Lockwood claimed the timing was urgent as the federal government's deadline for matching donations was the next day at midnight. 
Some townspeople accused councillor Dorothy Lockwood of ambushing the meeting by presenting the last-minute proposal to divert money from the town's centennial fireworks fund. 
The quake was centered in the Indian Ocean, and it created the biggest gash in the Earth's seabed ever observed. 
Scientists have upgraded the magnitude of the quake from 9.0 to around 9.1-9.3, which is a dramatically more powerful quake. 
Critics have been quick to compare this to the $177 million spent every day in Iraq to conduct war in that country. 
Without the new law, contributors would have waited until 2006 and their 2005 tax returns to be able to write off their charitable donations. 
* When the surface waves from the Sumatra quake reached Alaska they triggered a swarm of 14 earthquakes in the Mount Wrangell area. 
The immediate fatalities from the earthquake and resulting tsunamis are but a fraction of the total effect from the disaster. 
This quake released an amount of energy equal to a 100 gigaton bomb, according to Roger Bilham, professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado. 
In Sri Lanka in Batticoloa District, the tsunami hit at the hour women on the east coast usually took their baths in the sea. 
The ten-hour telethon was organised on Sunday, January 16, by the television station Realitatea TV, and was the first time an event of this kind had been. 
