The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw said: "For all the huge advances in the control of our lives through science and technology an earthquake on this scale is truly humbling as well as profoundly tragic for everyone involved." He said messages of condolence have been sent to India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives and confirmed that emergency support teams are on standby. He added: "For the tens of thousands of British tourists in southeast Asia and their relatives and friends here this will I know be a very worrying time. "We are doing everything we can to assist but the disruption to communication in the worst affected areas is inevitably making it difficult to confirm exactly the situation on the ground.