On the 26th of December 2004, the second largest earthquake ever recorded on a seismograph between 9.1 and 9.3 in magnitude took place under the Indian Ocean of the Western Coast of Sumatra. Of eight minutes in duration, the quake was also the longest one, as well as the eighth deadliest natural disasters. It triggered the number of tsunamis but it became known in some parts of the world as the Asian Tsunami and in others as the Boxing Day Tsunami.
Following the sudden vertical rise at the seabed, the waters receded from the shores of such countries as Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand and then poured back into devastating effects.
Like all tsunamis, the phenomenon depends very differently in shallow water than it did in deep water. Far out at sea, the waves are small and hard to notice, but the massive displacement of water in shallows near the shoreline slow the tsunami speed considerably and resulted in the succession of huge waves which rolled inland and in a 30-minute cycle. The third was the biggest and the most cataclysmic, with waves up to 30 meters high destroying towns and villages and traveling up to two kilometers at max.
The force of the waves was calculated to be equivalent of five megatons of TNT. That’s over twice the entire explosive force used during all of the World War II including the atomic bombs of the Russian and Nagasaki. The 1600 kilometer fault line stretched from North to the South is where the waves of the greatest impact were the ones tracked into the East and West, this meant that countries like Bangladesh which is a low lying country at the northern end of the Bay of Bengal, and therefore quite near to the quake’s epicenter, reported only two deaths out off the capsized of a tourist boat.
Other countries are not so lucky and distance was no guarantee of safety. Somalia 4500 kilometers away on the North-Eastern coast of Africa lost nearly 300 people and the further 500,000 were displaced. The worst country was Indonesia, while exact numbers of casualties were impossible to gauge, original estimates put the number of deaths such around 170,000. Although in 2005, the Indonesian health minister updated that total to 220,000.
In the Northern Provincial Capital of Banda Aceh, one of the hardest hit areas, over 40,000 deaths. The casualties in India, Thailand and Sri Lanka also known within the thousands with the overall estimated lost of life of about 300,000 within the vicinity of 1.7 million people losing their homes.
Unable to resist the force of the water, children made up at least the third of the casualties, while it’s also reported that four times as many women were killed as men because they waited on beaches for their fisherman husbands to return. Tourist also suffered badly and Europe particularly affected. Sweden and Germany confirmed over 500 deaths each, amongst those dead were 14 years Lucy Holland the granddaughter of English film Director Richard Attenborough and the fashion photographer’s son and nephew. Brazil lost it's diplomat, Lys Amayo de Benedek D’Avola and her young son died in Phi Phi, Thailand.
Amongst all the horror though, there was amazing stories of courage, resilience and quick thinking. Before the tsunami hit Northern Phuket in Thailand, a 10 year old British school girl called Tilly Smith spotted the warning signs of the receding ocean and remembering her geography lessons alerted her parents to the danger. They raised the alarm and everyone on the beach was safely evacuated.
Because the effects of the disaster were felt in such a global scale and the news images was so horrifying, the amount of aid send in the stricken areas was unprecedented amounting to $7 billion US dollar. But the physical and psychological and political ramifications are so profound that while relief is swift and for the most part well orchestrated, a recovery process was stretched on for decades.
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