The quake originated in a so-called megathrust fault, where heavy oceanic plates subduct beneath lighter continental plates.“We took a boat all the way from the middle of the island up to Banda Aceh, the hardest hit area, and for hundreds of kilometers it was as if somebody had taken an eraser and erased everything underneath the 20-meter line,” says Titov. It was during these expeditions that scientists confirmed maximum wave heights of more than 131 feet on the northwestern tip of the island. Rather than delivering one violent jolt, the quake lasted an unrelenting 10 minutes, releasing as much pent-up power as several thousand atomic bombs.Titov will never forget the scene of widespread devastation he witnessed on Sumatra even months after the tsunami waters had subsided.Titov emphasizes that tsunamis look nothing like the giant surfing break-style waves that many of us imagine.Thailand was next. A powerful earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, on December 26, 2004 sets off a tsunami that wreaks death and devastation across the … Despite the time lapse, locals and tourists were caught completely unaware of the imminent destruction.

Borrero remembers coming upon a colossal freighter loaded with bags of cement that had been flipped on its back with its propeller in the air. It’s nearly impossible to imagine the 100-foot roiling mountain of water that engulfed the coastal city of 320,000, instantly killing more than 100,000 men, women and children.

At the same time, an Indonesian radio station reports the death of nine villagers as the result of a tsunami. “The sheer scale of the destruction was just mind-boggling.” At 7:59 AM, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake—one of the largest ever recorded—ripped through an undersea fault in the Indian Ocean, propelling a massive column of water toward unsuspecting shores. Vasily Titov is a tsunami researcher and forecaster with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Center for Tsunami Research. “It’s more like the ocean turns into a white water river and floods everything in its path.”The 2004 quake ruptured a 900-mile stretch along the Indian and Australian plates 31 miles below the ocean floor. With waves traveling 500 mph across the Indian Ocean, the tsunami hit the coastal provinces of Phang Nga and Phuket an hour and a half later. The Boxing Day tsunami would be the deadliest in recorded history, taking a staggering 230,000 lives in a matter of hours.In the process, massive segments of the ocean floor were forced upward an estimated 30 or 40 meters (up to 130 feet).

The earthquake which caused the tsunami, hit at one minute before 8:00am. The city of Banda Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra was closest … It’s completely reversed with tsunamis,” says Titov.

The effect was like dropping the world’s largest pebble in the Indian Ocean with ripples the size of mountains extending out in all directions.Once caught in the raging waters, if the currents don’t pull you under, the debris will finish the job.“In earthquakes, a certain number of people die but many more are injured. one hour after the earthquake. The December 26, 2004 magnitude (M) 9.1 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake occurred along a tectonic subduction zone in which the India Plate, an oceanic plate, is being subducted beneath the Burma micro-plate, part of the larger Sunda plate. Over the next seven hours, a tsunami —a series of immense ocean waves—triggered by the quake reached out across the Indian Ocean , devastating coastal areas as far away as East Africa . On December 26, 2004, at 7:59 am local time, an undersea earthquake with a magnitude of 9.1 struck off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. “So without a natural warning, without an official warning and with no history of tsunamis, hitting coastlines full of people, that’s the perfect combination to cause a lot of death and destruction.”Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you.“It’s a wave, but from the observer’s standpoint, you wouldn’t recognize it as a wave,” Titov says.

Jakarta: Ten years ago, on Sunday, December 26, 2004, a massive earthquake struck off Indonesia, unleashing a devastating tsunami which left more than 220,000 dead across the Indian Ocean in hours.

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