"It's bad, bad, bad," Sudesh Bahl, who owns the popular Barbecue Hut restaurant, told CFTO News. One of Bahl's regular customers, a Sri Lankan, was worried about the fate of family on the island located off the south tip of India. "The telephones are not working because all the lines are dead," Bahl said. South Asian radio stations across Canada are attempting to help fill in the information gap. A Sri Lankan-Canadian woman who operated a clothing store in the area, the largest South Asian shopping district in eastern North America, said her family was safe but in shock at the destruction.
         Abu Siregar, a Indonesian-Canadian, worked the phones all day trying to help organize a response to the crisis. "They really, really need blankets, something like that. And medicines. Because their houses are gone," he told CFTO News. Groups like the Red Cross and UNICEF are urging people to donate cash, not goods. Other groups helping provide relief are Oxfam, World vision and Medicins Sans Frontieres. "There's no question, with the size of this earthquake and the tsunamis that have resulted, there's literally millions of people who are going to be impacted by this event," Don Shropshire, a spokesman for the Canadian Red Cross, told CTV News. The Canadian Red Cross has pledged $200,000 so far. The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace said it will send $50,000.

         To donate, Canadians can contact:
         Canadian Red Cross, toll-free at 1-800-418-1111
         World Vision toll-free at 1-800-268-5528
         UNICEF Canada

          Canada's toll
        So far, only one Canadian citizen has been confirmed dead, and about another dozen wounded. That fatality happened in Sri Lanka, were an estimated 4,500 have died. The total number of dead is estimated at 11,300 and growing. UNICEF, the United Nations aid agency, estimates that about one-third of those are children. One Quebec man got a shock Sunday when he got a phone call from his brother in Phuket, Thailand who wanted to describe the ordeal of himself, his daughter and his girlfriend. "When he called me, he was in a panic, I can tell you,'' Francois Desharnais, in the central Quebec town of St-Christophe-d'Arthabaska, told The Canadian Press about his brother Bertrand. "They were all banged up, Marie-Pier (Bertrand's daughter) more than the others. When the tidal wave struck, they were in their hotel room and they ended up near the ceiling after the water swept them upwards. "Marie-Pier was caught between the doorframe and the ceiling and was cut up a bit. "He told me that if they hadn't been in the hotel room with Marie-Pier, they would have died because they would have been swept away." "The last time he called me, he was feeling better but he was shook up. I'd never heard him that shaken up. He told me he came close to dying.''
         B.C.'s future?
       The impact of the quake is a human story, but it's also a scientific one. Geologists here are interested in the situation because a major earthquake is expected someday in British Columbia. "What we are trying to understand is how the ground will shake in Vancouver and Victoria during our future earthquake," research scientist John Cassidy of the Geological Survey of Canada told CTV News. B.C.'s coastal communities are at risk from tsunamis. If a major quake happened like the one in Alaska in 1964, those communities would have about 3.5 hours warning, Bob Bugslag, director of B.C.'s Provincial Emergency Program, told The Canadian Press. "We are on the Pacific Rim and the entire area is very vulnerable to tsunamis," said Bugslag on Sunday. Unlike the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Rim countries have a tsunami warning network. Bugslag said it generates about one alert per week.