Photonic Torpedoes

I just wrapped up an extensive vacation, the first I’ve had in a long while. I made stops to both Singapore and the Indonesian island state of Bali. As part of my planning both before and after I arrived, I used Google Earth to locate places to see, do virtual location scouting and to geo-code my photos.

Well, I was geotagging some of my photos from Bali with the latest version of Google Earth, which now displays the date the satellite photo, and noticed the date on the Bali images was Oct. 17, 2002. Yeah, it’s a bit out of date; the hotel I stayed at shows up as just a rice field. Anyway, that date is just five days after the Oct. 12, 2002 terrorist bombing on the island which killed 202 people, most of whom were foreign tourists.

The photo on Google Earth isn’t the highest of resolutions, but it’s clear to see the area of the explosion, the Sari Club nightclub and Paddy’s Pub across the street, is pretty torn up.

Here are the lat/lon coordinates if you want to see for yourself:
115.1739855401701° E, 8.716950885121568° S

And here’s a Google Map:

View Larger Map

And here’s a KMZ file for use Google Earth.

And finally, here’s a screen shot in case Google updates its imagery (which it certainly will do eventually):