Tsunami Victims Sue NOAA, Thai Gov't

Leslie

Leslie

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Staff member
SEVERAL dozen European victims of Asia's tsunami disaster have filed a lawsuit demanding that Thai authorities, US forecasters, and a French hotel chain prove that they reacted adequately.

In what is believed to be the first tsunami claim worldwide, US lawyer Edward Fagan and two other lawyers have filed the suit with a New York district court on behalf of more than 60 plaintiffs from Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

The suit was filed against the Thai government, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its Tsunami Warning Centre, and the French hotel group Sofitel, said Herwig Hasslacher, one of the group's lawyers.

The plaintiffs accuse Thai authorities of not releasing information about the impending sea surge as soon as they received it, arguing that a more prompt alert would have saved thousands of lives.


They also accuse the NOAA, whose Hawaii-based tsunami warning centre covers only the Pacific, of not informing Indian Ocean states of the tsunami even though they had registered the seaquake.

The French hotel chain Sofitel, part of the group Accor, is accused of knowingly building the Sofitel Khao Lak Beach in the Thai resort of Phuket on a fault line, along with failing to inform parents of the victims and failing to repatriate some of the victims' bodies. The lawyers said the suit was not, at present, designed to demand compensation but to uncover evidence that would prove negligence.
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There's a stretch

:alienhuh:
 
A biiig stretch... and dead before it gets out of the gate. The US, like all other nations, claims soverign immunity and is immune to lawsuits ... especially since the victims were A: not from the US, B: nowhere near the US, and C: bears no responsibility for acts of god.
 
According to CBC tonight, there have been 4000 earthquakes off your coast in the last couple weeks. yikes!!
 
Yeah they are assuming its just an underwater volcano or sumthin causing the shaking,nothing to worry about,now if the plates start slideing causing quakes/tsunamis :bolt:
 
I dun told ya BC is just gonna fall off and take your island down with it.
 
NOAA is the primary weather tracking agency in America, among its other functions. If a tsunami isn't even a weather phenomenon, then why sue them in the first place?
 
Kinda rakes me. We sent millions if not billions to their aid. Private citizens and government alike. Gestures of honest sympathy, help in everything from water to drink to clothes to wear to anything in between. Now they wanna sue to get more from the evil Americans.

I'm tempted to say it....


Fuck 'em. At least the ones doing stuff like this.
 
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