

"TIME" magazine's Michael Elliott was on the golf course in Phuket, Thailand, about 350 yards away from shore, when the first wave crashed down. I spoke with him earlier by phone.

Michael, when the wave first hit, you were close by, but you really didn't know anything had happened.

MICHAEL ELLIOTT, "TIME" MAGAZINE: I had not the first idea, Anderson. I was about 300 yards, I suppose, I guess, from the beach. I was playing golf. It was a glorious morning, a few puffy high white clouds, beautiful blue sky, lots of sunshine. And some kids came running onto the golf course, very upset and very agitated, saying that something had happened down on the beach.

COOPER: And when you first went down to that beach, shortly after the waves had hit, what, I mean, what did you see? What did you smell? What did you hear?

ELLIOTT: The first thing that happened was that the sea got sucked out, hundreds of meters. I was talking to a guy who I had become friendly with, he ran a beach bar, and he said, you know, he suddenly saw the sea disappear, until he saw exposed rocks that he had no idea that were there.

So, I mean, they all knew that something weird was happening, but they'd never seen it before. The sea disappeared so quickly (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that fish were stranded on dry land, hopping from rock (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to rock (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

Then the waves started coming in, quite slowly at first, which I think enabled some people, at least on this beach, to kind of rescue their belongings. Then they came in faster and faster and bigger and bigger. And at least in this part of Phuket, in southern Thailand, there were four big waves that really did the damage.

I tried to measure kind of how high the water had come in the villages that I was at. And I would guess it was somewhere between eight and 10 feet above what you would expect as the normal high-water mark.

COOPER: And were families, were people -- I mean, after the waves had hit, were they stumbling around trying to...

ELLIOTT: Absolutely. Absolutely. No, I mean, people were very, very scared. People were very, very shaken. And then by the afternoon, you know, people were kind of trying to do what they could to rescue what belongings that they could, to kind of identify how they could make places safe.

But, I mean, you know, I'm talking about houses that just disappeared, you know, that were just kind of reduced to, you know, a few twisted pieces of rebar and corrugated iron and bamboo thatch. You -- there really wasn't anything left in a lot of cases.

The force of this was extraordinary. I mean, you saw telegraph poles (UNINTELLIGIBLE) actually just been snapped off like that. I saw a boat that had been (UNINTELLIGIBLE) on top of a couple of cars. I saw another car that had just kind of been up-ended, you know, against a telegraph pole.

And you know, one had this extraordinary sense of amazing power, just kind of huge gullies kind of gouged out of the (UNINTELLIGIBLE). You know, if then went kind of 300 or 400 yards further inland, you wouldn't have known that anything had happened, had happened at all, that was the really freaky thing.

I've never in my life seen this division between total mayhem, literally on one side of a road, and kind of complete normality on the other.

COOPER: Remarkable. Michael Elliott, I'm glad you're safe and your family is safe as well, and you were able to get out to Singapore. Thank you for joining us, Michael.

ELLIOTT: Thanks, Anderson. Take care.

COOPER: In Sri Lanka, shipments of food, tents and medical supplies already on their way. Joining me now on the phone from Colombo, Sri Lanka is Alastair Gordon-Gibson of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Alastair, hank you for joining us. I realize now, there are hundreds of thousands in many of the countries without homes right now, without knowing what this next day is going to bring. How worried are you about the possible outbreaks of disease? Of epidemics?

ALASTAIR GORDON-GIBSON, INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF RED CROSS & RED CRESCENT SOCIETIES: Clearly that's the initial concern for all of us now. Numbers are still uncertain of those affected. But as you say, it's affected a million people, and numbers of displaced are still uncertain. But the relief and rescue phase will continue for a week or two more. We're very concerned now about the risk of diarrheal diseases and contaminated water which could be affecting those population affected.

COOPER: How does that happen? Without going into too much detail. There is simply no place for people to relieve themselves, and it mixes with drinking water? How is disease spread in these conditions that people are living in?

GORDON-GIBSON: Well, Sri Lanka in particular has a huge coastal line. Vast parts of the island have been affected on the east, west and southern coast of the island. And many communities are still submerged, 30 or 40 villages are still underwater. Now, the body count has not yet been established, therefore, there's a lot of dead and decaying bodies still in the water, the water with the population itself is contaminated by fecal deposits. So the risks, potential risk of diarrheal disease is very high. So we're take steps. We've launched an appeal and had good response, and we have medical teams flying in tomorrow, and we're bringing in medical kits which should be able to cope with immediate effects of up to 100,000 people for two months. So we hope that will go some way to helping the situation.

COOPER: Alastair, as far as you know, was there any warning for people in Sri Lanka? Did the central government know about this? Did they have any word there had been an earthquake, it's possible the tsunami is coming?

GORDON-GIBSON: No, I think it caught everybody by surprise, not just the government. There had been reports in some of the press about some tremors earlier in the week, but frankly, Sri Lanka is not on an earthquake zone, it's not a natural disaster that Sri Lanka was used to in the past. Therefore it did catch everybody by surprise and other government has acknowledged that. But they're not the only who were ones caught by surprise, and I think it's hard not to help trying to mitigate the effects of this very, very big casualty on the people.

COOPER: Alastair Gordon-Gibson, appreciate you joining us. Thank you very much.

If you'd like to contribute to the relief effort, here's contact effort for just some of the organizations providing assistance. There are of course others. You can call the American Red Cross, International Response Fund at 1-800-HELP NOW or you can contact UNICEF at its Web site, www.unicef.org. Also, Doctors Without Borders can be reached by calling 1-888-392-0392.

The wave of destruction. Tens of thousands swallowed alive. The death toll still rising.

Why was there no warning? Even with hours to prepare, why weren't more alerted about the deadly waves?

And could it happen here? Is America vulnerable to tsunamis? Tonight, the hard facts about these killer waves. This special edition of 360 continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Get inside! Get inside! Come on, guys!

OK, I'm getting frightened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Just one view of the devastating tsunamis that hit land. Tourists caught in the wave of destruction. Welcome back to this special edition of ANDERSON COOPER 360. We're looking in-depth what has happened and what will happen the next several days in the Ring of Fire. Dozens of countries in Southeast Asia affected by this tsunami. More than 22,000 people have died, not quite half of those in Sri Lanka, more than 6,000 in India, more than 4,000 in Indonesia. But in all those place, the tolls are rising and hundreds of thousands are homeless and epidemics are a grave threat. It is an enormous story, terrible story, in this special two hour edition of the show, we're going to bring you as much of the scope as we can from the region and some amazing tales of survival.

Let's set the scene. It began on the floor of the sea two of the vast plates which the continents sit bumped into each other off the island of Sumatra. This started a chain reaction, a tremendous rolling energy that pushed everything along before it, including whole oceans of water.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): When the waves came, there was no warning, just walls of water, slamming ashore, leaving death and destruction in their wake. This was the scene in Thailand, at beach resort Phuket. The waves were created by the most powerful earthquake to hit the planet in 40 years. It struck off the coast of Sumatra, 9.0 on the Richter scale. Indonesia was hit first, but the waves spread far and fast. Stunned hotel guests captured the tsunami's impact on home videos.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my God. Look it's coming in now right over the swimming pool.

Get inside! Get inside! Come on, guys!

COOPER: The island of Sri Lanka, off the coast of India, was hit head on by the brunt of the waves which took only two hours to travel the 1,000 miles from the earthquake's epicenter.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There was this roaring noise, and looked through the glass doors and this torrent of muddy water came down the steps and through the doors. It pushed away into a play room glass doors were smashed by the water and I just couldn't keep my footing. I was very frightened.

COOPER: The water carried away everything in its path. Buses filled with passenger, trapped inside, cars, buildings, those who couldn't scramble to hire ground climbed atop trees or vehicles. Some were simply swept away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was just one long wave across horizon, and it looked quite small from the distance. As it got near you could sort of -- It's quite a big wave. And then as it hit the front, it swept the whole road along the beach, flooded it completely, took trees out, everything, took cars, motorbikes out.

COOPER: For thousands, there was no escape. In seconds, entire families were gone caught in a force triggered by an earthquake estimated as being as powerful as a million atomic bombs of the size dropped on Japan in the Second World War. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was absolutely no warning. I was asleep in a beachfront cottage. I heard a loud noise. All of a sudden roof was ripped off of the cottage, and my friend and I were taken out to say, just taking out in currents were so strong, we were seeing cars and animals and people, tearing by, we were able to hang onto a telephone pole where a mattress wedged between us for literally 30 seconds. There was a calm in the storm, and another wave hit. I finally climbed up to a roof of a home, because the water pushed me behind the home, and sat out the rest of the waves on top of this structure which luckily held. But many people have died. There are a lot of us are injured here. I'm very scraped up, but luckily I'm okay, and I'm still missing my friend.

COOPER: For those lucky enough to survive, the aftermath was equally overwhelming. Hospitals struggled with a massive influx of injured. And the bodies were everywhere, lying in the streets, caught in trees. As the dead were recovered, they were lined up on sidewalks and laid out in the few buildings that weren't destroyed. Tourists streamed out of damaged areas as rescue workers streamed in.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When they -- if you like enormity of it all came in and started swelling around hotel and it was furniture and people running screaming and literally for their lives, shattering of glass, the power which is just absolutely terrifying.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

COOPER: Well, the power of the tsunami came from the most powerful earthquake in 40 years. Here's a fast fact for you. This weekend's 9.0 quake tied a 1952 quake in Russia for the fourth strongest since 1900. In the number three spot, a 9.1 quake that hit Alaska in March of 1957. The second most powerful a 9.2 that hit Prince William Sound in Alaska in March 1964. 125 people killed there. And the most powerful earthquake a magnitude 9.5 that hit Chile in May 1960 killing 2000 people.

One survivor, a fisherman from India, described to the "New York Times" the panic the reaction of the tsunami and devastation, saying, quote, "everything was running, everybody was running but God saves little." An act of God say some, a terrible reality of science to others. Joining us from Washington to discuss exactly how this happened is Jim Devine, senior science adviser of the United States Geological Survey. Jim, thanks for being with us.

JIM DEVINE, SENIOR SCIENCE ADVISER USGS: Good evening.

COOPER: Tell us about the seismic activity that caused this tsunami to happen.

DEVINE: Well, as you mentioned early, the origin of this earthquake comes from the collision of two major plates on the earth's surface. The Indian Plate trying to push in under the Burma Plate, and that creates a huge amount of energy release, and when that occurs underwater, it generates a large amount energy that gets carried away by waves.

COOPER: What kind of force are we talking about, 9.0?

DEVINE: Oh, a 9.0 is a very large amount of energy. I heard you earlier say a million atomic bomb, it could easily be that. 9s occurred once a decade or so. So it's just a very large amount energy being released from the earth at one time.

COOPER: And as it approaches the shore, it slows down, as the water grows in height, but when it's traveling in the ocean, this thing is moving at some 500 miles an hour, I saw?

DEVINE: Yes, it travels through the ocean very efficiently. The waves move along, all the way across ocean until it hits an obstruction, when it gets to shallower water, it slows down, and so the energy has to go somewhere, and it goes into the height of the wave, and that's why the waves get so high, even though they're not seen in the deep ocean.

COOPER: You know, over and over we heard tonight, no warning, there was no warning. I understand in Indonesia it hit in five on ten minutes in Sumatra. In Sri Lanka they had a two hour lead time from the time the earthquake first hit to the time the waves started to come. Did somebody drop the ball here?

DEVINE: Well, in one respect, there's no ball to drop. Tsunamis in the Indian Ocean are fairly rare, in fact they're quite rare. And one of this size, I don't think it's ever occurred in historical time. So there was just no system in place to convey a message that's so rare and so infrequent, that there's just no way to handle it.

COOPER: But the USGS does -- you guys monitor this, you knew the earthquake happened and you have a procedure for this. Who do you call to alert them?

DEVINE: Yes, we have a call-down list of the key officials in this country and other international organizations. And we notified those people immediately after locating the event.

COOPER: The State Department, the White House?

DEVINE: The State Department, AID, the White House. U.N. organizations.

COOPER: And do you tell them that tsunami is possible, or you do you just say 9.0 earthquake hit. What do you say?

DEVINE: No, we can only say it's possible. You don't know whether it's actually occurred until the first tide gauge records it. Then you know it's occurred and you get some feeling how big it is s.

COOPER: Where was the first tide gauge?

DEVINE: In that part of the world, I do not know, because there is not a system to deal with it in terms of immediately notifying people about a tsunami. That exists in Pacific Ocean, but unfortunately not in the Indian Ocean.

COOPER: Interesting, Jim Devine, appreciate you joining us, thanks very much.

DEVINE: Happy to be here.

COOPER: 360 next, there was ample time between earthquake and deadly waves. Again the question, why no warning? Another perspective on that. We like to look at all the angles on 360. That when we come back.

Plus the horror in the words of those who experienced it and saw it for themselves. Be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Just some of the images call the on home video. Survivors are e-mailing harrowing stories to cnn.com. Also we're going to read you some of them in just a moment. Many are saying there's no warning the tsunami was coming. But there are significant periods of time between when the earthquake struck and when the giant waves hit land, depending on land fall. So why no massive alert? Turns out there's no tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean as you just heard, as there is for the Pacific. My next guest says there's a lot of blame to go around. Douglas Mulhall is the author of "Our Molecular Future: How Nanotechnology, Robotics, Genetics and Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Our World." Douglas joins us now. Appreciate you joining us. Douglas, you believe many of the deaths could have been prevented, how?

DOUGLAS MULHALL, AUTHOR: Well, Anderson, the real problem you is heard the word surprise said several times. But it's actually no surprise to anybody in the region. Most of the nations were notified as long as three years ago this was a significant possibility, and that they had to do something about it. In fact, that is one reason why I published our book more than two years ago was to warn about the possibility of these types of events.

COOPER: But, Douglas, a lot of the people or the leaders say look, we have high poverty rates, we're involved in civil conflict in the case of Sri Lanka, there is a vicious civil war going on there. You can invest millions of dollars in a system for something that only happens every once in a while? That's what they would say?

MULHALL: You know, Anderson, it's interesting, suddenly there's a glass wall put around the Indian Ocean as if it's not connected to the rest of the world. The fact of the matter is that international aid agencies and organizations and the World Bank and a bunch of other international organizations are deeply involve in the Indian Ocean area, including the tourism industry that has billions and billions of dollars invested in the area. There's lots of money to go around and these countries do not have to take on the burden individually of putting in these relatively cheap systems that could have avoided this. We're talking a few million dollars here to put in these systems.

COOPER: That's it, couple million dollars.

MULHALL: Yes, just to put in a rudimentary system that could give advanced warning of this. India and these countries, they have very advanced communications systems. They're not in the dark ages. They don't have ...

COOPER: I have to tell you, what I don't understand, I'm still trying to figure out the answer to this and I'm going to talk to the foreign minister in a little while and I hope to get an answer from him, but in Sri Lanka, they had a two hour heads-up time, the geological survey said they called the State Department, the State Department said they did call around to a couple countries and give them some sort of warning. In that two hours, why wasn't anyone in the coastal communities warned? That's my question, and I can't find an answer to it.

MULHALL: Anderson, the real problem is the psychology of tsunamis. If people are not trained to expect them and to react to them, you are going to get this slow communications roll like we did. There were people that were alerted. But as it went down the communication hierarchy it got slower and slower until things went up on the Web after the waves had hit. It was the psychology, that's what has to be broken and that's what we point out in the book. That there's lots of technologies to solve this problem, it doesn't take much money, but people simply have to be aware of this and give it priority.

COOPER: That's one of the sickening things about the story, you read they put up the warnings on the Web after the first waves had already hit, what good does that do? A lot of questions still to be answered. We're going to be looking at this later in the week. Douglas Mulhall, appreciate you joining us. Thanks, Douglas.

MULHALL: Thank you.

COOPER: Coming up at the top of the second hour of this special edition of 360. It's a two hour edition, I'm going to speak to the prime minister of Sri Lanka and try to get the situation in his country and find out what he thinks about the warning.

360 next -- tales from the survivors themselves. We're going to hear from those who lived through the deadly force of the tsunamis.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: So much destruction. Our coverage of this continues in the next hour, but we end this first hour of our special edition of 360 with the harrowing words of some who were there and lived through the devastation, these are survivors' accounts. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's coming again! Coming again! Big one.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I ran into our beachfront bungalow to look for a camera. I guess I spent a minute looking for, it couldn't find it. I came back out again and other guy who runs the hotel is screaming for people to get off the beach. I looked out to sea, and I guess at this stage, it was about 100 yards, 200 yards off the beach. This wall of water heading our way. And my wife screamed to me, she grabbed our daughter Elizabeth, and I looked frantically for my five- year-old son Peter (ph), and he was looking out to sea, he was mesmerized, hypnotized by the wall of water heading our way. So I just sprinted for the boy and I grabbed him. And my wife yelled to me to get into the bungalow, but I knew that Peter and I wouldn't make it. So we headed at right angles from the wave, and I just ran as hard as I could.

Having stood in the water initially, within two seconds from ankle height it came to shoulder height. You usually imagine a tidal wave much like you see in the movies, a big crescent wave. Waves that hit Phuket and the reports I heard from other resorts they all came in very hard and fast. It was a bit like watching a bath run to the top.

I looked behind and I could see the wall of water coming towards us, and eventually we were, I suppose, 25 yards, 50 yards from the beach. The wave caught up with myself and Peter (ph), and it washed us, guess another 50 yards into a mangrove swamp. We were very lucky not to be hit by all the debris that there was. The wave carried with it. It was carrying small boats with it, it was carrying logs, masonry, it was a terrifying experience.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, this special edition of 360 continues. More to come in the next hour, we'll take you to the hardest hit areas. Live reports from our correspondents around the globe, and we're also going to talk about the relief efforts under way, as well as bring you the story of Oprah Winfrey's interior designer who was caught by the surge of water.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: We continue our special edition. "PAULA ZAHN NOW" will not be seen tonight, because there are so many stories of disaster to tell you about, so many stories of courage and survival.

It's a disaster causing untold misery and images so powerful, you might want to turn away, like the heartbreaking pictures we are about to show you. This is an Indonesian man wading through waist-deep water carrying a dead child. The image puts the entire disaster in perspective. At least 22,000 people are dead right now. And that number is growing.

Help already is on the way. The initial U.S. response is a contribution of $15 million. But the head of the United Nations emergency relief effort predicts this may be the biggest humanitarian disaster in world history.

To get a sense of the real impact of this mind-boggling disaster, we're going to look at it through the eyes of just one city.

This is what happened in Galle, Sri Lanka.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): This is merely the aftermath of the disaster. Water was hurtled ashore by the tsunami, smashing, crushing, undermining, and then carrying away as it rushed back to the sea.

The sound is harrowing as well, a constant din of wailing, crying, and shouting, pierced now and again by sirens. This is Galle, Sri Lanka, home to some 84,000 people, a port city and provincial capital full of buses, buses that became islands in the flood, and unsafe islands at that.

Watch. The water capsizes one bus. It sinks in a matter of seconds. Those aboard scramble onto a precarious pile of debris. If you were lucky, you found a rooftop to watch it all go by. Others not so lucky had to cling for their lives. Some were swept away. We don't know what happened to them.

Galle has never seen anything like this. The Portuguese came here in the 1500s, then the Dutch, then the British, then the tourists, and now the water. It looks like the aftermath of a hurricane. Reports say a 30-foot wave washed over the ramparts of the old Dutch port. See those long red objects near the top of your screen? There are heavy railroad cars, passenger cars toppled and scattered.

There's a civil war in Sri Lanka. Both the government and the rebels are appealing for help. Galle is in the government-controlled part of the island. Officials declared a national disaster. Some even came to visit. Relief centers opened complete with food and sad, peaceful music. Hospitals were overwhelmed with injured, and morgues with the dead.

This is just one city's story. These scenes from Galle are being repeated in countless cities and towns all around the rim of the Indian Ocean. Survivors salvage what they can. Others just stare. There simply are not words for this. In the background, if you listen closely, you can hear bird's songs breaking the silence and the roar of the waves.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Many of those killed in the tsunami disaster were on the teardrop-shaped island of Sri Lanka, off India's southeastern coast. Now, officials in Sri Lanka say that more than 10,000 people have lost their lives. And it's estimated the number of people displaced from destroyed villages is over one million.

CNN's Hugh Riminton is in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, at a church that's serving as a shelter.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RIMINTON (voice-over): Across Sri Lanka, asleep from pure exhaustion, more than 1,500 people are at this shelter alone, a church favored because its on high ground, in case the sea comes for them again. Sunday's memories still so fresh for the survivors.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You can't describe it. It was -- we thought that we were going to die.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Someone was screaming, it's coming again. It's coming again. Everybody was just standing by the windows and waiting for another wave.

RIMINTON: At least one million Sri Lankans have fled their homes or have no homes to return to. The tsunamis hit more than 1,000 miles of coastline. The official death toll in Sri Lanka alone has topped 10,000.

India has responded to the Sri Lankan's government appeals for help with helicopters and half-a-dozen warships. United States and Europe have pledged millions in immediate aid. The question is whether it can get here soon enough to stop the death toll rising from disease, exposure and untreated injuries.

(on camera): As under-equipped rescue services do what they can to get into the most remote and hard-hit areas, there is another move out of Sri Lanka.

(voice-over): The airport is crowded with the injured, the traumatized, the just plain lucky.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The waves come and for two minutes, we go with the car and then all the people that stay there was dead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our hotel is nonexistent anymore. And we had a big wave coming into the hotel. And we swim.

RIMINTON: The wave tumbled this couple so hard, when, somehow they emerged alive, they'd found they'd been stripped completely naked.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have this from people on the streets. They give it. They have nothing themselves, and they give this to us. We were naked.

RIMINTON: And without passports, tickets or money, they're desperate now just to get home.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RIMINTON: Dawn is breaking over the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, where the flags in the city are at half mass this morning, as people start to emerge from their second night, many of them of course in makeshift shelters or out in the open sleeping on the ground and once again assessing for themselves individually and collectively as a nation how they're going to pull through these next few days and weeks.

COOPER: Hugh, at this point, what is being done to prevent the spread of disease? You have a lot of bodies in water. Conditions are ripe for disease to spread. RIMINTON: Well, the initial thing is -- still they're in the process of making their assessments, trying to prioritize, trying to get to various areas.

But they still have had not full reports back on the casualty figures, let alone the immediate needs that people might have not just for fresh water, but sanitation and immediate medical needs that people have for untreated wounds that are taking place. We're still in this first initial emergency phase. And, at the same time, there is an inevitable kind of life cycle to a disaster that happens.

There's almost a surge of adrenaline that can get people through the first 24 hours, first 48 hours. But even in these shelters that we were at last night, there were people there. A priest who was at this church was saying that what he notices now is that people are just really very deeply depressed, even those who have not directly lost. There's that sense of just deep shock, almost a catatonic stage of people not being able to really move. And that is starting to descend upon people now.

COOPER: Yes, the adrenaline goes away. The reality sets in. Hugh Riminton, thank you very much.

We hope to talk to the prime minister of Sri Lanka any moment now. Looking, though, at the damage in Sri Lanka, it's hard to imagine how anyone could live through the experience.

Satinder Bindra has the stories of some of the lucky survivors.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SATINDER BINDRA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Unaware of the suffering around her, the youngest member of this relief camp sleeps fitfully. But baby Rashuda's (ph) mother worries. Her younger brother is missing. And baby Rashuda's grandmother is dead, swept out to sea by Sunday's tsunami.

Without my mother, I just can't imagine living, she says. The rest of the family, too, will find it hard to live without her.

This is what tens of thousands of Sri Lankan families woke up to. Their homes destroyed. Their neighborhoods and communities sucked up by a savage sea.

(on camera): More than 1,500 people are now seeking shelter in this relief camp alone. Here they're provided food, water and emotional support. It's a story that's being repeated in thousands of shelters across the country.

(voice-over): Relief efforts, too, are now slowly bearing fruit. Western tourists stranded on Sri Lanka's beaches are now being moved to the county's capital, Colombo. For some, the events of the past 48 hours have been more than they can bear.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was on a big stone and I saw only water above me. I was very -- I thought, I will die. BINDRA: More than 10,000 Sri Lankans have already been killed in this calamity. Some of the worst affected communities are in this country south and east. Tourists rescued from these areas say people there need help fast.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no power. There's no petrol, so there's no movement. There's no, like, support giving through to help the injured. And I believe that there are bodies that need to be dealt with, identified and transported out of there because, soon, I guess, with this heat, the sanitation problems will arise.

BINDRA: Over the next 24 hours, officials here say the death toll is likely to rise. Sri Lankans are bracing themselves for more suffering, they're also praying they've seen the last of these killer waves.

Satinder Bindra, CNN, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, 360 next, the devastation on the tourist mecca of Phuket, Thailand.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN IRVINE, ITN REPORTER: I heard a commotion on the beach; I ran down and saw a wall of water coming towards us. It was about a hundred yards off the beach at that stage.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Firsthand account from a TV reporter who was vacationing there with his family.

And a familiar face from Oprah Winfrey's show and his story of survival when the tsunami crashed ashore.

First, one of the many tales of survival, this one sent to us by e-mail from Thailand -- quote -- "It was like the aftermath of a bomb, a total mess with fatalities. I saw a dead boy age about 4 being carried away by his father. It was terrible. The human suffering and economic cost of this catastrophe is difficult to comprehend."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: A vacation paradise shattered. 360 next, the destruction of one of Asia's most popular beach resorts.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: For more on what's happening in Sri Lanka right now, what's being done to help disaster victim, we are joined by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. He joins me now on phone from Colombo.

Prime minister, thank you very much for being with us. The situation in your country, how bad is it? Prime Minister Rajapaksa, can you hear me? We will try to get him back on the phone. Obviously, communication a little bit difficult right now with Sri Lanka.

You know, thousands of tourists were in southern Thailand for the big holiday weekend. Their vacations turned into nightmares, of course, when the surging waters hit. As one American tourist described it: "Our paradise turned into hell. We saw a massive wave coming toward us, so we just turned and ran."

Some did not run fast enough. Now rescuers are combing the beaches, searching for survivors, while others are scrambling simply to get out.

CNN's Aneesh Raman joins me now from Phuket, Thailand.

Aneesh, What's the latest?

RAMAN: Anderson.

Yes, the latest here is that, yesterday, the death toll more than doubled. It is likely to do something similar today. It's now hovering just around 900. The reason, officials tell us, is that, as of the first night, some 400 to 600 people were thought to have been taken out to sea.

Initially, they were hoping that they could try and rescue some, if not most of them, but beginning yesterday morning, bodies were washing ashore. That has continued through the night. So it is likely we will see that number continue to rise.

Here in Phuket, where we are, the death toll is about 130. But the worst hit area is the coastal town of Pung Ha (ph). There, more than 500 people are presumed dead. And, as you say, this is a hugely popular tourist destination in the region for Western tourists. And we're getting a sense that a good number of these casualties are going to be foreign nationals.

Yesterday, we visited the hospital here in Phuket. Some 400 foreign nationals who were injured are there, 22 nationalities at least, ranging from Americans, to German, Koreans, Australians, all of them just coming to terms with what will be the psychological impact of surviving this ordeal that is likely, Anderson, to last years.

COOPER: Aneesh, you know, in so many of these pictures that we're watching as you're speaking, you see it's local villagers, it's tourists who are carrying the dead, the injured away. What are the government services like? How have they responded to what's happening there?

RAMAN: Well, they responded as quickly as they could, but that wasn't quick enough in terms of the disaster on the ground. The government was among the tourist in terms of being caught off guard, calling this an unprecedented catastrophe. So, initially, that was really the only way for people to help each other here on the island. Communication was cut. There was no real sense of what was going on. We've heard stories of people using doors as stretchers and really joining together, the locals who work in the tourist industry, as well as those who were here, survivors who were slightly injured helping those who were more severely injured.

For all of them, it was literally just a shocking situation that they had to react with reflex. And for those who are alive, a number of them, it is because of the goodwill of the other people here, Anderson.

COOPER: People coming together around the world. Aneesh Raman, thank you very much.

Since the tsunamis hit, India has been getting the brunt of some aftershocks.

Joining me now on the phone from Chennai, India, is Grant Cassidy of World Vision.

Grant, thanks very much for being with us. I know it's been a very busy of days for you. Have you been getting hit with aftershocks?

GRANT CASSIDY, WORLD VISION: No, we haven't, which is -- we're very thankful for that. But it's meant, though, that people can't go back to their houses. We have a very low-lying shoreline. And there's been real efforts by authorities to keep the people away from the coast.

I think, in another 12 hours, people can begin to relax.

COOPER: What are the most pressing needs right now?

CASSIDY: Feeding people, people who have lost everything.

And just a wall of water just knocked over their homes, took away everything they owned. So, government has basically allowed people to gather in schools and other public building, not particularly places people should be living. So, what we've been trying to do is, we've had World Vision teams out. And we fed about 10,000 families yesterday basic three meals a day. We hope the next step is that they can go home and we can begin distributing food and giving them pots and pans and other vessels, so they can begin to restore their lives.

COOPER: You're feeding 10,000 families, which is a remarkable thing. After they're fed, where do they go? As you said, they don't have homes. Are there shelters for them? Are they just out in the streets?

CASSIDY: No, there's not really shelters.

Many of these people that were worst hit and certainly here in Chennai were fisherman and other very poor people who had built their homes with their own hands. Now, they're going to end up doing that again. And they're used to living that way. It's not a way we'd like them to have to live, but they will do that again.

But we need to give them some basics to get going, because they would have lost absolutely everything. And so even giving someone rice without -- they need a pot to boil water and cook it in.

COOPER: Grant Cassidy, I know it's been a very busy time for you with World Vision. We do appreciate your joining us, doing remarkable work in Chennai, India. Thanks very much, Grant.

We have made it easy for you to help in the relief effort, if you want. You can just go to our Web site, CNN.com. There is a story about all the help that's on the way. In it, you will find links to several reputable relief agencies.

360 next, one father's frantic search for his 5-year-old son as the giant tsunami bore down, in his own words. It has a happy end, this one.

Also tonight, the real thing was devastating, but the world's largest soon tsunami simulator may tell us whether it could happen here in the U.S.

And a little later tonight, a different story, Osama bin Laden and another audiotape, one month before the Iraqi elections.

And, as we go to break, another survival story, this one sent to us by e-mail from Rubin (ph) in Malaysia. Rubin writes: "I stood up to look at the sea and was stunned to see a huge whirlpool in front of my apartment. As the waves approached, it was possible to see them rise in height and crash onto the shoreline. It looked like a giant washing machine in front of my apartment. There was no warning."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: It was such a big event, and yet there are so many small stories of pain and survival.

In Thailand, ITN's Asia correspondent John Irvine was on vacation with his wife and children when the waves struck.

Our Zain Verjee has his story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAIN VERJEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Mid morning on the lovely island of Koh Yao. John Irvine spots a huge line of white foam about a mile offshore. The vacationing TV reporter runs inside to get a camera when suddenly he's forced to turn back.

IRVINE: The guy who runs the hotel was screaming at people to get off of the beach. And I guess, at this stage, it was about 100 yards, maybe 200 yards off the beach, this wall of water heading our way. And my wife screamed to me. She grabbed our daughter, Elizabeth (ph).

VERJEE: His wife, Libby, and little Elizabeth, run uphill into their bungalow. Irvine begins a frantic search for his 5-year-old son, Peter. Then, suddenly, he, spots him.

IRVINE: He was standing at water's edge looking out to sea. He was mesmerized by the wave that was coming towards us, a single wave on a flat, calm ocean. It was moving pretty quickly. I ran for the boy, I grabbed him, and I could hear and feel the hiss of this wave coming -- coming behind us.

VERJEE: The bungalow was too far, so Irvine rather with his son at an angle along the beach. He tried frantically to outrun the water.

IRVINE: I just ran as hard as I could. And then I could hear the rush behind me. I looked behind and I could see the wall of water coming towards us. Eventually, we were, I suppose, 25 yard, 50 yards from the beach. The wave caught up with myself and Peter.

VERJEE: The wave, like monster waves crashing onto beach fronts in half-a-dozen countries, lifted Irvine and his son.

IRVINE: Washed us, I guess another 50 yards into a mangrove swamp. We were very lucky not to be hit by all the debris that there was the wave carried with. It was carrying small boats with it. It was carrying logs, masonry. It was a terrifying experience.

VERJEE: The terrifying feeling stayed with Irvine as he and his son floated by trees and scraped by debris. They heard more water coming behind them.

IRVINE: And then I heard the bang as the wave broke on the beach and it came through the trees. And Peter and I just were running as fast as we could. And we could hear the water, the onrush behind us.

It was your worst nightmare in a Hollywood disaster movie rolled into one. I glanced back and I could see coconuts and palm fronts and boulders in this water. And eventually the tidal wave caught up with us.

VERJEE: Father and son ended up bruised and scared, floating in an inland race paddy. Slowing, through the swirling waters and panicked crowds, they made their way back to search for Libby and Elizabeth.

IRVINE: I found Elizabeth in what was left of our beach bungalow.

She had made it there. I just couldn't get there in time. And so I just ran directly away from the wave. And she was in the bungalow, and much of the furniture in there was destroyed. Most of the settings are gone. I'm amazed that she emerged unscathed.

She described it as being in a washing machine. My wife had hit several palm trees. She had gone for quite a ride on the wave as well. And she's battered and bruised.

VERJEE: Reunited, the family slept on a hilltop. They will wake up in a few hours surrounded by islands of debris.

IRVINE: I think we got off quite lightly. I would estimate the wave here as being no bigger than 20 feet high. I think, in other parts of Thailand and indeed in Sri Lanka, especially, that the tsunami was much bigger.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VERJEE: John Irvine and his family are all OK.

In fact, Anderson, they should be waking up to another day right about now.

COOPER: And there are so many people who are waking up just about now, because it is dawn in that part of the world, not knowing what this day will bring.

Zain Verjee, thanks for that story, remarkable.

360 next, the world's biggest tsunami simulator and what it could tell us about what would happen if the U.S. was hit. And it's happened before.

Also later, you probably know him from "Oprah" tonight. You will hear him a whole new way, swept into an ocean, Nate Berkus, a man lucky to be alive tonight.

And, as we go to break, another tale of survival e-mailed to us from Peter in China -- quote -- Peter writes: "My wife was in Phuket when the first wave hit. Her room was filled with water. She almost drowned. She ran to a hotel lobby just before a second wave hit. She managed to climb to the top of a tree. I'm so glad that she survived."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: In just a minute, creating tsunamis in the laboratory.

But, first, let's check our top stories in "The Reset."

The death toll from Sunday's disaster now stands at just over 22,000. And it is expected to climb. The magnitude 9.0 quake that caused it is the fourth largest since earthquakes started being measured in 1899. And there it is, hitting Thailand.

The U.S. government expects to spend $15 million in its initial response to the tragedy, but a top emergency official at the United Nations says the cost of the devastation will probably be many billions of dollars. The U.N. official also calls -- called the U.S. and other nations stingy when it comes to foreign aid. I'll talk with him in just a little bit.

For more on what's happening in Sri Lanka and what's being done to help disaster victims, I'm joined by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. He joins me now by phone from Colombo. Prime Minister, thanks very much for being with us. The situation in your country, how high at this point is the death toll? How many people are homeless right now?

MAHINDA RAJAPAKSA, PRIME MINISTER, SRI LANKA: The normal life -- lives have been destroyed. And buildings, the buildings, school buildings, police stations, hotels, industries, have been affected.

At the moment, still the bodies we are finding, dead bodies and because of those dead bodies and missing are still coming in. Therefore, we will not be able to give you the exact figure, but it's more than thousands. More than 4,000 people have died. And another 300,000 people, families have been affected.

COOPER: And what are the greatest needs right now?

RAJAPAKSA: Yes. Right now is to -- medicines, then tents, children, milk powder for children, food, medical equipment, tents.

COOPER: Did you have -- did your government have any warning of what was to come? There were some two hours from the time the earthquake happened under water off of the coast of Sumatra to the time the waves first hit Sri Lanka. Did your government know the waves were coming?

RAJAPAKSA: No, unfortunately, no. Because the Indian Ocean is not -- generally the warnings are in the Pacific Ocean, but unfortunately we didn't have that information till suddenly that -- got this and killed our people.

COOPER: Did you know that an earthquake had taken place off the island of Sumatra?

RAJAPAKSA: No, unfortunately, no till this incident happened.

COOPER: So you had no idea that there had even been an earthquake two hours before?

RAJAPAKSA: No.

COOPER: What -- I mean, do you feel more should have been done? Do you feel you want to look at the system for warnings? Because there are some who say this region was warned, you know, two years ago that this could possibly happen by UNESCO.

RAJAPAKSA: The information, what we get, all of the information, we send it to a Hawaii institution, which is an American institution, and they analyze it. So now it's high time that we must have all this equipment, and this -- we must have a system strong as the U.S.

COOPER: Prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, we do appreciate you joining us. I know it has been a very difficult 24 hours for you, and we do appreciate you taking the time. And we wish you and the people who are in such great need in your country well. Thank you for joining us.

RAJAPAKSA: Thank you.

COOPER: The frightening devastation in Asia may leave you wondering whether it could happen here in the U.S. After all, the United States is bordered by two great oceans. In fact, tsunamis have struck here with deadly force and yes, it could happen again.

That part of our extensive coverage from our Adaora Udoji.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ADAORA UDOJI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The terror of a tsunami triggered by an earthquake swept Valdez, Alaska, off of the map on Good Friday in 1964. More than 100 people were killed down the coast to California. Since 1946, tsunamis have hit Alaska four times, causing death and destruction all the way to Hawaii.

Today, scientists worry a tsunami could strike North America again. They worry about active fault lines causing earthquakes in the west, a triggering event for monster waves. Government officials worry, too, which is why a federal warning system also monitors other potential triggers: volcanoes, meteorites and landslides.

D.I. JOHNSON, NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE: The warning systems are in their infancy. We're getting better and better at -- at informing the public.

UDOJI: The East Coast hasn't been completely spared. A tidal wave bashed Newfoundland in 1929, killing 27. Another hit Puerto Rico in 1918.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don't have big earthquakes here. We're not going to see that big type of tsunami.

UDOJI: But are there theories the East Coast still may be vulnerable. Some argue if the volcano in the Canary Islands near Africa suddenly erupted and collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean, it could send violent ripples to the U.S. coast within nine hours.

Other scientists worry about gases escaping the continental crust 50 to 100 miles off the coast of North Carolina.

The idea of an explosive shift, argues Columbia University professor Jeffrey Weissel, leads to troubling questions.

JEFFREY WEISSEL, PROFESSOR, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: We were surprised and everybody surprised of that -- surprised about the amount of gas that we found. And we don't understand the full implications for inciting future submarine landslides, which then might produce dangerous tsunamis.

UDOJI: Scientists say they just can't yet connect all the dots, but many still believe the West Coast has a greater risk of getting hit.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

UDOJI: And the federal warning center based in the Pacific Northwest says it's issued 10 tsunami warnings in the past 20 years.

The bottom line, says Professor Weissel, is that it's very difficult to quantify the risk because predicting tsunamis, especially in the west is simply difficult, simply because scientists at this point can't predict the triggering events like volcanoes and landslides. We just don't know enough right now.

COOPER: All right. Adaora Udoji, thanks for that.

Let's try to get a handle on these killer waves. The laboratory at Oregon State University contains the world's largest tsunami simulator. Joining me from there right now is the lab's director, Dan Cox.

Dan, thanks very much for being with. I know you can actually generate a wave. I'm going to ask you to do that. I know it takes about 60 seconds or so to do actually do it. So I'm just going to ask you to start generating the wave and then we can talk a little bit as you're doing it.

DAN COX, TSUNAMI LAB DIRECTOR, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY: Sure, OK.

Tim, do you want to generate it?

What I'm standing on here is a model in the Pacific Northwest in Puget Sound. You can see the wave in the distance as it comes to the coast. It's going to hit the coast on the right and then inundate a city. And then you could see how it spread all of the debris around.

COOPER: When the wave is coming -- when the wave is coming toward the shore, it actually slows down. Why does it do that?

COX: That's just basically related to the science of waves. The waves have to travel at the square root of the water depth. So as the water depth decreases, the wave has to slow down. And then the problem is that -- go ahead.

COOPER: I'm sorry to interrupt. You created this in your lab. How did it happen in real life, I mean, the Indian Ocean? This thing was traveling 500 miles an hour, I'm told, at some points.

COX: Right, and the primary purpose of this laboratory is to say what happens when that wave hits the coastline? So we're not -- there are other scientists that are trying to solve that problem of how the tsunami itself is generated. Other scientists worried about how it moves across the ocean.

And the primary purpose of this laboratory is to figure out what's going to happen when that wave hits the coast?

COOPER: So what kind of coastlines are most at risk?

COX: Well, it all depends on the -- where the tsunami is coming from. But the tsunami is going to react to the underwater topography. The cliche is that the wave wants to travel uphill. And so when that tsunami came in 1964, it selectively picked out certain sections of the coastline here in the United States. A city in northern California, Lincoln, and Seaside here in Oregon. If that wave had come from a different angle, it would have picked out different cities.

And so it all depends on the wave direction and the -- and the topography.

COOPER: So -- so by -- when you look at these -- at this water in this tank doing this to your model city, I mean, what do you learn? What do you see? What you have figured out?

COX: Well there's a couple of things. One is just trying to understand the basic science of what happens when the wave hits the coast.

Some things that we've learned, not in this test but in others, for example, when a wave hits an island, often the biggest wave is on the backside of the island. Something that you wouldn't expect. You'd expect the biggest wave to be in the front, but sometimes the wave wraps around on either side and creates the biggest wave in the back.

COOPER: Which is apparently from what we understand, is apparently what happened in Sri Lanka. Some of the initial waves not so big, but then that huge wave coming on later.

Dan, I appreciate you joining us. I know setting that up is difficult. We appreciate it. Dan Cox, thanks very much.

360 next, on the ground in India: the grief, the anguish. Some personal stories ahead.

Also tonight, a familiar face from "The Oprah Winfrey Show" swept out to sea. In his own words, how he survived.

COOPER: Also later, taking the tsunamis' destruction to the "Nth Degree."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: The words of an Indian construction worker speak for millions tonight across Asia. He said, "What did we do to deserve this?"

More than 6,000 people died in India, and they have begun to bury the dead. With a look at that, here is Suhasini Haidar.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUHASINI HAIDAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Laying to rest one of the tsunami's tiniest victims, residents of a small fishing village on the south Indian coast come to mourn this 8-month-year-old and relive the horror of all they've seen. Their homes have been destroyed, and they've seen family members and friends drowned in the giant wave that hit the village of Kalapat (ph). Most of the dead here were women and small children.

As her relatives cremate 35-year-old Kuni (ph), they can't even dwell on their grief. They must think of where to go next. Many from Kalapat (ph) have already moved to this building nearby, some exhausted by terror and grief.

Muni Naird (ph) said that she can't believe this is all that's left of her wedding gallery. "But at least we saved our lives," she says.

(on camera) Thousands are now pouring into schools and public buildings across the state. Many here say their huts have washed away and they can't go home. Some say they've lost loved once and are just too traumatized to consider going back to the scene of destruction.

(voice-over) Despite his fears, Sumir Vranandanan (ph) has gone back to look for his father's body. An earth mover did find the clothes his father was wearing in the debris of his home.

"I realized then that my father must have died," he says.

Many other villagers from Kalapat (ph) haven't been found. Their families saying their anguish deepens as they can't give their loved ones a decent burial.

Suhasini Haidar, CNN, Kalapat (ph) Beach, South India.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, help is pouring in to Asia from all over the world. Volunteers in Portland, Oregon were packing supplies today to ship to the tsunami victims. The federal government is committing about $15 million at this point. That's just a start for the hundreds of thousands of people who are now homeless because of the tsunamis.

And the U.N. is getting its relief system in motion as well. It'll be an enormous task.

Joining me now for his only live network TV is Jan Egeland, the U.N. under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.

Appreciate you joining us. I know it's an extraordinarily busy time for you. What are you doing right now? What is the U.N. doing? What is the need?

JAN EGELAND, SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS, UNITED NATIONS: The U.N. is now going into high gear. We have involved all our humanitarian organizations, all the development organizations, our country teams in all of these affected countries.

We've sent expert teams to all of the affected countries. We are assessing now the damage, and we are coordinating the international relief with the massive national and local effort.

The biggest effort is done by the heroes in the local municipalities and the local organizations and the local Red Crescent and Red Cross organizations, and we try to help them from the U.N.

COOPER: How long does it take the U.N. to mobilize, to actually get assets on ground in place, you know, meeting the needs of people?

EGELAND: Well, we sent our first people there Sunday, hours after the tsunami hit. We have given local relief immediately. We have hundreds of local staff active in the relief effort. And now we are seeing hundreds of relief flights coming in from member states of the U.N. And we try to coordinate that.

One of the problems is that outgoing tourists, people fleeing the scene, are clogging up airports, as we also have relief flights coming in. It will be a massive undertaking to get the relief effective.

COOPER: Months, months of rebuilding?

EGELAND: Months of rebuilding because remember the two waves of destruction. First the tsunami takes tens of thousands of lives. There are still thousands and thousands there missing. We haven't even been able to reach all of the affected communities in Sumatra, which are the closest.

And then the second wave is the destruction caused by infected water, pollution, the total destruction of the local societies that will lead to epidemics, disease, and so on, unless our relief effort is effective.

COOPER: Earlier at your press conference you said it's going to cost billions of dollars. You said rich nations -- you didn't point out anyone in particular. You didn't say the U.S. You didn't say Europe. But you just said rich nations are being, I think, stingy was the word you used.

You don't think rich nations are paying their fair share?

EGELAND: No, I don't think so. I have been in relief work now in non-governmental organizations and the Red Cross and the U.N. for many years. It bothers me that we, the rich nations, are not becoming more generous the more rich we become.

The average rich nation pays 0.2 percent of its national income in international solidarity, in international assistance. We keep 99.98 percent to ourselves, on average. I don't think that's very generous when we see the images that you have just seen today.

COOPER: Are saying richer nations should pay a much higher proportion?

EGELAND: A much higher proportion. I mean, usually in the old days in many religions, you should give one-10th of your surplus. We give much less than one percent.

COOPER: Well, there's certainly a lot of need right now. Jan Egeland, we do appreciate you joining us. Thank you very much.

EGELAND: Thank you.

COOPER: Joining me now on the phone is Major General Gary North, director of operations for the U.S. Pacific command for the Air Force. Major General North is directing the U.S. relief efforts.

Major General, what is the latest? What can you tell us about your efforts?

MAJ. GEN. GARY NORTH, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, U.S. PACIFIC COMMAND, AIR FORCE: Well, Anderson, what U.S. Pacific command is doing right now is cooperating with our collective government efforts.

As you know, the U.S. government has been asked to provide disaster relief to the governments of Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Thailand to mitigate the effects of the recent earthquakes and tsunamis. And here at U.S. Pacific command, we're supporting the U.S. government, DOD efforts in the region.

COOPER: So are you flying? I mean, have you been able to fly supplies in at this point? And how many flights are -- when do you get up and running?

NORTH: We currently have one P-3 surveillance aircraft that is in Thailand. And we have five other surveillance aircraft that are en route, or will be en route shortly. As well, we are marshalling and loading up to six C-130 cargo aircraft that will come out of Japan with relief supplies and humanitarian efforts that we hope to have inside in the next 24 hours.

COOPER: So you're hoping within the next 24 hours to get those C-130s down range or on the ground?

NORTH: That's correct.

COOPER: All right, well it's good work that you're doing there at the U.S. Pacific Command, Major General. We do appreciate you joining us. I know it's a busy time for you.

360 next, a familiar face from "The Oprah Winfrey Show" actually swept out to sea. His remarkable story ahead.

Also tonight, numbers beyond meaning: 22,000 dead. We'll try to get our minds around the meaning of all of that. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: The strange thing about disaster like this, it strikes everyone. Young and old, rich and poor, famous and not.

Fans of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" know this man, Nate Berkus. He's a regular guest. He's an interior designer and tonight, he is a man very lucky to be alive.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) OPRAH WINFREY, HOST, "THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW": Our favorite decorator.

COOPER (voice-over): He's Oprah Winfrey's load of decor, 33- year-old interior designer Nate Berkus. In 2003, Berkus, made famous by his regular appearance by Oprah, was named one of "People" magazine's sexiest men alive. Tonight, he's lucky just to be alive.

NATE BERKUS, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: I heard a loud noise. All of a sudden the roof was ripped off of the cottage and my friend and I were taken out to sea. Just taken in currents that were so strong with debris and cars and animals and people tearing by.

COOPER: Berkus was vacationing at Arugam Bay in Sri Lankan's east coast when the tsunami hit. As many as 10,000 people died on the island.

BERKUS: There was absolutely no warning. I was asleep in a beachfront cottage.

COOPER: Nate and a friend, photographer Fernando Bengoechea, were quickly carried out to sea by the torrents of swirling water.

BERKUS: Really against that kind of force of nature, there was nothing any of us could do.

COOPER: The tsunami hit the resort at about 9 a.m. Berkus and Bengoechea were separated by the currents.

BERKUS: We were able to hang onto a telephone pole with a mattress wedged between us for literally 30 seconds. There was a calm in the storm and then another wave hit. Both of us were torn away from the phone pole.

I finally climbed up to a roof of a home, because the water pushed me behind the home. And sat out the rest of the waves on top of this -- this structure.

COOPER: Berkus, who started his own design firm at age 24, is based in Chicago. Last night, he slept in a field in Sri Lanka with about 50 other tsunami survivors.

BERKUS: I'm sitting here with nothing. No passport, no money, no anything in shorts that somebody gave me. We desperately, desperately need help from the government here. We're without water. We're without food and many of us are injured.

COOPER: Now, like thousands of other displaced tourist, he's trying to make his way back home.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: And Nate Berkus' friend, Fernando Bengoechea, the last we heard, was still missing.

If you want to help the tsunami victims, you can go to our web site, CNN.com. There's news about all the help on the way, and links to some reputable relief agencies.

"LARRY KING" is up next on the top of the hour with more on the tsunami disaster. Let's take a look -- Larry.

LARRY KING, HOST, "LARRY KING LIVE": Anderson, thanks. In from vacation in for this incredible story.

We're going to have top meteorologist experts in this area, people from the environmental labs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Foundation and Administration. We'll have a seismologist with us, as well as survivors, people from the Red Cross, nurses and the like.

As we get the reporters, the death toll approaches 23,000, and as was said earlier on your show, Anderson, more are expected. This is one of the untold great tragedies of our time.

COOPER: And so many stories to tell. Larry, we'll be watching tonight at 9 p.m. in just about five minutes. Thanks, Larry.

Coming up next on 360, hundreds of thousands homeless and more than 22,000 killed, as Larry just said. The numbers are just hard to imagine. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Finally tonight, taking the unimaginable to "The Nth Degree."

There's no way to comprehend the story we've spent the last two hours trying to tell. Ordinarily, details help. In this case, though, the details only made what's happened harder to grasp, much harder.

This is a scale, these are numbers the brain is simply not equipped to take in. In South Asia up and down the coastlines of five countries that largely are coastline, because they're islands or peninsula, in countless villages and towns and cities in sight of the sea, tens of thousand are dead, hundreds of thousands homeless and many, many are missing.

Entire places are missing, swallowed by the tide. A whole world is awash now after a series of dreadful waves 20 and 30 and 40 feet high, spawned by a monstrous undersea quake.

Cars have changed places with boats, the former bobbing, the latter high and dry.

On some of the most famously beautiful beaches of the world, not shells but bodies are being collected, and those who are dry and safe are dazed and grief stricken.

It comes to this: 2004 is not quite over yet but we know already for an absolute fact how it's going to be remembered. For millions of us, for generations this will forever be the evil year the sea rose up and took away too much and too many. I'm Anderson Cooper. Thanks for joining this special edition of 360. CNN's coverage continues now with "LARRY KING LIVE."

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired December 27, 2004 - 19:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, HOST: Good evening from New York. I'm Anderson Cooper.
More than 22,000 dead, and the body count is climbing.

360 starts now.

The wave of destruction, tens of thousands swallowed alive. The death toll still rising. Tonight, live reports from the worst-hit areas and chilling stories of survival against the sea.

The crisis continues. Decaying bodies, contaminated water, and now, fears of an epidemic. The latest what's being done to prevent a new catastrophe.

Tens of thousands without food, water or shelter. How soon will help reach those in need, and what you can do to help.

Why was there no warning? Even with hours to prepare, why weren't more alerted about the deadly waves? Tonight a 360 investigation into what could have been done to save thousands of lives.

And could it happen here? Is America vulnerable to tsunamis? Tonight, the hard facts about these killer waves.

ANNOUNCER: This is a special two-hour edition of ANDERSON COOPER 360, Wave of Destruction.

COOPER: Good evening again.

If you ever wondered why the ancients feared and worshipped the sea, why they humbly offered it their prayers, their sacrifices, this is why.

The sea, propelled as it was by a massive earthquake yesterday in South Asia, can rise up in great and terrible waves and wipe away whole villages.

At this hour, CNN has confirmed more than 22,000 deaths, and that toll is certain to rise. In 10 countries, but most of all in Sri Lanka and India and Indonesia and Thailand, there is chaos now, and grief, and widespread disbelief among those who survived that they survived, and that so very many others did not.

Here's what is happening right now. Relief efforts and evacuations and airlifts are under way. Epidemic disease is now a very real threat in some places. Tourists from America and many other countries are trying to make their ways home. And hundreds thousands of others left without homes, without anything but their lives.

This is a special two-hour edition of 360, and we are covering all the angles tonight.

We'll follow the course of devastation with live reports from the hardest-hit areas, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand. Soon the sun will be rising there, and there are so many people unsure what this new day will bring.

We're also going to be investigating why there was no warning in places that should have had at least an hour's notice of the killer waves coming.

Many questions to answer tonight, many stories to tell you.

We begin with a man on vacation with his family. CNN Beijing cameraman Brad Olsen was in Phuket, Thailand, getting some R&R when the tsunami hit. He'd been on the beach the day before and had gotten sunburned, so he decided to take his family to the jungle instead. That decision might just have saved him and his family their lives.

He's still in Phuket. He's been working the story for us. He joins us now live by phone.

Good to have you on the program. I'm glad you're safe.

You've been speaking with eyewitnesses all day since this tsunami hit. How did they describe it?

BRAD OLSEN, CNN BEIJING CAMERAMAN: They said it was just massive. The -- most people were standing on the beach, and then they just heard screaming and yelling. They looked up and saw a wall of water coming at them.

Most of the survivors managed to run to higher ground, and those that didn't manage to run to higher ground were simply washed away. That's what they said. Some of the people who sucked out to sea on the small island where I was at managed to swim back, but they said it took them typically 20 minutes, and that's a long time to swim if you're not a good swimmer.

COOPER: Brad, it looks so calm and peaceful behind you now. When you got down to the beach for the first time after the waves hit, I mean, what struck you most?

OLSEN: That it was so calm and peaceful, like there were a few people standing around, and it's obvious a large wave had come through. And there were just people standing around on the shore where I was. And the thing that struck me was that the hundreds of small boats that had been ferrying tourists back and forth between the small islands around the Onang (ph) Resort where I was, were just gone. You know, there were a few smashed up on the shore. But otherwise, there were none, and previously there had been hundreds of them.

COOPER: Brad, I know you were there with your family. You got them safely on a plane back to Bangkok. You're staying in the area to work. I know you took a helicopter to Phi Phi, which is an island off Phuket, an island that really didn't get any rescue workers for those first several hours. How bad was it there?

OLSEN: It was really, really bad. We hit -- it seemed that the tourist village there was at the end of a bay. And the bay, I think, channeled the force of the wave through the tourist village. And the wave penetrated very deeply, probably a couple hundred meters, and just flattened it.

The survivors there said that, again, a wall of water just came screaming through the village, knocking down trees in its wake, and anyone who wasn't able to get out of its way was crushed, basically, under debris and tons of water.

One man I talked to who was helping organize the survivors' relief effort said he managed to survive by climbing a water tower. And he'd brought up a couple other people with him.

But basically, I think the people who survived were just lucky. Either you were in the right place or you were in the wrong place.

COOPER: You know, Brad, I know you can't see the pictures that we're looking at right now. We're looking at pictures of people loaded into helicopters. They look like Thai government helicopters or medical evacuation helicopters. But what we're seeing is, it looks like a lot of sort of just the tourists themselves, the local people, who are doing the rescue working, who are carrying these litters with bodies on them. What sort of help are people getting there?

OLSEN: Well, for the first six hours, they said, there was no help whatsoever. They tried to land some helicopters, but they just couldn't get them in on the beach. And four heroic survivors organized the rest of them into a rescue brigade. They managed to clear debris off some tennis courts to make helicopter landing pads.

They set up a triage center for the wounded, the injured, and they set up stretcher brigades, using doors from hotels to stretch -- ferry people from the devastation area into the evacuation area.

They said they were able to operate for about two hours before sunset, and the helicopters couldn't land anymore. And then they had to carry all the wounded back up into the hills, into the jungle, in case another tsunami came.

The next morning, the helicopters resumed, and the rescue operations resumed. When I was there, I asked them how many they'd gotten out, and they said about 150, many of them very serious, and they were quite pleased that none of them had actually died while in their care. They did a terrific job organizing themselves.

COOPER: And Brad...

OLSEN: And if it hadn't been for those four leaders (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- Yes?

COOPER: Brad, in Phuket now, I mean, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) you were saying, I'm sorry to interrupt you, because there's a delay here. You were saying if it hadn't been for those four leaders, a lot more people would have been injured. I'm sure that's true.

What does Phuket like right now where you are? I mean, as I said, it looks very calm behind you. What do you see around you?

OLSEN: Well, behind me up on the hillside, it is very, very clear. There's a lot of yachts sitting in the harbor here. Most of the big boats like that weren't really affected.

But if you get down onto the shoreline, you can see that a massive wave has rolled through. And then if you go down into the village, the tourist villages along the beach, there's a lot of devastation on the seafront.

I think here, the wave didn't penetrate as deeply as on Phi Phi Island, because the development is a lot more dense, and it's made out of concrete and rebar. So it went very deep up into the streets, but it's not as deep, not as many buildings were destroyed, I think, as on Phi Phi Island, where I spent most of my time looking around.

COOPER: Well, Brad, I'm glad you were able to get your family out. I'm glad that you and your family are safe and sound. And we appreciate all the work you've been doing. Brad Olsen, thanks very much, on his vacation in Phuket in Thailand.

Now, more than 1,000 miles west of where Brad is in Phuket, poor villagers and well-to-do tourists in Sri Lanka were just waking up when the monster wave hit there. Now, more than 10,000, both the poor and the wealthy, were killed on that island, and hundreds of thousands more -- and that is a conservative estimate, I should tell you -- hundreds of thousands are without homes, or, for that matter, services of any kind right now.

CNN's Hugh Riminton is in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, at a church that is serving as a refuge. He joins us now by phone.

Hugh, what's the situation where you are?

HUGH RIMINTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's just approaching daybreak here, Anderson. This is the second night that they've been out. About a million people are away from their homes, displaced from their homes. About a quarter of that number, 250,000, there or thereabouts, really have no homes to return to. They're in these coastal areas that have just been utterly devastated.

And the rest are staying away from the coastline, plainly fearing a return of the waves.

Some people have started, just even in the course of last night, started to drift back towards their places. Maybe their fear is starting to drift off a little bit, but it's still very acute.

COOPER: How far -- you're in Colombo, the capital. How far are you from the areas that were hardest hit? And how hard is it to get to those areas, to communicate with those areas?

RIMINTON: Well, the area that was hit, Colombo -- sorry, Sri Lanka is an island rather like a teardrop, a sort of an oval type of a shape. There was really only about a quarter of the island that wasn't affected by the tsunami, and that was up in the northwestern corner.

So most of the island was, in fact, hit. The hardest hit in terms of taking the brunt of the tsunami was on the southeastern side. Perhaps by luck, that is one of the less-populated areas. The most densely populated area, along the western coast, where Colombo, the capital, is, but there have been plenty of deaths north and south of Colombo, particularly south, and on its way round.

There is one town, a town called Ampara (ph), in which, according to the extremely conservative police numbers, 1,516 people died, are confirmed dead, in that one small town of Ampara the southeastern edge. There are, in the immediate surrounding district, 120,000 people on police figures that are without homes. And that just gives an indication, one little snapshot, of one part of this island.

COOPER: Hugh, you know, I mean, it's a big story like this, and you were -- as you're speaking, we're looking at some of these pictures. We just saw a man carrying a small child out of wreckage. Clearly the child had been killed. People looking at their devastated homes trying to figure out what to do next.

The questions now will become, why wasn't there warning? Sri Lanka had some two hours from the time the earthquake hit to the time the waves actually hit the island of Sri Lanka. Clearly, some people must have known this tsunami was coming. Why weren't the people in the beach areas told? Any ideas, Hugh?

RIMINTON: Look, the only thing I could say to that, I'm sure there will be quite a deal of considered inquiry into this as time goes by, is that this is -- it's difficult to apply, if you like, Western notions of warnings, and civil defense procedures in what is still a third-world country, and it's still emerging from a generation of civil warfare. Its infrastructure is not first-world infrastructure.

The other thing to remember is that it's a fair distance away from the actual epicenter. They might have imagined that they were -- that nothing that dramatic would happen this far away.

The other thing, of course, is that tidal waves move at tremendous speed in big water. So they slow down and rise as they come to shallow water, as we know, and that's when you start getting the height of them. But they can move at up to 400 miles an hour across deep water.

I don't know how much warning they had, how they would have got that information across in this extremely decentralized society -- it's very much a village-based society -- and how you'd have got people, you know, warned to get up off the beaches. And even how they'd respond to it, because when the first people, even in the resorts, when they saw the first waves, lots of people's reaction was to go down to the beach and have a look at these strange waves coming in.

COOPER: Well, Hugh, you raise some good points there. We're going to continue looking at this question, though, a little bit later on in the hour. Hugh Riminton in Colombo, Sri Lanka, right now, stay safe. Appreciate you joining us for that.

Hugh was talking about the speed of this tsunami. Let's put that in perspective for a moment, because the speed is just extraordinary. When it hit the land, it actually had slowed down. Scientists say it likely was going about 30 to 40 miles per hour.

But listen to this. When it was traveling across the Indian Ocean, it was going about 12.5 times faster than that, about 500 miles per hour.

In perspective, the typical cruising speed for a Boeing 737 jet is 530 miles per hour. Some perspective.

360 next, the wave of destruction. We'll take you live to Phuket, Thailand, to hear from the survivors who made it through the devastation.

Plus, a little boy lost and found, his mother still missing. Find out how his family identified him from half a world away. A happy ending to this little boy's tale.

Also tonight, desperate rescue efforts, and corpses piled on the beaches. The latest on what's being done to prevent an outbreak of disease.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: It is hard to imagine.

The enormous story of the Asian tsunami, in the end, really, comes down to a great number of small stories, the stories of individuals, men and women and children like you just saw in those pictures who saw and survived what so many others did not.

We're covering all the angles on this tragedy tonight in this two-hour special edition of 360.

CNN's Aneesh Raman has found some of those remarkable small stories of survival to tell.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The moment a tropical resort became a scene of horror, a massive wave, one of many, roaring into Patong (ph) Beach on Phuket Island, an Australian tourist on a rooftop capturing the beginning of a catastrophe, a wall of water engulfing buildings, surging into the streets, carrying people, vehicles, and more, one snapshot of a disaster that has ravaged a continent.

Not far away, 26-year-old Belgian tourist Ilyana Livieu (ph) was among thousands of vacationers enjoying a break in the tropics.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I was trying to spend the day on the beach. And suddenly, all the water went away, and everyone was just looking at it, and saying, Where is all the water? And then suddenly, it was all coming at us, and people just start to run and scream.

RAMAN: In seconds, pristine tranquility turned into a hellish fight to stay alive.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The building was collapsing, so I had to jump to another building. And then a second wave came in, a third wave came in, and people injured, I saw dead bodies floating. And so then, at a moment, we decided with a couple of people just to run for it.

RAMAN (on camera): As tsunami waves devoured the coastlines of Phuket and Phi Phi Island, tourists like Ilyana desperately scrambled for higher ground. Whatever remained on the shore now evidence of severe destruction.

(voice-over): Destruction Ilyana avoided. She is now at this hospital, along with hundreds of other survivors from at least 20 countries, all in shock.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I hope to be back for a new year with my family. We'll never forget this Christmas.

RAMAN: But at least, she has somewhere to go. Many who live here are still missing family members and have no home left.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RAMAN: And Anderson, as we began this, the second full day of massive rescue and relief operations, that is the dual challenge for the Thai government, helping these tourists who desperately want to get home, as well as helping the locals who desperately need to rebuild.

COOPER: Aneesh, was there a warning in Thailand? There was about an hour, from my understanding, from the time the earthquake hit off the coast of Indonesia, off the coast of Sumatra, to when it actually hit Thailand. Did anybody know this thing was coming there?

RAMAN: Nobody that we spoke to. And the other thing to keep in mind is, really, to get into the mind of the tourists that were here on Phuket Island. They're in a foreign land, they're amidst a language they don't speak. And the transition for them was quite eerie. They're here on a holiday retreat the day after Christmas, tranquility. These beaches are widely regarded as some of the best in the region. And in a matter of moments, destruction just came at them, 30- foot-high waves, 30 to 40 miles an hour.

The stories that I spoke with -- the people on the ground, just hours after these waves had come, I was still in Bangkok, were chilling. The people on the island at that moment just had no idea what to do. They didn't know if more waves were coming. They didn't know where to go. At that point, severe structural damage was still a possibility. They weren't sure whether to stay in the hotel they were at or whether to continue going forward.

They didn't really know the lay of the land. And the locals here had never seen anything like this, so they were as petrified as the tourists. They were running -- they were some of the earliest running to higher ground. So really, everyone caught off guard here, Anderson.

COOPER: The grandson of the king of Thailand killed as well by the water.

Aneesh Raman, thanks very much for your story. Appreciate it.

Hans Bergstrom of Sweden is a survivor too, but he cannot tell his own story. He's only 20 months old. That's him. In Phuket, in the chaos of the tsunami, Hans was separated from his parents. A couple took him to the local hospital. Shortly after his picture was posted on the Internet, he was identified by relatives and reunited with his father and grandfather.

It is a small story of success, his is, but Hans Bergstrom's mother and grandmother have yet to be located.

Around the world, aid groups are rushing to help victims of the tsunami. The International Red Cross has launched an emergency appeal for immediate relief. There are other aid groups as well, such as UNICEF, Christian Aid, and CARE, that are also sending help. MedAir, which provides emergency assistance to international travelers, is making its clinics and doctors available to all tsunami victims.

Carol Guanieri (ph) is a nurse and manager of the MedAir clinic in Bangkok, Thailand. She joins me now on the phone with an update on the situation there.

Appreciate you joining us, Carol. What kind of injuries have you been seeing?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're seeing a lot of people with fractures, a lot of people with wounds, and wounds that are going to become infected. We also are seeing a lot of people that are drinking -- that drank a lot of the water, so they're having lung congestion, they're having problems breathing. Those are the main things that we're seeing.

COOPER: You're saying you're seeing people with wounds. Were they hit by debris that was being carried along in the water, or, I mean, were they slammed against something? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, again, they were hit by the debris, they're badly bruised, they've got bad cuts, the wounds got infected. Yes, they were running away, they were running into trees, into cars hit them, pieces of wood from floating from houses, yes. They've been badly hit.

COOPER: I'm told there's no clear number at this point of how many people are walking into hospitals for treatment. How are local hospitals, I mean, dealing with this onslaught of injured? Can they, can they deal with it?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know, they're overwhelmed, but they're actually doing a great job. They have doctors and nurses from all over the country coming down to help them. The (UNINTELLIGIBLE) are coming in, the local communities are doing a great job. They're having donations. You know, people are bringing food in, clothing for the people. Everybody is really pulling together to help out through this crisis.

COOPER: How do you get to islands? I mean, Ko Phi Phi, some of these other islands off Phuket, which, you know, a lot of travelers go to, a lot of tourists go to, particularly they want to go to the ones that are farther out, that less tourists go to, so it's more of an isolated area. Are, are, I mean, do you have a sense of everyone who's out there, who, are, is everyone's needs being met? Or are there still people you simply can't account for, people that are still in desperate need?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, there's -- yes, the people that are here are just devastated. A lot of them are still missing family (UNINTELLIGIBLE) people. They've lost everything, they lost their passports, they lost all their documentation, they lost all their clothes. They're just devastated. They really (UNINTELLIGIBLE) really working hard to deal with everything.

COOPER: Carol Guanieri, we appreciate you joining us. I know it's been a very busy day for you, and we do appreciate you taking the time with us. Thanks very much, carol.

Asia has seen more than its share of deadly earthquakes. In fact, the top three deadliest earthquakes since 1900 have all been in that region. Here's a 360 fast fact. The third-deadliest earthquake was in Tsinghai, China, May 1927, 200,000 people were killed in a 7.9- magnitude quake. The second-deadliest, the same number of people killed in an 8.6 quake in Gansu, China, in December 1920.

And the deadliest, a magnitude 7.5 quake hit Tangshan, China, in July 1976. It killed at least 255,000 people.

Coming up next on 360, the wave of destruction. Right now, desperate rescue efforts under way. So many still missing, so many of them little children. We'll go live to Sri Lanka for the latest.

Also ahead, why weren't more people warned? It took some two hours for the waves to hit Sri Lanka. Some are saying that was enough time to give local authorities a heads-up. Why didn't they get that warning? Some tough questions that need answers ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Our special edition of 360 continues.

It's so hard to imagine what it must have been like for those people unlucky enough to be on the beach when the waves began. After all, it seemed like an ordinary weekend day. Some tourists were snorkeling, others walked along the shore, kids were playing games on the water's edge.

"TIME" magazine's Michael Elliott was on the golf course in Phuket, Thailand, about 350 yards away from shore, when the first wave crashed down. I spoke with him earlier by phone.

Michael, when the wave first hit, you were close by, but you really didn't know anything had happened.

MICHAEL ELLIOTT, "TIME" MAGAZINE: I had not the first idea, Anderson. I was about 300 yards, I suppose, I guess, from the beach. I was playing golf. It was a glorious morning, a few puffy high white clouds, beautiful blue sky, lots of sunshine. And some kids came running onto the golf course, very upset and very agitated, saying that something had happened down on the beach.

COOPER: And when you first went down to that beach, shortly after the waves had hit, what, I mean, what did you see? What did you smell? What did you hear?

ELLIOTT: The first thing that happened was that the sea got sucked out, hundreds of meters. I was talking to a guy who I had become friendly with, he ran a beach bar, and he said, you know, he suddenly saw the sea disappear, until he saw exposed rocks that he had no idea that were there.

So, I mean, they all knew that something weird was happening, but they'd never seen it before. The sea disappeared so quickly (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that fish were stranded on dry land, hopping from rock (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to rock (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

Then the waves started coming in, quite slowly at first, which I think enabled some people, at least on this beach, to kind of rescue their belongings. Then they came in faster and faster and bigger and bigger. And at least in this part of Phuket, in southern Thailand, there were four big waves that really did the damage.

I tried to measure kind of how high the water had come in the villages that I was at. And I would guess it was somewhere between eight and 10 feet above what you would expect as the normal high-water mark.

COOPER: And were families, were people -- I mean, after the waves had hit, were they stumbling around trying to...

ELLIOTT: Absolutely. Absolutely. No, I mean, people were very, very scared. People were very, very shaken. And then by the afternoon, you know, people were kind of trying to do what they could to rescue what belongings that they could, to kind of identify how they could make places safe.

But, I mean, you know, I'm talking about houses that just disappeared, you know, that were just kind of reduced to, you know, a few twisted pieces of rebar and corrugated iron and bamboo thatch. You -- there really wasn't anything left in a lot of cases.

The force of this was extraordinary. I mean, you saw telegraph poles (UNINTELLIGIBLE) actually just been snapped off like that. I saw a boat that had been (UNINTELLIGIBLE) on top of a couple of cars. I saw another car that had just kind of been up-ended, you know, against a telegraph pole.

And you know, one had this extraordinary sense of amazing power, just kind of huge gullies kind of gouged out of the (UNINTELLIGIBLE). You know, if then went kind of 300 or 400 yards further inland, you wouldn't have known that anything had happened, had happened at all, that was the really freaky thing.

I've never in my life seen this division between total mayhem, literally on one side of a road, and kind of complete normality on the other.

COOPER: Remarkable. Michael Elliott, I'm glad you're safe and your family is safe as well, and you were able to get out to Singapore. Thank you for joining us, Michael.

ELLIOTT: Thanks, Anderson. Take care.

COOPER: In Sri Lanka, shipments of food, tents and medical supplies already on their way. Joining me now on the phone from Colombo, Sri Lanka is Alastair Gordon-Gibson of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Alastair, hank you for joining us. I realize now, there are hundreds of thousands in many of the countries without homes right now, without knowing what this next day is going to bring. How worried are you about the possible outbreaks of disease? Of epidemics?

ALASTAIR GORDON-GIBSON, INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF RED CROSS & RED CRESCENT SOCIETIES: Clearly that's the initial concern for all of us now. Numbers are still uncertain of those affected. But as you say, it's affected a million people, and numbers of displaced are still uncertain. But the relief and rescue phase will continue for a week or two more. We're very concerned now about the risk of diarrheal diseases and contaminated water which could be affecting those population affected.

COOPER: How does that happen? Without going into too much detail. There is simply no place for people to relieve themselves, and it mixes with drinking water? How is disease spread in these conditions that people are living in?

GORDON-GIBSON: Well, Sri Lanka in particular has a huge coastal line. Vast parts of the island have been affected on the east, west and southern coast of the island. And many communities are still submerged, 30 or 40 villages are still underwater. Now, the body count has not yet been established, therefore, there's a lot of dead and decaying bodies still in the water, the water with the population itself is contaminated by fecal deposits. So the risks, potential risk of diarrheal disease is very high. So we're take steps. We've launched an appeal and had good response, and we have medical teams flying in tomorrow, and we're bringing in medical kits which should be able to cope with immediate effects of up to 100,000 people for two months. So we hope that will go some way to helping the situation.

COOPER: Alastair, as far as you know, was there any warning for people in Sri Lanka? Did the central government know about this? Did they have any word there had been an earthquake, it's possible the tsunami is coming?

GORDON-GIBSON: No, I think it caught everybody by surprise, not just the government. There had been reports in some of the press about some tremors earlier in the week, but frankly, Sri Lanka is not on an earthquake zone, it's not a natural disaster that Sri Lanka was used to in the past. Therefore it did catch everybody by surprise and other government has acknowledged that. But they're not the only who were ones caught by surprise, and I think it's hard not to help trying to mitigate the effects of this very, very big casualty on the people.

COOPER: Alastair Gordon-Gibson, appreciate you joining us. Thank you very much.

If you'd like to contribute to the relief effort, here's contact effort for just some of the organizations providing assistance. There are of course others. You can call the American Red Cross, International Response Fund at 1-800-HELP NOW or you can contact UNICEF at its Web site, www.unicef.org. Also, Doctors Without Borders can be reached by calling 1-888-392-0392.

The wave of destruction. Tens of thousands swallowed alive. The death toll still rising.

Why was there no warning? Even with hours to prepare, why weren't more alerted about the deadly waves?

And could it happen here? Is America vulnerable to tsunamis? Tonight, the hard facts about these killer waves. This special edition of 360 continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Get inside! Get inside! Come on, guys!

OK, I'm getting frightened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Just one view of the devastating tsunamis that hit land. Tourists caught in the wave of destruction. Welcome back to this special edition of ANDERSON COOPER 360. We're looking in-depth what has happened and what will happen the next several days in the Ring of Fire. Dozens of countries in Southeast Asia affected by this tsunami. More than 22,000 people have died, not quite half of those in Sri Lanka, more than 6,000 in India, more than 4,000 in Indonesia. But in all those place, the tolls are rising and hundreds of thousands are homeless and epidemics are a grave threat. It is an enormous story, terrible story, in this special two hour edition of the show, we're going to bring you as much of the scope as we can from the region and some amazing tales of survival.

Let's set the scene. It began on the floor of the sea two of the vast plates which the continents sit bumped into each other off the island of Sumatra. This started a chain reaction, a tremendous rolling energy that pushed everything along before it, including whole oceans of water.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): When the waves came, there was no warning, just walls of water, slamming ashore, leaving death and destruction in their wake. This was the scene in Thailand, at beach resort Phuket. The waves were created by the most powerful earthquake to hit the planet in 40 years. It struck off the coast of Sumatra, 9.0 on the Richter scale. Indonesia was hit first, but the waves spread far and fast. Stunned hotel guests captured the tsunami's impact on home videos.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my God. Look it's coming in now right over the swimming pool.

Get inside! Get inside! Come on, guys!

COOPER: The island of Sri Lanka, off the coast of India, was hit head on by the brunt of the waves which took only two hours to travel the 1,000 miles from the earthquake's epicenter.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There was this roaring noise, and looked through the glass doors and this torrent of muddy water came down the steps and through the doors. It pushed away into a play room glass doors were smashed by the water and I just couldn't keep my footing. I was very frightened.

COOPER: The water carried away everything in its path. Buses filled with passenger, trapped inside, cars, buildings, those who couldn't scramble to hire ground climbed atop trees or vehicles. Some were simply swept away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was just one long wave across horizon, and it looked quite small from the distance. As it got near you could sort of -- It's quite a big wave. And then as it hit the front, it swept the whole road along the beach, flooded it completely, took trees out, everything, took cars, motorbikes out.

COOPER: For thousands, there was no escape. In seconds, entire families were gone caught in a force triggered by an earthquake estimated as being as powerful as a million atomic bombs of the size dropped on Japan in the Second World War. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was absolutely no warning. I was asleep in a beachfront cottage. I heard a loud noise. All of a sudden roof was ripped off of the cottage, and my friend and I were taken out to say, just taking out in currents were so strong, we were seeing cars and animals and people, tearing by, we were able to hang onto a telephone pole where a mattress wedged between us for literally 30 seconds. There was a calm in the storm, and another wave hit. I finally climbed up to a roof of a home, because the water pushed me behind the home, and sat out the rest of the waves on top of this structure which luckily held. But many people have died. There are a lot of us are injured here. I'm very scraped up, but luckily I'm okay, and I'm still missing my friend.

COOPER: For those lucky enough to survive, the aftermath was equally overwhelming. Hospitals struggled with a massive influx of injured. And the bodies were everywhere, lying in the streets, caught in trees. As the dead were recovered, they were lined up on sidewalks and laid out in the few buildings that weren't destroyed. Tourists streamed out of damaged areas as rescue workers streamed in.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When they -- if you like enormity of it all came in and started swelling around hotel and it was furniture and people running screaming and literally for their lives, shattering of glass, the power which is just absolutely terrifying.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

COOPER: Well, the power of the tsunami came from the most powerful earthquake in 40 years. Here's a fast fact for you. This weekend's 9.0 quake tied a 1952 quake in Russia for the fourth strongest since 1900. In the number three spot, a 9.1 quake that hit Alaska in March of 1957. The second most powerful a 9.2 that hit Prince William Sound in Alaska in March 1964. 125 people killed there. And the most powerful earthquake a magnitude 9.5 that hit Chile in May 1960 killing 2000 people.

One survivor, a fisherman from India, described to the "New York Times" the panic the reaction of the tsunami and devastation, saying, quote, "everything was running, everybody was running but God saves little." An act of God say some, a terrible reality of science to others. Joining us from Washington to discuss exactly how this happened is Jim Devine, senior science adviser of the United States Geological Survey. Jim, thanks for being with us.

JIM DEVINE, SENIOR SCIENCE ADVISER USGS: Good evening.

COOPER: Tell us about the seismic activity that caused this tsunami to happen.

DEVINE: Well, as you mentioned early, the origin of this earthquake comes from the collision of two major plates on the earth's surface. The Indian Plate trying to push in under the Burma Plate, and that creates a huge amount of energy release, and when that occurs underwater, it generates a large amount energy that gets carried away by waves.

COOPER: What kind of force are we talking about, 9.0?

DEVINE: Oh, a 9.0 is a very large amount of energy. I heard you earlier say a million atomic bomb, it could easily be that. 9s occurred once a decade or so. So it's just a very large amount energy being released from the earth at one time.

COOPER: And as it approaches the shore, it slows down, as the water grows in height, but when it's traveling in the ocean, this thing is moving at some 500 miles an hour, I saw?

DEVINE: Yes, it travels through the ocean very efficiently. The waves move along, all the way across ocean until it hits an obstruction, when it gets to shallower water, it slows down, and so the energy has to go somewhere, and it goes into the height of the wave, and that's why the waves get so high, even though they're not seen in the deep ocean.

COOPER: You know, over and over we heard tonight, no warning, there was no warning. I understand in Indonesia it hit in five on ten minutes in Sumatra. In Sri Lanka they had a two hour lead time from the time the earthquake first hit to the time the waves started to come. Did somebody drop the ball here?

DEVINE: Well, in one respect, there's no ball to drop. Tsunamis in the Indian Ocean are fairly rare, in fact they're quite rare. And one of this size, I don't think it's ever occurred in historical time. So there was just no system in place to convey a message that's so rare and so infrequent, that there's just no way to handle it.

COOPER: But the USGS does -- you guys monitor this, you knew the earthquake happened and you have a procedure for this. Who do you call to alert them?

DEVINE: Yes, we have a call-down list of the key officials in this country and other international organizations. And we notified those people immediately after locating the event.

COOPER: The State Department, the White House?

DEVINE: The State Department, AID, the White House. U.N. organizations.

COOPER: And do you tell them that tsunami is possible, or you do you just say 9.0 earthquake hit. What do you say?

DEVINE: No, we can only say it's possible. You don't know whether it's actually occurred until the first tide gauge records it. Then you know it's occurred and you get some feeling how big it is s.

COOPER: Where was the first tide gauge?

DEVINE: In that part of the world, I do not know, because there is not a system to deal with it in terms of immediately notifying people about a tsunami. That exists in Pacific Ocean, but unfortunately not in the Indian Ocean.

COOPER: Interesting, Jim Devine, appreciate you joining us, thanks very much.

DEVINE: Happy to be here.

COOPER: 360 next, there was ample time between earthquake and deadly waves. Again the question, why no warning? Another perspective on that. We like to look at all the angles on 360. That when we come back.

Plus the horror in the words of those who experienced it and saw it for themselves. Be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Just some of the images call the on home video. Survivors are e-mailing harrowing stories to cnn.com. Also we're going to read you some of them in just a moment. Many are saying there's no warning the tsunami was coming. But there are significant periods of time between when the earthquake struck and when the giant waves hit land, depending on land fall. So why no massive alert? Turns out there's no tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean as you just heard, as there is for the Pacific. My next guest says there's a lot of blame to go around. Douglas Mulhall is the author of "Our Molecular Future: How Nanotechnology, Robotics, Genetics and Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Our World." Douglas joins us now. Appreciate you joining us. Douglas, you believe many of the deaths could have been prevented, how?

DOUGLAS MULHALL, AUTHOR: Well, Anderson, the real problem you is heard the word surprise said several times. But it's actually no surprise to anybody in the region. Most of the nations were notified as long as three years ago this was a significant possibility, and that they had to do something about it. In fact, that is one reason why I published our book more than two years ago was to warn about the possibility of these types of events.

COOPER: But, Douglas, a lot of the people or the leaders say look, we have high poverty rates, we're involved in civil conflict in the case of Sri Lanka, there is a vicious civil war going on there. You can invest millions of dollars in a system for something that only happens every once in a while? That's what they would say?

MULHALL: You know, Anderson, it's interesting, suddenly there's a glass wall put around the Indian Ocean as if it's not connected to the rest of the world. The fact of the matter is that international aid agencies and organizations and the World Bank and a bunch of other international organizations are deeply involve in the Indian Ocean area, including the tourism industry that has billions and billions of dollars invested in the area. There's lots of money to go around and these countries do not have to take on the burden individually of putting in these relatively cheap systems that could have avoided this. We're talking a few million dollars here to put in these systems.

COOPER: That's it, couple million dollars.

MULHALL: Yes, just to put in a rudimentary system that could give advanced warning of this. India and these countries, they have very advanced communications systems. They're not in the dark ages. They don't have ...

COOPER: I have to tell you, what I don't understand, I'm still trying to figure out the answer to this and I'm going to talk to the foreign minister in a little while and I hope to get an answer from him, but in Sri Lanka, they had a two hour heads-up time, the geological survey said they called the State Department, the State Department said they did call around to a couple countries and give them some sort of warning. In that two hours, why wasn't anyone in the coastal communities warned? That's my question, and I can't find an answer to it.

MULHALL: Anderson, the real problem is the psychology of tsunamis. If people are not trained to expect them and to react to them, you are going to get this slow communications roll like we did. There were people that were alerted. But as it went down the communication hierarchy it got slower and slower until things went up on the Web after the waves had hit. It was the psychology, that's what has to be broken and that's what we point out in the book. That there's lots of technologies to solve this problem, it doesn't take much money, but people simply have to be aware of this and give it priority.

COOPER: That's one of the sickening things about the story, you read they put up the warnings on the Web after the first waves had already hit, what good does that do? A lot of questions still to be answered. We're going to be looking at this later in the week. Douglas Mulhall, appreciate you joining us. Thanks, Douglas.

MULHALL: Thank you.

COOPER: Coming up at the top of the second hour of this special edition of 360. It's a two hour edition, I'm going to speak to the prime minister of Sri Lanka and try to get the situation in his country and find out what he thinks about the warning.

360 next -- tales from the survivors themselves. We're going to hear from those who lived through the deadly force of the tsunamis.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: So much destruction. Our coverage of this continues in the next hour, but we end this first hour of our special edition of 360 with the harrowing words of some who were there and lived through the devastation, these are survivors' accounts. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's coming again! Coming again! Big one.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I ran into our beachfront bungalow to look for a camera. I guess I spent a minute looking for, it couldn't find it. I came back out again and other guy who runs the hotel is screaming for people to get off the beach. I looked out to sea, and I guess at this stage, it was about 100 yards, 200 yards off the beach. This wall of water heading our way. And my wife screamed to me, she grabbed our daughter Elizabeth, and I looked frantically for my five- year-old son Peter (ph), and he was looking out to sea, he was mesmerized, hypnotized by the wall of water heading our way. So I just sprinted for the boy and I grabbed him. And my wife yelled to me to get into the bungalow, but I knew that Peter and I wouldn't make it. So we headed at right angles from the wave, and I just ran as hard as I could.

Having stood in the water initially, within two seconds from ankle height it came to shoulder height. You usually imagine a tidal wave much like you see in the movies, a big crescent wave. Waves that hit Phuket and the reports I heard from other resorts they all came in very hard and fast. It was a bit like watching a bath run to the top.

I looked behind and I could see the wall of water coming towards us, and eventually we were, I suppose, 25 yards, 50 yards from the beach. The wave caught up with myself and Peter (ph), and it washed us, guess another 50 yards into a mangrove swamp. We were very lucky not to be hit by all the debris that there was. The wave carried with it. It was carrying small boats with it, it was carrying logs, masonry, it was a terrifying experience.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, this special edition of 360 continues. More to come in the next hour, we'll take you to the hardest hit areas. Live reports from our correspondents around the globe, and we're also going to talk about the relief efforts under way, as well as bring you the story of Oprah Winfrey's interior designer who was caught by the surge of water.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: We continue our special edition. "PAULA ZAHN NOW" will not be seen tonight, because there are so many stories of disaster to tell you about, so many stories of courage and survival.

It's a disaster causing untold misery and images so powerful, you might want to turn away, like the heartbreaking pictures we are about to show you. This is an Indonesian man wading through waist-deep water carrying a dead child. The image puts the entire disaster in perspective. At least 22,000 people are dead right now. And that number is growing.

Help already is on the way. The initial U.S. response is a contribution of $15 million. But the head of the United Nations emergency relief effort predicts this may be the biggest humanitarian disaster in world history.

To get a sense of the real impact of this mind-boggling disaster, we're going to look at it through the eyes of just one city.

This is what happened in Galle, Sri Lanka.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): This is merely the aftermath of the disaster. Water was hurtled ashore by the tsunami, smashing, crushing, undermining, and then carrying away as it rushed back to the sea.

The sound is harrowing as well, a constant din of wailing, crying, and shouting, pierced now and again by sirens. This is Galle, Sri Lanka, home to some 84,000 people, a port city and provincial capital full of buses, buses that became islands in the flood, and unsafe islands at that.

Watch. The water capsizes one bus. It sinks in a matter of seconds. Those aboard scramble onto a precarious pile of debris. If you were lucky, you found a rooftop to watch it all go by. Others not so lucky had to cling for their lives. Some were swept away. We don't know what happened to them.

Galle has never seen anything like this. The Portuguese came here in the 1500s, then the Dutch, then the British, then the tourists, and now the water. It looks like the aftermath of a hurricane. Reports say a 30-foot wave washed over the ramparts of the old Dutch port. See those long red objects near the top of your screen? There are heavy railroad cars, passenger cars toppled and scattered.

There's a civil war in Sri Lanka. Both the government and the rebels are appealing for help. Galle is in the government-controlled part of the island. Officials declared a national disaster. Some even came to visit. Relief centers opened complete with food and sad, peaceful music. Hospitals were overwhelmed with injured, and morgues with the dead.

This is just one city's story. These scenes from Galle are being repeated in countless cities and towns all around the rim of the Indian Ocean. Survivors salvage what they can. Others just stare. There simply are not words for this. In the background, if you listen closely, you can hear bird's songs breaking the silence and the roar of the waves.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Many of those killed in the tsunami disaster were on the teardrop-shaped island of Sri Lanka, off India's southeastern coast. Now, officials in Sri Lanka say that more than 10,000 people have lost their lives. And it's estimated the number of people displaced from destroyed villages is over one million.

CNN's Hugh Riminton is in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, at a church that's serving as a shelter.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RIMINTON (voice-over): Across Sri Lanka, asleep from pure exhaustion, more than 1,500 people are at this shelter alone, a church favored because its on high ground, in case the sea comes for them again. Sunday's memories still so fresh for the survivors.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You can't describe it. It was -- we thought that we were going to die.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Someone was screaming, it's coming again. It's coming again. Everybody was just standing by the windows and waiting for another wave.

RIMINTON: At least one million Sri Lankans have fled their homes or have no homes to return to. The tsunamis hit more than 1,000 miles of coastline. The official death toll in Sri Lanka alone has topped 10,000.

India has responded to the Sri Lankan's government appeals for help with helicopters and half-a-dozen warships. United States and Europe have pledged millions in immediate aid. The question is whether it can get here soon enough to stop the death toll rising from disease, exposure and untreated injuries.

(on camera): As under-equipped rescue services do what they can to get into the most remote and hard-hit areas, there is another move out of Sri Lanka.

(voice-over): The airport is crowded with the injured, the traumatized, the just plain lucky.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The waves come and for two minutes, we go with the car and then all the people that stay there was dead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our hotel is nonexistent anymore. And we had a big wave coming into the hotel. And we swim.

RIMINTON: The wave tumbled this couple so hard, when, somehow they emerged alive, they'd found they'd been stripped completely naked.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have this from people on the streets. They give it. They have nothing themselves, and they give this to us. We were naked.

RIMINTON: And without passports, tickets or money, they're desperate now just to get home.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RIMINTON: Dawn is breaking over the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, where the flags in the city are at half mass this morning, as people start to emerge from their second night, many of them of course in makeshift shelters or out in the open sleeping on the ground and once again assessing for themselves individually and collectively as a nation how they're going to pull through these next few days and weeks.

COOPER: Hugh, at this point, what is being done to prevent the spread of disease? You have a lot of bodies in water. Conditions are ripe for disease to spread. RIMINTON: Well, the initial thing is -- still they're in the process of making their assessments, trying to prioritize, trying to get to various areas.

But they still have had not full reports back on the casualty figures, let alone the immediate needs that people might have not just for fresh water, but sanitation and immediate medical needs that people have for untreated wounds that are taking place. We're still in this first initial emergency phase. And, at the same time, there is an inevitable kind of life cycle to a disaster that happens.

There's almost a surge of adrenaline that can get people through the first 24 hours, first 48 hours. But even in these shelters that we were at last night, there were people there. A priest who was at this church was saying that what he notices now is that people are just really very deeply depressed, even those who have not directly lost. There's that sense of just deep shock, almost a catatonic stage of people not being able to really move. And that is starting to descend upon people now.

COOPER: Yes, the adrenaline goes away. The reality sets in. Hugh Riminton, thank you very much.

We hope to talk to the prime minister of Sri Lanka any moment now. Looking, though, at the damage in Sri Lanka, it's hard to imagine how anyone could live through the experience.

Satinder Bindra has the stories of some of the lucky survivors.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SATINDER BINDRA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Unaware of the suffering around her, the youngest member of this relief camp sleeps fitfully. But baby Rashuda's (ph) mother worries. Her younger brother is missing. And baby Rashuda's grandmother is dead, swept out to sea by Sunday's tsunami.

Without my mother, I just can't imagine living, she says. The rest of the family, too, will find it hard to live without her.

This is what tens of thousands of Sri Lankan families woke up to. Their homes destroyed. Their neighborhoods and communities sucked up by a savage sea.

(on camera): More than 1,500 people are now seeking shelter in this relief camp alone. Here they're provided food, water and emotional support. It's a story that's being repeated in thousands of shelters across the country.

(voice-over): Relief efforts, too, are now slowly bearing fruit. Western tourists stranded on Sri Lanka's beaches are now being moved to the county's capital, Colombo. For some, the events of the past 48 hours have been more than they can bear.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was on a big stone and I saw only water above me. I was very -- I thought, I will die. BINDRA: More than 10,000 Sri Lankans have already been killed in this calamity. Some of the worst affected communities are in this country south and east. Tourists rescued from these areas say people there need help fast.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no power. There's no petrol, so there's no movement. There's no, like, support giving through to help the injured. And I believe that there are bodies that need to be dealt with, identified and transported out of there because, soon, I guess, with this heat, the sanitation problems will arise.

BINDRA: Over the next 24 hours, officials here say the death toll is likely to rise. Sri Lankans are bracing themselves for more suffering, they're also praying they've seen the last of these killer waves.

Satinder Bindra, CNN, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, 360 next, the devastation on the tourist mecca of Phuket, Thailand.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN IRVINE, ITN REPORTER: I heard a commotion on the beach; I ran down and saw a wall of water coming towards us. It was about a hundred yards off the beach at that stage.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Firsthand account from a TV reporter who was vacationing there with his family.

And a familiar face from Oprah Winfrey's show and his story of survival when the tsunami crashed ashore.

First, one of the many tales of survival, this one sent to us by e-mail from Thailand -- quote -- "It was like the aftermath of a bomb, a total mess with fatalities. I saw a dead boy age about 4 being carried away by his father. It was terrible. The human suffering and economic cost of this catastrophe is difficult to comprehend."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: A vacation paradise shattered. 360 next, the destruction of one of Asia's most popular beach resorts.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: For more on what's happening in Sri Lanka right now, what's being done to help disaster victim, we are joined by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. He joins me now on phone from Colombo.

Prime minister, thank you very much for being with us. The situation in your country, how bad is it? Prime Minister Rajapaksa, can you hear me? We will try to get him back on the phone. Obviously, communication a little bit difficult right now with Sri Lanka.

You know, thousands of tourists were in southern Thailand for the big holiday weekend. Their vacations turned into nightmares, of course, when the surging waters hit. As one American tourist described it: "Our paradise turned into hell. We saw a massive wave coming toward us, so we just turned and ran."

Some did not run fast enough. Now rescuers are combing the beaches, searching for survivors, while others are scrambling simply to get out.

CNN's Aneesh Raman joins me now from Phuket, Thailand.

Aneesh, What's the latest?

RAMAN: Anderson.

Yes, the latest here is that, yesterday, the death toll more than doubled. It is likely to do something similar today. It's now hovering just around 900. The reason, officials tell us, is that, as of the first night, some 400 to 600 people were thought to have been taken out to sea.

Initially, they were hoping that they could try and rescue some, if not most of them, but beginning yesterday morning, bodies were washing ashore. That has continued through the night. So it is likely we will see that number continue to rise.

Here in Phuket, where we are, the death toll is about 130. But the worst hit area is the coastal town of Pung Ha (ph). There, more than 500 people are presumed dead. And, as you say, this is a hugely popular tourist destination in the region for Western tourists. And we're getting a sense that a good number of these casualties are going to be foreign nationals.

Yesterday, we visited the hospital here in Phuket. Some 400 foreign nationals who were injured are there, 22 nationalities at least, ranging from Americans, to German, Koreans, Australians, all of them just coming to terms with what will be the psychological impact of surviving this ordeal that is likely, Anderson, to last years.

COOPER: Aneesh, you know, in so many of these pictures that we're watching as you're speaking, you see it's local villagers, it's tourists who are carrying the dead, the injured away. What are the government services like? How have they responded to what's happening there?

RAMAN: Well, they responded as quickly as they could, but that wasn't quick enough in terms of the disaster on the ground. The government was among the tourist in terms of being caught off guard, calling this an unprecedented catastrophe. So, initially, that was really the only way for people to help each other here on the island. Communication was cut. There was no real sense of what was going on. We've heard stories of people using doors as stretchers and really joining together, the locals who work in the tourist industry, as well as those who were here, survivors who were slightly injured helping those who were more severely injured.

For all of them, it was literally just a shocking situation that they had to react with reflex. And for those who are alive, a number of them, it is because of the goodwill of the other people here, Anderson.

COOPER: People coming together around the world. Aneesh Raman, thank you very much.

Since the tsunamis hit, India has been getting the brunt of some aftershocks.

Joining me now on the phone from Chennai, India, is Grant Cassidy of World Vision.

Grant, thanks very much for being with us. I know it's been a very busy of days for you. Have you been getting hit with aftershocks?

GRANT CASSIDY, WORLD VISION: No, we haven't, which is -- we're very thankful for that. But it's meant, though, that people can't go back to their houses. We have a very low-lying shoreline. And there's been real efforts by authorities to keep the people away from the coast.

I think, in another 12 hours, people can begin to relax.

COOPER: What are the most pressing needs right now?

CASSIDY: Feeding people, people who have lost everything.

And just a wall of water just knocked over their homes, took away everything they owned. So, government has basically allowed people to gather in schools and other public building, not particularly places people should be living. So, what we've been trying to do is, we've had World Vision teams out. And we fed about 10,000 families yesterday basic three meals a day. We hope the next step is that they can go home and we can begin distributing food and giving them pots and pans and other vessels, so they can begin to restore their lives.

COOPER: You're feeding 10,000 families, which is a remarkable thing. After they're fed, where do they go? As you said, they don't have homes. Are there shelters for them? Are they just out in the streets?

CASSIDY: No, there's not really shelters.

Many of these people that were worst hit and certainly here in Chennai were fisherman and other very poor people who had built their homes with their own hands. Now, they're going to end up doing that again. And they're used to living that way. It's not a way we'd like them to have to live, but they will do that again.

But we need to give them some basics to get going, because they would have lost absolutely everything. And so even giving someone rice without -- they need a pot to boil water and cook it in.

COOPER: Grant Cassidy, I know it's been a very busy time for you with World Vision. We do appreciate your joining us, doing remarkable work in Chennai, India. Thanks very much, Grant.

We have made it easy for you to help in the relief effort, if you want. You can just go to our Web site, CNN.com. There is a story about all the help that's on the way. In it, you will find links to several reputable relief agencies.

360 next, one father's frantic search for his 5-year-old son as the giant tsunami bore down, in his own words. It has a happy end, this one.

Also tonight, the real thing was devastating, but the world's largest soon tsunami simulator may tell us whether it could happen here in the U.S.

And a little later tonight, a different story, Osama bin Laden and another audiotape, one month before the Iraqi elections.

And, as we go to break, another survival story, this one sent to us by e-mail from Rubin (ph) in Malaysia. Rubin writes: "I stood up to look at the sea and was stunned to see a huge whirlpool in front of my apartment. As the waves approached, it was possible to see them rise in height and crash onto the shoreline. It looked like a giant washing machine in front of my apartment. There was no warning."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: It was such a big event, and yet there are so many small stories of pain and survival.

In Thailand, ITN's Asia correspondent John Irvine was on vacation with his wife and children when the waves struck.

Our Zain Verjee has his story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAIN VERJEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Mid morning on the lovely island of Koh Yao. John Irvine spots a huge line of white foam about a mile offshore. The vacationing TV reporter runs inside to get a camera when suddenly he's forced to turn back.

IRVINE: The guy who runs the hotel was screaming at people to get off of the beach. And I guess, at this stage, it was about 100 yards, maybe 200 yards off the beach, this wall of water heading our way. And my wife screamed to me. She grabbed our daughter, Elizabeth (ph).

VERJEE: His wife, Libby, and little Elizabeth, run uphill into their bungalow. Irvine begins a frantic search for his 5-year-old son, Peter. Then, suddenly, he, spots him.

IRVINE: He was standing at water's edge looking out to sea. He was mesmerized by the wave that was coming towards us, a single wave on a flat, calm ocean. It was moving pretty quickly. I ran for the boy, I grabbed him, and I could hear and feel the hiss of this wave coming -- coming behind us.

VERJEE: The bungalow was too far, so Irvine rather with his son at an angle along the beach. He tried frantically to outrun the water.

IRVINE: I just ran as hard as I could. And then I could hear the rush behind me. I looked behind and I could see the wall of water coming towards us. Eventually, we were, I suppose, 25 yard, 50 yards from the beach. The wave caught up with myself and Peter.

VERJEE: The wave, like monster waves crashing onto beach fronts in half-a-dozen countries, lifted Irvine and his son.

IRVINE: Washed us, I guess another 50 yards into a mangrove swamp. We were very lucky not to be hit by all the debris that there was the wave carried with. It was carrying small boats with it. It was carrying logs, masonry. It was a terrifying experience.

VERJEE: The terrifying feeling stayed with Irvine as he and his son floated by trees and scraped by debris. They heard more water coming behind them.

IRVINE: And then I heard the bang as the wave broke on the beach and it came through the trees. And Peter and I just were running as fast as we could. And we could hear the water, the onrush behind us.

It was your worst nightmare in a Hollywood disaster movie rolled into one. I glanced back and I could see coconuts and palm fronts and boulders in this water. And eventually the tidal wave caught up with us.

VERJEE: Father and son ended up bruised and scared, floating in an inland race paddy. Slowing, through the swirling waters and panicked crowds, they made their way back to search for Libby and Elizabeth.

IRVINE: I found Elizabeth in what was left of our beach bungalow.

She had made it there. I just couldn't get there in time. And so I just ran directly away from the wave. And she was in the bungalow, and much of the furniture in there was destroyed. Most of the settings are gone. I'm amazed that she emerged unscathed.

She described it as being in a washing machine. My wife had hit several palm trees. She had gone for quite a ride on the wave as well. And she's battered and bruised.

VERJEE: Reunited, the family slept on a hilltop. They will wake up in a few hours surrounded by islands of debris.

IRVINE: I think we got off quite lightly. I would estimate the wave here as being no bigger than 20 feet high. I think, in other parts of Thailand and indeed in Sri Lanka, especially, that the tsunami was much bigger.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VERJEE: John Irvine and his family are all OK.

In fact, Anderson, they should be waking up to another day right about now.

COOPER: And there are so many people who are waking up just about now, because it is dawn in that part of the world, not knowing what this day will bring.

Zain Verjee, thanks for that story, remarkable.

360 next, the world's biggest tsunami simulator and what it could tell us about what would happen if the U.S. was hit. And it's happened before.

Also later, you probably know him from "Oprah" tonight. You will hear him a whole new way, swept into an ocean, Nate Berkus, a man lucky to be alive tonight.

And, as we go to break, another tale of survival e-mailed to us from Peter in China -- quote -- Peter writes: "My wife was in Phuket when the first wave hit. Her room was filled with water. She almost drowned. She ran to a hotel lobby just before a second wave hit. She managed to climb to the top of a tree. I'm so glad that she survived."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: In just a minute, creating tsunamis in the laboratory.

But, first, let's check our top stories in "The Reset."

The death toll from Sunday's disaster now stands at just over 22,000. And it is expected to climb. The magnitude 9.0 quake that caused it is the fourth largest since earthquakes started being measured in 1899. And there it is, hitting Thailand.

The U.S. government expects to spend $15 million in its initial response to the tragedy, but a top emergency official at the United Nations says the cost of the devastation will probably be many billions of dollars. The U.N. official also calls -- called the U.S. and other nations stingy when it comes to foreign aid. I'll talk with him in just a little bit.

For more on what's happening in Sri Lanka and what's being done to help disaster victims, I'm joined by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. He joins me now by phone from Colombo. Prime Minister, thanks very much for being with us. The situation in your country, how high at this point is the death toll? How many people are homeless right now?

MAHINDA RAJAPAKSA, PRIME MINISTER, SRI LANKA: The normal life -- lives have been destroyed. And buildings, the buildings, school buildings, police stations, hotels, industries, have been affected.

At the moment, still the bodies we are finding, dead bodies and because of those dead bodies and missing are still coming in. Therefore, we will not be able to give you the exact figure, but it's more than thousands. More than 4,000 people have died. And another 300,000 people, families have been affected.

COOPER: And what are the greatest needs right now?

RAJAPAKSA: Yes. Right now is to -- medicines, then tents, children, milk powder for children, food, medical equipment, tents.

COOPER: Did you have -- did your government have any warning of what was to come? There were some two hours from the time the earthquake happened under water off of the coast of Sumatra to the time the waves first hit Sri Lanka. Did your government know the waves were coming?

RAJAPAKSA: No, unfortunately, no. Because the Indian Ocean is not -- generally the warnings are in the Pacific Ocean, but unfortunately we didn't have that information till suddenly that -- got this and killed our people.

COOPER: Did you know that an earthquake had taken place off the island of Sumatra?

RAJAPAKSA: No, unfortunately, no till this incident happened.

COOPER: So you had no idea that there had even been an earthquake two hours before?

RAJAPAKSA: No.

COOPER: What -- I mean, do you feel more should have been done? Do you feel you want to look at the system for warnings? Because there are some who say this region was warned, you know, two years ago that this could possibly happen by UNESCO.

RAJAPAKSA: The information, what we get, all of the information, we send it to a Hawaii institution, which is an American institution, and they analyze it. So now it's high time that we must have all this equipment, and this -- we must have a system strong as the U.S.

COOPER: Prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, we do appreciate you joining us. I know it has been a very difficult 24 hours for you, and we do appreciate you taking the time. And we wish you and the people who are in such great need in your country well. Thank you for joining us.

RAJAPAKSA: Thank you.

COOPER: The frightening devastation in Asia may leave you wondering whether it could happen here in the U.S. After all, the United States is bordered by two great oceans. In fact, tsunamis have struck here with deadly force and yes, it could happen again.

That part of our extensive coverage from our Adaora Udoji.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ADAORA UDOJI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The terror of a tsunami triggered by an earthquake swept Valdez, Alaska, off of the map on Good Friday in 1964. More than 100 people were killed down the coast to California. Since 1946, tsunamis have hit Alaska four times, causing death and destruction all the way to Hawaii.

Today, scientists worry a tsunami could strike North America again. They worry about active fault lines causing earthquakes in the west, a triggering event for monster waves. Government officials worry, too, which is why a federal warning system also monitors other potential triggers: volcanoes, meteorites and landslides.

D.I. JOHNSON, NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE: The warning systems are in their infancy. We're getting better and better at -- at informing the public.

UDOJI: The East Coast hasn't been completely spared. A tidal wave bashed Newfoundland in 1929, killing 27. Another hit Puerto Rico in 1918.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don't have big earthquakes here. We're not going to see that big type of tsunami.

UDOJI: But are there theories the East Coast still may be vulnerable. Some argue if the volcano in the Canary Islands near Africa suddenly erupted and collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean, it could send violent ripples to the U.S. coast within nine hours.

Other scientists worry about gases escaping the continental crust 50 to 100 miles off the coast of North Carolina.

The idea of an explosive shift, argues Columbia University professor Jeffrey Weissel, leads to troubling questions.

JEFFREY WEISSEL, PROFESSOR, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: We were surprised and everybody surprised of that -- surprised about the amount of gas that we found. And we don't understand the full implications for inciting future submarine landslides, which then might produce dangerous tsunamis.

UDOJI: Scientists say they just can't yet connect all the dots, but many still believe the West Coast has a greater risk of getting hit.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

UDOJI: And the federal warning center based in the Pacific Northwest says it's issued 10 tsunami warnings in the past 20 years.

The bottom line, says Professor Weissel, is that it's very difficult to quantify the risk because predicting tsunamis, especially in the west is simply difficult, simply because scientists at this point can't predict the triggering events like volcanoes and landslides. We just don't know enough right now.

COOPER: All right. Adaora Udoji, thanks for that.

Let's try to get a handle on these killer waves. The laboratory at Oregon State University contains the world's largest tsunami simulator. Joining me from there right now is the lab's director, Dan Cox.

Dan, thanks very much for being with. I know you can actually generate a wave. I'm going to ask you to do that. I know it takes about 60 seconds or so to do actually do it. So I'm just going to ask you to start generating the wave and then we can talk a little bit as you're doing it.

DAN COX, TSUNAMI LAB DIRECTOR, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY: Sure, OK.

Tim, do you want to generate it?

What I'm standing on here is a model in the Pacific Northwest in Puget Sound. You can see the wave in the distance as it comes to the coast. It's going to hit the coast on the right and then inundate a city. And then you could see how it spread all of the debris around.

COOPER: When the wave is coming -- when the wave is coming toward the shore, it actually slows down. Why does it do that?

COX: That's just basically related to the science of waves. The waves have to travel at the square root of the water depth. So as the water depth decreases, the wave has to slow down. And then the problem is that -- go ahead.

COOPER: I'm sorry to interrupt. You created this in your lab. How did it happen in real life, I mean, the Indian Ocean? This thing was traveling 500 miles an hour, I'm told, at some points.

COX: Right, and the primary purpose of this laboratory is to say what happens when that wave hits the coastline? So we're not -- there are other scientists that are trying to solve that problem of how the tsunami itself is generated. Other scientists worried about how it moves across the ocean.

And the primary purpose of this laboratory is to figure out what's going to happen when that wave hits the coast?

COOPER: So what kind of coastlines are most at risk?

COX: Well, it all depends on the -- where the tsunami is coming from. But the tsunami is going to react to the underwater topography. The cliche is that the wave wants to travel uphill. And so when that tsunami came in 1964, it selectively picked out certain sections of the coastline here in the United States. A city in northern California, Lincoln, and Seaside here in Oregon. If that wave had come from a different angle, it would have picked out different cities.

And so it all depends on the wave direction and the -- and the topography.

COOPER: So -- so by -- when you look at these -- at this water in this tank doing this to your model city, I mean, what do you learn? What do you see? What you have figured out?

COX: Well there's a couple of things. One is just trying to understand the basic science of what happens when the wave hits the coast.

Some things that we've learned, not in this test but in others, for example, when a wave hits an island, often the biggest wave is on the backside of the island. Something that you wouldn't expect. You'd expect the biggest wave to be in the front, but sometimes the wave wraps around on either side and creates the biggest wave in the back.

COOPER: Which is apparently from what we understand, is apparently what happened in Sri Lanka. Some of the initial waves not so big, but then that huge wave coming on later.

Dan, I appreciate you joining us. I know setting that up is difficult. We appreciate it. Dan Cox, thanks very much.

360 next, on the ground in India: the grief, the anguish. Some personal stories ahead.

Also tonight, a familiar face from "The Oprah Winfrey Show" swept out to sea. In his own words, how he survived.

COOPER: Also later, taking the tsunamis' destruction to the "Nth Degree."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: The words of an Indian construction worker speak for millions tonight across Asia. He said, "What did we do to deserve this?"

More than 6,000 people died in India, and they have begun to bury the dead. With a look at that, here is Suhasini Haidar.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUHASINI HAIDAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Laying to rest one of the tsunami's tiniest victims, residents of a small fishing village on the south Indian coast come to mourn this 8-month-year-old and relive the horror of all they've seen. Their homes have been destroyed, and they've seen family members and friends drowned in the giant wave that hit the village of Kalapat (ph). Most of the dead here were women and small children.

As her relatives cremate 35-year-old Kuni (ph), they can't even dwell on their grief. They must think of where to go next. Many from Kalapat (ph) have already moved to this building nearby, some exhausted by terror and grief.

Muni Naird (ph) said that she can't believe this is all that's left of her wedding gallery. "But at least we saved our lives," she says.

(on camera) Thousands are now pouring into schools and public buildings across the state. Many here say their huts have washed away and they can't go home. Some say they've lost loved once and are just too traumatized to consider going back to the scene of destruction.

(voice-over) Despite his fears, Sumir Vranandanan (ph) has gone back to look for his father's body. An earth mover did find the clothes his father was wearing in the debris of his home.

"I realized then that my father must have died," he says.

Many other villagers from Kalapat (ph) haven't been found. Their families saying their anguish deepens as they can't give their loved ones a decent burial.

Suhasini Haidar, CNN, Kalapat (ph) Beach, South India.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, help is pouring in to Asia from all over the world. Volunteers in Portland, Oregon were packing supplies today to ship to the tsunami victims. The federal government is committing about $15 million at this point. That's just a start for the hundreds of thousands of people who are now homeless because of the tsunamis.

And the U.N. is getting its relief system in motion as well. It'll be an enormous task.

Joining me now for his only live network TV is Jan Egeland, the U.N. under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.

Appreciate you joining us. I know it's an extraordinarily busy time for you. What are you doing right now? What is the U.N. doing? What is the need?

JAN EGELAND, SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS, UNITED NATIONS: The U.N. is now going into high gear. We have involved all our humanitarian organizations, all the development organizations, our country teams in all of these affected countries.

We've sent expert teams to all of the affected countries. We are assessing now the damage, and we are coordinating the international relief with the massive national and local effort.

The biggest effort is done by the heroes in the local municipalities and the local organizations and the local Red Crescent and Red Cross organizations, and we try to help them from the U.N.

COOPER: How long does it take the U.N. to mobilize, to actually get assets on ground in place, you know, meeting the needs of people?

EGELAND: Well, we sent our first people there Sunday, hours after the tsunami hit. We have given local relief immediately. We have hundreds of local staff active in the relief effort. And now we are seeing hundreds of relief flights coming in from member states of the U.N. And we try to coordinate that.

One of the problems is that outgoing tourists, people fleeing the scene, are clogging up airports, as we also have relief flights coming in. It will be a massive undertaking to get the relief effective.

COOPER: Months, months of rebuilding?

EGELAND: Months of rebuilding because remember the two waves of destruction. First the tsunami takes tens of thousands of lives. There are still thousands and thousands there missing. We haven't even been able to reach all of the affected communities in Sumatra, which are the closest.

And then the second wave is the destruction caused by infected water, pollution, the total destruction of the local societies that will lead to epidemics, disease, and so on, unless our relief effort is effective.

COOPER: Earlier at your press conference you said it's going to cost billions of dollars. You said rich nations -- you didn't point out anyone in particular. You didn't say the U.S. You didn't say Europe. But you just said rich nations are being, I think, stingy was the word you used.

You don't think rich nations are paying their fair share?

EGELAND: No, I don't think so. I have been in relief work now in non-governmental organizations and the Red Cross and the U.N. for many years. It bothers me that we, the rich nations, are not becoming more generous the more rich we become.

The average rich nation pays 0.2 percent of its national income in international solidarity, in international assistance. We keep 99.98 percent to ourselves, on average. I don't think that's very generous when we see the images that you have just seen today.

COOPER: Are saying richer nations should pay a much higher proportion?

EGELAND: A much higher proportion. I mean, usually in the old days in many religions, you should give one-10th of your surplus. We give much less than one percent.

COOPER: Well, there's certainly a lot of need right now. Jan Egeland, we do appreciate you joining us. Thank you very much.

EGELAND: Thank you.

COOPER: Joining me now on the phone is Major General Gary North, director of operations for the U.S. Pacific command for the Air Force. Major General North is directing the U.S. relief efforts.

Major General, what is the latest? What can you tell us about your efforts?

MAJ. GEN. GARY NORTH, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, U.S. PACIFIC COMMAND, AIR FORCE: Well, Anderson, what U.S. Pacific command is doing right now is cooperating with our collective government efforts.

As you know, the U.S. government has been asked to provide disaster relief to the governments of Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Thailand to mitigate the effects of the recent earthquakes and tsunamis. And here at U.S. Pacific command, we're supporting the U.S. government, DOD efforts in the region.

COOPER: So are you flying? I mean, have you been able to fly supplies in at this point? And how many flights are -- when do you get up and running?

NORTH: We currently have one P-3 surveillance aircraft that is in Thailand. And we have five other surveillance aircraft that are en route, or will be en route shortly. As well, we are marshalling and loading up to six C-130 cargo aircraft that will come out of Japan with relief supplies and humanitarian efforts that we hope to have inside in the next 24 hours.

COOPER: So you're hoping within the next 24 hours to get those C-130s down range or on the ground?

NORTH: That's correct.

COOPER: All right, well it's good work that you're doing there at the U.S. Pacific Command, Major General. We do appreciate you joining us. I know it's a busy time for you.

360 next, a familiar face from "The Oprah Winfrey Show" actually swept out to sea. His remarkable story ahead.

Also tonight, numbers beyond meaning: 22,000 dead. We'll try to get our minds around the meaning of all of that. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: The strange thing about disaster like this, it strikes everyone. Young and old, rich and poor, famous and not.

Fans of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" know this man, Nate Berkus. He's a regular guest. He's an interior designer and tonight, he is a man very lucky to be alive.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) OPRAH WINFREY, HOST, "THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW": Our favorite decorator.

COOPER (voice-over): He's Oprah Winfrey's load of decor, 33- year-old interior designer Nate Berkus. In 2003, Berkus, made famous by his regular appearance by Oprah, was named one of "People" magazine's sexiest men alive. Tonight, he's lucky just to be alive.

NATE BERKUS, TSUNAMI SURVIVOR: I heard a loud noise. All of a sudden the roof was ripped off of the cottage and my friend and I were taken out to sea. Just taken in currents that were so strong with debris and cars and animals and people tearing by.

COOPER: Berkus was vacationing at Arugam Bay in Sri Lankan's east coast when the tsunami hit. As many as 10,000 people died on the island.

BERKUS: There was absolutely no warning. I was asleep in a beachfront cottage.

COOPER: Nate and a friend, photographer Fernando Bengoechea, were quickly carried out to sea by the torrents of swirling water.

BERKUS: Really against that kind of force of nature, there was nothing any of us could do.

COOPER: The tsunami hit the resort at about 9 a.m. Berkus and Bengoechea were separated by the currents.

BERKUS: We were able to hang onto a telephone pole with a mattress wedged between us for literally 30 seconds. There was a calm in the storm and then another wave hit. Both of us were torn away from the phone pole.

I finally climbed up to a roof of a home, because the water pushed me behind the home. And sat out the rest of the waves on top of this -- this structure.

COOPER: Berkus, who started his own design firm at age 24, is based in Chicago. Last night, he slept in a field in Sri Lanka with about 50 other tsunami survivors.

BERKUS: I'm sitting here with nothing. No passport, no money, no anything in shorts that somebody gave me. We desperately, desperately need help from the government here. We're without water. We're without food and many of us are injured.

COOPER: Now, like thousands of other displaced tourist, he's trying to make his way back home.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: And Nate Berkus' friend, Fernando Bengoechea, the last we heard, was still missing.

If you want to help the tsunami victims, you can go to our web site, CNN.com. There's news about all the help on the way, and links to some reputable relief agencies.

"LARRY KING" is up next on the top of the hour with more on the tsunami disaster. Let's take a look -- Larry.

LARRY KING, HOST, "LARRY KING LIVE": Anderson, thanks. In from vacation in for this incredible story.

We're going to have top meteorologist experts in this area, people from the environmental labs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Foundation and Administration. We'll have a seismologist with us, as well as survivors, people from the Red Cross, nurses and the like.

As we get the reporters, the death toll approaches 23,000, and as was said earlier on your show, Anderson, more are expected. This is one of the untold great tragedies of our time.

COOPER: And so many stories to tell. Larry, we'll be watching tonight at 9 p.m. in just about five minutes. Thanks, Larry.

Coming up next on 360, hundreds of thousands homeless and more than 22,000 killed, as Larry just said. The numbers are just hard to imagine. We'll be right back.

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COOPER: Finally tonight, taking the unimaginable to "The Nth Degree."

There's no way to comprehend the story we've spent the last two hours trying to tell. Ordinarily, details help. In this case, though, the details only made what's happened harder to grasp, much harder.

This is a scale, these are numbers the brain is simply not equipped to take in. In South Asia up and down the coastlines of five countries that largely are coastline, because they're islands or peninsula, in countless villages and towns and cities in sight of the sea, tens of thousand are dead, hundreds of thousands homeless and many, many are missing.

Entire places are missing, swallowed by the tide. A whole world is awash now after a series of dreadful waves 20 and 30 and 40 feet high, spawned by a monstrous undersea quake.

Cars have changed places with boats, the former bobbing, the latter high and dry.

On some of the most famously beautiful beaches of the world, not shells but bodies are being collected, and those who are dry and safe are dazed and grief stricken.

It comes to this: 2004 is not quite over yet but we know already for an absolute fact how it's going to be remembered. For millions of us, for generations this will forever be the evil year the sea rose up and took away too much and too many. I'm Anderson Cooper. Thanks for joining this special edition of 360. CNN's coverage continues now with "LARRY KING LIVE."

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