Never forget: Plaques with victims’ names seen at the Tsunami Memorial Park on Koh Phi Phi in Thailand. — AFP
Survivors and victims’ relatives will mark the 20th anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, which killed more than 220,000 people across more than a dozen countries.
A 9.1-magnitude earthquake off the western coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island triggered huge waves that swept into coastal areas of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and nine other nations around the Indian Ocean basin.
Here is a look back at the impact of the deadliest tsunami in history.
Faultline rupture
The tsunami was triggered by the longest faultline rupture from an earthquake ever observed, seconds before 7.59am on Dec 26, 2004.
The ocean floor opened at least 1,200km in length between the India plate and Burma microplate.It created waves more than 30m-high, releasing energy equivalent to 23,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs and causing widespread destruction.
The magnitude was initially recorded at 8.8, before the United States Geological Survey gave its official magnitude of 9.1 and depth as 30km.
The epicentre was located about 242km from Sumatra’s coast.
Indonesia is a vast archipelago nation on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through South-East Asia and across the Pacific basin.
Huge death toll
A total of 226,408 people died as a result of the tsunami, according to EM-DAT, a recognised global disaster database.
The worst affected area was northern Sumatra, where more than 120,000 people were killed out of a total of 165,708 dead in Indonesia.
The huge waves travelled around the Indian Ocean, hitting Sri Lanka, India and Thailand hours later.
At their fastest the waves travelled at over 800kph, more than twice the speed of a bullet train.
Drastic difference: This combination photo showing an aerial view of a mosque in an area that was affected by the 2004 tsunami in Kuala Bubon on the outskirts of Meulaboh, Aceh province, on Jan 19, 2005, (top) and the same mosque on Nov 17, 2024. — AFP
More than 35,000 were killed in Sri Lanka, with 16,389 killed in India and 8,345 in Thailand, according to EM-DAT.
Nearly 300 were killed in Somalia, more than 100 in the Maldives, as well as scores in Malaysia and Myanmar.
Displaced, reconstruction
The tsunami displaced more than 1.5 million people and sparked disaster relief of around US$14bil pledged from the international community, according to the United Nations.
Hundreds of thousands of buildings were destroyed, leaving in some cases entire communities homeless.
A splurge in reconstruction has transformed the worst-hit city Banda Aceh.
More than 100,000 houses were rebuilt in the westernmost Indonesian province of Aceh alone, according to the Indonesian government.
Tragic past: NAT Association founder Elisabeth Zana, who lost her daughter Natacha in the 2004 tsunami, standing amid waste rubble near a tsunami evacuation centre while visiting the Tsunami Memorial Park on Koh Phi Phi, Thailand. After the deadliest tsunami in history claimed her only daughter, Zana considered taking her own life – until a nearby Thai school reignited her sense of purpose. — AFP
Warning systems
The tsunami also forced a reckoning about the preparedness of coastal communities around the Indian Ocean basin.
At the time of the earthquake, there was no warning system in place in the Indian Ocean.
But now, 1,400 stations globally cut warning times to just minutes after a tsunami wave forms.
Experts said the lack of a properly coordinated warning system in 2004 had made the disaster’s impact worse.
Ocean scientists say countries are more prepared than ever thanks to millions of dollars being invested into tsunami warning systems, but warn that the impact of a catastrophic tsunami can never be completely prevented. — AFP
