Amount raised Thursday by the Sault Ste. Marie offices of the Canadian Red Cross for Asian tsunami relief: $16,360.
Grand total raised here since the December 26 disaster: $164,232.
******************** How you can help #1
Buy a ticket to the tsunami benefit concert Hands Across The Oceans being organized by students from the Algoma District School Board. It's at Kiwanis Community Theatre (White Pines) on Friday, January 14 and will feature Korah’s Mustang Sally (shown) and many other vocal, instrumental and choreographed numbers by students from area schools. Tickets are $10 and all proceeds go to Red Cross, UNICEF and World Vision tsunami relief operations. Tickets will be sold Monday through Wednesday at all of Algoma's public high schools, and also at the board offices at 644 Albert Street East in Sault Ste. Marie during regular business hours (8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.). Unsold tickets will be available at the door the night of the concert.
How you can help #2
Drop in over the weekend to the Red Cross offices at 105 Allard Street. They're keeping special weekend hours, opening 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday.
How you can help #3
Drop over to the Red Cross table at Station Mall. It will be staffed from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday.
How you can help #4
Attend the Comedics and Reptiles benefit concert on Saturday, January 15 at the Best Western on Great Northern Road in Sault Ste. Marie. Tickets are $25. All proceeds to the Canadian Red Cross Asian Relief Fund.
******************** Could a tsunami happen here?
This week, the popular website HowStuffWorks.com introduced a new feature explaining tsunamis, walls of water up tp 10.5 metres high that can travel faster than a commercial jet.
Most tsunamis are caused by underwater earthquakes.
Many, many years ago, giant earthquakes are said to have played a role in the formation of Lake Superior.
Could a tsunami ever happen here?
"Highly unlikely," says Steve Colman, director of the Large Lakes Observatory at the University of Minnesota's Duluth campus.
First, Colman says, earthquakes are largely a thing of the past in this area. There are no longer major faults under the lake, and the area is remarkably stable.
"We do have little-bittly earthquakes in the lake," Colman tells the Budgeteer News in Duluth, "but even the most stable areas have those."
Another reason we don't have to worry about tsunamis is the depth of Lake Superior - 489 feet on average, compared to 11,000 feet for the Indian Ocean.
If you're determined to worry about big waves on Lake Superior, Colman says, then worry about a seiche.
Pronounced 'SAY- sh', a seiche happens when winds blow steadily across the lake in the same direction, then stop, causing an excessive amount of water to stack up at one end of the lake.
To read more of Colman's comments in the Budgeteer News, please click here.
********************** How much of the money actually goes to tsunami relief?
SooToday.com asked Diane Lajambe, district branch manager at the Sault offices of the Canadian Red Cross, how much of the money being raised here will actually get to victims of the Asian tsunami.
Here's her response:
"Regarding the question of where the money goes: Our international relief operation management and administrative costs usually run at 15 percent. However, due to the generous donations and the magnitude of the response from the Canadian public, our management and administrative costs are being driven down. We know that our administrative costs will be less than 10 percent. The Canadian Red Cross prides itself on our transparent management of publicly donated funds. There are real management and administrative costs associated with an operation of this magnitude.
As we do for all major appeals, the Canadian Red Cross has set up a special trust fund for the Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Appeal. As part of good financial governance, we will also be conducting an annual independent audit of the trust funds revenues and expenditures to be better inform our donors and partners.
If anyone has any questions about how the money is spent, what it buys, etc., please contact the branch."
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