Indian Ocean Tsunami

Earthquake and tsunami

Date: December 26, 2004

Place: 11 countries bordering the Indian Ocean—Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, the Maldives, the Seychelles, Somalia, and Kenya

Magnitude: 9.3

Result: Official death toll of 186,983, later revised upward to 212,000; 42,883 missing; thousands dead from injuries and diseases directly attributable to the tsunami

Tsunamis, which seldom occur in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, are more frequent in the Pacific Ocean, the average depth of which is much greater. However, one minute before 7:00 a.m. on December 26, 2004, the strongest earthquake recorded in the previous 40 years erupted on the floor of the Indian Ocean near the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

This quake was originally assigned an magnitude of 9.0 on the Richter scale, but seismologists ultimately determined that the actual magnitude was 9.3. In contrast, the magnitude of the earthquake that leveled much of San Francisco in 1906 measured 7.8 on the Richter scale, and the greatest magnitude ever recorded was 9.5 in the earthquake the struck Chile on May 22, 1960.

Although the earthquake in the Indian Ocean did not immediately produce huge ocean surges, the energy emanating from its epicenter equaled that of more than 23,000 atomic bombs of the sort dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. The ocean’s surface immediately after the earthquake experienced waves of about 1 foot, which made them virtually undetectable as a tsunami.

As the energy that the earthquake released moved in concentric circles from the epicenter, however, the size of the waves increased dramatically. They moved at speeds in excess of 600 miles an hour, slowing down only when they reached the shallow coastal waters in areas bordering the ocean. As they advanced, the waves created outflows that drained harbors, causing the curious to walk toward receding shorelines, fascinated by what was exposed in the shallow areas.

Almost instantly, without warning, the shoreline was inundated by waves as high as 50 feet that crashed with a force that pulverized everything in their paths. In tsunamis, the tops of the waves travel much faster than the bottoms, which results in a dramatic rising of the sea. The combined speed and weight of the raging water makes human survival unlikely.

The areas affected by the Indian Ocean Tsunami were quite impoverished. Many of their structures, especially those in which natives live, were badly built, making them incapable of resisting the force of such a powerful tsunami. These structures were either flattened or tossed about like matchboxes when the high waves hit.

Because this fearsome tsunami struck the day after Christmas, resorts on the Indian Ocean were booked to capacity with tourists, many from Europe and the United States. In the fishing villages abutting the ocean, many of the men had gone out on their boats, which accounts for the fact that four times more women than men died in the disaster. In addition, one-third of the dead were children. The initial official combined death toll for 11 countries of 186,983 was ultimately revised upward to about 212,000.

The Causes of the Tsunami. Earthquakes occur when two tectonic plates push against each other to the point that they produce a violent reaction. Such a reaction may build gradually over thousands of years before it produces an earthquake. The section of the earth’s crust called the India plate has been sliding at barely perceptible speeds under the Burma plate for millennia. On December 26, 2004, the India plate that was sliding under the Burma plate finally created a rupture about 600 miles long off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It displaced the area beneath the water by an estimated 10 yards horizontally and several yards vertically.

The result was that rock measured in trillions of tons was displaced and propelled by water moving at more than 600 miles an hour. It moved along hundreds of miles, causing the worst underwater upheaval since the Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964. Any earthquake that measures more than 6.0 on the Richter scale can be devastating. When the measurement exceeds 9.0, the results are staggering.

The fissure that the quake created filled with seawater, resulting in a huge disruption on the ocean floor. As billions of gallons of water poured into the newly created trench, waves radiated from the long fissure, sending killer concentric waves toward land. When these waves reached landfall, they engulfed everything in their paths with a force so great that little could withstand them.

The Immediate Aftermath. The destruction the tsunami caused was so widespread and all-encompassing that the engulfed coastal areas resembled war zones. The country hit hardest and first was Indonesia, with Sri Lanka, Thailand, and India suffering severe damage as the waves raced across the Indian Ocean in all directions. Little remained standing along the shore. Bodies dangled from trees or protruded from the great rivers of mud left behind when the waters receded. More people were dead than alive. After the tsunami retreated, the gentler ocean waves washed thousands of bodies to shore.

The poverty of the affected areas prevented them from having the sophisticated advanced tsunami warning systems that are available in more prosperous regions. Had such systems been in place, mass evacuations could have spared thousands of lives. Moving to higher ground saved some who sensed that the tsunami was imminent, but most people did not realize the danger until it was upon them.

Many of those who survived were made numb by the magnitude of the disaster. They wandered about aimlessly amid areas whose only shelters had been washed out to sea or catapulted far into the higher reaches of the terrain that was dotted by the boats, automobiles, trucks, and heavy equipment that the rushing water had tossed like toys and deposited up to 2 miles from where they had originated.

Aftershocks shook the area, causing not only additional damage to the few remaining structures that might have been used to shelter the survivors but also terrifying the stunned people who had managed to escape the original assault. Between December 26 and January 1, 2005, the affected area was shaken by 84 aftershocks whose magnitude ranged from 5.0 to 7.0 on the Richter scale.

Of these aftershocks, 26 were felt on the same day as the major underwater quake that had triggered the tsunami. At least one such aftershock had an magnitude of 7.0, which in itself was sufficient to cause severe damage to inhabited areas. Survivors much in need of shelter were reluctant to enter buildings that they feared would collapse as the aftershocks destabilized the ground beneath them.

In the days immediately following the tsunami, tens of thousands of people needed medical treatment for such problems as open wounds, broken bones, contusions, dysentery, and various endemic diseases. Such assistance was not available to them because the afflicted areas, many of which never had adequate medical facilities, had lost most of their physicians and nurses and had suffered the loss of clinics that vanished beneath the waves.

Help from outside was on its way, but it did not arrive in time to save many of the more critically injured victims of the tsunami. As the survivors were forced to live in intensely crowded conditions, a great danger arose from communicable respiratory diseases, particularly influenza and pneumonia. Conditions were right for mosquitoes to breed, raising the threat of malaria.

In the week following the December 26 disaster, survivors had little to eat. They drank what water they could find at their own risk, as water supplies had been contaminated by raw sewage and decaying bodies. Among the first food shipments to arrive from outside the stricken area were cases of dried noodles that these had to be prepared by adding boiling water. Unfortunately, many people did not have any means of boiling water, which in most cases was so polluted that bringing it to boiling temperature would not wholly eliminate the dangers that drinking it posed.

Factors Complicating Recovery. The immediate task facing the survivors was to dispose of the decaying corpses that were quickly deteriorating in the hot, humid climate. Survivors frantically tried to find and identify dead relatives. In the end, many of the dead had to be cremated or buried anonymously in mass graves.

Problems arose because many people in the tsunami’s path were Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim. Muslims prohibit cremation of a dead person’s remains, which made it difficult for many of the afflicted communities to employ the most efficient and sanitary way to dispose of bodies. Some efforts were made to photograph every body before it was buried in a mass grave so that survivors might eventually identify their loved ones.

Some of the religions followed by people in the countries struck by the tsunami deny death if a body is not present. Therefore, hordes of people refused to admit that family members had perished because their bodies had not been found. Further, Hindus and Buddhists believe in gods with mercurial temperaments and that natural disasters reflect divine anger. Such beliefs caused many of the survivors to suffer from guilt, which sometimes resulted in passivity and resignation preventing them from facing the realities of the disaster and taking the actions needed to set recovery efforts in motion.

In both India and Indonesia, separatist groups were seeking independent political status, creating additional difficulties. Sometimes such groups interfered with recovery efforts. The devastated city of Banda Atjeh, which lost one-third of its 320,000 inhabitants, had been a stronghold of Muslim extremists who were seeking independence from Indonesia. It was feared that these extremists would do violence to rescuers who came into the area.

Also, Indonesia was slow to accept rescuers because, since the country had gained independence in 1949, it had allowed no foreign military personnel on Indonesian soil. When the Indonesian government finally admitted military personnel from foreign countries, it stipulated that rescuers must be unarmed.

Worldwide Relief Efforts. All the civilized world was dismayed by the loss of life and property that the tsunami caused. Early reports that suggested casualty rates below 10,000 elicited immediate help and support from a number of nations, but as reports of fatalities zoomed, rapidly increasing offers of help were forthcoming.

On December 28, two days after the tsunami, U.S. president George W. Bush pledged $15 million in relief funds to the stricken nations. By December 31, when heightened casualty reports flooded in, Bush increased that aid to $350 million. By February 10, as the dimensions of the tragedy grew, Bush urged Congress to appropriate $950 million for tsunami relief. Congress passed the requested legislation. Soon after the disaster, President Bush dispatched two American aircraft carriers, the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Bonhomme Richard, to the area to serve as staging grounds for helicopter flights to the places most in need of immediate relief. In many instances, the tsunami had wiped out roads, making access by air the only workable alternative.

Among other major contributors to the relief effort were Japan, with a pledge of $500 million; Australia, with a pledge of $800 million that was later increased to $1.1 billion; the European Union, with a pledge of $675 million; Denmark, with a pledge of $420 million; Germany, with a pledge of $653 million; and Canada, with a pledge of $425 million. Even small countries offered assistance: tiny Monaco, $133 million; Bosnia, $67,000; Cambodia, $40,000; Croatia, $917,000; Belgium, $15.67 million; and Cyprus, $1.3 million.

Private donations, both corporate and personal, came pouring in. When an Indian oncologist living and practicing in Florida set out to raise $100,000 for tsunami relief, he raised twice that amount between December 26 and January 7.

Military personnel arrived from the United States as well as from Australia, Singapore, and a number of European countries. Members of the Australian and Singaporean air forces quickly built air strips in Medan, Indonesia, so that relief planes could land. They flew in large cargo planes filled with food, water, and medical supplies that were then transferred to helicopters for transportation to the areas where they were needed the most.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan visited the stricken areas of Sri Lanka and pledged food and other necessities to every person who needed them. The United States remembered the dead by flying flags on all public buildings at half-staff in the week following the tsunami. Americans were urged to make donations to relief organizations.

President Bush enlisted the aid of former presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton to organize fund-raising efforts. Even though Clinton was recovering from recent heart surgery, he plunged into relief activities with characteristic vigor and enthusiasm, as did the 80-year-old Bush. The two visited the affected areas, bringing hope and promises of tangible assistance to community leaders throughout the region.

Outcomes. Remarkably, the epidemics many feared would follow the tsunami did not develop. Broken bones mended and torn flesh healed as survivors began to reconstruct their lives and rebuild their communities. On a personal level, most of the people who had lived near the Indian Ocean planned to rebuild in the same areas, as is often the case following such disasters as typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis.

As a result of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, considerable attention is being paid to natural phenomena that seem predictive of impending disaster. Somehow, hundreds of members of a tribe that had inhabited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands off the coast of India for many centuries, through some unexplained sixth sense, foresaw that a tsunami was imminent and moved to higher ground, thereby reducing their casualty rate to zero.

Similarly, few animals were killed by the tsunami. Elephants, water buffalo, dogs, cats, and many species of birds escaped the devastation that wiped out so much of the human population in the places that were their natural habitats. Biologists, meteorologists, and climatologists have engaged in far-reaching studies designed to explain what clues cause animals to sense oncoming natural disasters.

Despite the relative poverty of the areas in which the tsunami struck, efforts are being made to install sophisticated early warning technologies such as those that exist in the Pacific Ocean to protect such vulnerable places as Hawaii and Alaska. When such systems are in place, mass evacuations may virtually eliminate the huge numbers of deaths that marked the Indian Ocean Tsunami.

Bibliography

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Anderson, Robert Mark. “Wave Files.” Natural History 115 (February, 2006): 54.

Bernard, E. N. Developing Tsunami-Resilient Communities:The National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program. Norwell, Mass.: Springer, 2005.

Fang, Mark Bay. “Remembering All the Lost, and Rebuilding.” U.S. News & World Report 40 (January 9, 2006): 10-11.

Stewart, Gail B. Catastrophe in Southeastern Asia: The Tsunami of 2004. Chicago: Gale/Lucent, 2005.

Torres, John Albert. Disaster in the Indian Ocean: Tsunami 2004. Hockessin, Del.: Mitchell Lane, 2005.