Verbatim

"Any reported death toll would be understated. Whole families are missing. Who would report them?"
SYAIFUDDIN ABDULLAH, oil-company project manager, who lost his sister and brother-in-law in Indonesia's Aceh province during the Sumatran earthquake

"We worked eight months on this, two shifts per day, 3,000 workers ... and it is all gone in five minutes."
EKASAK THONGTHASAWES, architect and builder of the Sofitel Magic Lagoon in Khao Lak, Thailand

"One of the problems is that if you tell untrained people, 'Listenthere's a tsunami coming,' half of them go down to the...

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