Commemoration Tsunami disaster 2004: Tidal wave caused destruction
20 years after the devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and other affected countries are commemorating the more than 220,000 victims on Boxing Day. A look back at the disaster and its consequences.
19.12.2024, 07:00
SDA
Huge crack on the seabed
The tsunami was triggered on December 26, 2004 at 7.58 a.m. (local time) by a severe shock in the Sunda Trench off the Indonesian coast, where the Indian continental plate is sliding under the smaller Burma plate. This builds up enormous tension, which was suddenly released on Boxing Day: the seabed ripped open over a length of 1200 kilometers, releasing as much energy as 13,000 of the atomic bombs that destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. Tidal waves up to 30 meters high piled up in the Indian Ocean.
Huge number of victims
According to the international disaster database EM-DAT, there were a total of 226,408 deaths. 165,708 people died in Indonesia alone, the vast majority of them in the province of Aceh in northern Sumatra, where the tidal waves were particularly high. From the center of the quake, the tsunami spread throughout the Indian Ocean at a speed of up to 800 kilometers per hour, reaching Sri Lanka, India and Thailand after two hours.
According to EM-DAT, more than 35,000 people lost their lives in Sri Lanka, 16,389 in India and 8345 in Thailand. In Thailand, numerous tourists on Christmas vacation were among the victims. There were also more than 100 deaths in the Maldives and several dozen each in Malaysia and Myanmar. Offshoots of the tsunami even reached the coast of East Africa: almost 300 deaths were recorded in Somalia alone.
Huge destruction
In Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India, the giant waves devastated large swathes of coastal land and destroyed entire towns and villages. Hundreds of thousands of buildings were destroyed and, according to UN figures, more than 1.5 million people lost their homes as a result of the tsunami. The international community provided around 14 billion dollars for reconstruction.
According to the Indonesian government, more than 100,000 houses were rebuilt in the province of Aceh alone - the devastated city of Banda Aceh is barely recognizable today.
Improving early warning systems
The number of victims was also so high because most people were completely unprepared for the disaster: There was no tsunami early warning system in the Indonesian Ocean at the time. The tidal waves rolled over the coasts without warning: holidaymakers and locals therefore did not have enough time to seek shelter - and many did not even understand what was happening at first.
After the disaster, an early warning system was also set up for the Indonesian Ocean, as had been in place in the Pacific for years. The warning systems are based on 1,400 measuring stations worldwide and send automatically generated warnings to the authorities and people in the affected coastal regions in the event of earthquakes and tsunamis.
