Survivors and relatives of victims next week will mark the 20th anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 220,000 people in more than a dozen countries.
A magnitude 9.1 earthquake off the west coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island sent huge waves that spread across the coastal areas of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and nine other countries around the Indian Ocean basin.
Here’s a look at the impact of the deadliest tsunami in history:
fault line rupture
A few seconds before 7:59 a.m. on December 26, 2004, the tsunami was triggered by the longest faultline rupture ever observed.
The ocean floor opened over a length of at least 1,200 kilometers (750 mi) between the India Plate and the Burma Microplate.
It produced waves more than 30 meters (100 ft) high, releasing energy equivalent to 23,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs and causing widespread destruction.
The magnitude was initially recorded as 8.8, before the United States Geological Survey reported its official magnitude as 9.1 and a depth of 30 kilometers (18.6 mi).
The epicenter of the earthquake was located 150 miles off the coast of Sumatra.
Indonesia is a vast archipelagic nation on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan to Southeast Asia and the Pacific Basin.
More than 2.26 lakh deaths
According to EM-DAT, a recognized global disaster database, a total of 226,408 people died as a result of the tsunami.
The worst-hit area was North Sumatra, where more than 120,000 people died, out of a total of 165,708 in Indonesia.
Huge waves swept across the Indian Ocean and hit Sri Lanka, India and Thailand hours later.
At their fastest the waves traveled at more than 800 kilometers per hour (500 mph), more than twice the speed of a bullet train.
According to EM-DAT, more than 35,000 people died in Sri Lanka, 16,389 in India and 8,345 in Thailand.
Nearly 300 people were killed in Somalia, more than 100 in the Maldives, as well as dozens in Malaysia and Myanmar.
displaced, rebuilt
According to the United Nations, the tsunami displaced more than 1.5 million people and prompted nearly $14 billion in disaster relief pledges from the international community.
Hundreds of thousands of buildings were destroyed, in some cases leaving entire communities homeless.
The wasteful expenditure on reconstruction has transformed Banda Aceh, the worst-hit city.
According to the Indonesian government, more than 100,000 homes were rebuilt in the western Indonesian province of Aceh alone.
warning system
The tsunami also forced consideration of the preparedness of coastal communities around the Indian Ocean Basin.
There was no warning system in place in the Indian Ocean at the time of the earthquake.
But now, 1,400 stations globally have reduced the warning time to just a few minutes after the tsunami wave arrived.
Experts said the lack of a properly coordinated warning system in 2004 had made the impact of the disaster worse.
Ocean scientists say we are more prepared than ever because of millions of dollars invested in tsunami warning systems, but they warn that the effects of devastating tsunamis can never be completely prevented.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
