Tsunami Hits Thailand & South East Asia!

Dedicated to all 2004 December 26th Boxing Day Tsunami Victims, families,those injured, and those otherwise affected.

The terrible devastation and the aftermath of this catastrophe caught on tape. The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami was triggered by an earthquake off the north-west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It killed 230,000 people in a dozen Indian Ocean countries, 170,000 of them in Indonesia's Aceh province alone.

Sri Lanka and Thailand were severely impacted by the tsunami on December 26, 2004. Tsunami Thailand 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC (07:58:53 local time) December 26, 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.
Surprisingly, some islands right in the middle of the tsunami were not badly affected. It turns out their atolls, or coral reefs, absorbed much of the wave. The coral ridges protected them. In many regions of the Asian waters, there is a practice some fishermen use, of dynamiting the natural coral reefs to bring up fish. These barriers to the tsunami were no longer in place to deflect the water.

The disaster promoted a global outpouring of sympathy, with governments, individuals and corporations pledging more than $13 billion in aid. According to UN database, nearly two years after donors pledged billions to help the victims only half the money had been spent. Of the half a million people left homeless by the disaster, only a third have been permanently rehoused.
The public response to the tsunami was very untypical. A combination of events - the dramatic nature of the huge wave, its occurrence at Christmas, the size of the disaster, the fact that so many Westerners died, the availability of spectacular video footage and the extensive TV coverage that secured - meant that the global public gave far more than ever before. The money went to aid agencies that were too small to mastermind such a mammoth task. Oxfam has spent more than $280 million on disaster recovery work and is now more than three-quarters of the way through its response plan. Aid workers have helped more than 2.3 million people across seven countries to get back into their homes.Despite the outpouring of generosity from aid agencies and individuals, recipient countries say pledges by some governments have still not been honoured.

The earthquake triggered a series of devastating tsunamis along the coasts of most landmasses bordering the Indian Ocean, killing more than 230,000 people in eleven countries, and inundating coastal communities with waves up to 30 meters With a magnitude of between 9.1 and 9.3, it is the second largest earthquake ever recorded on a seismograph. This earthquake had the longest duration of faulting ever observed, between 8.3 and 10 minutes. It caused the entire planet to vibrate as much as 1 cm (0.5 inches) and triggered other earthquakes as far away as Alaska.

The disaster is known by the scientific community as the Great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake,and is also known as the Asian Tsunami and the Boxing Day Tsunami. Thailand: 5,393 confirmed dead, 3,071 missing. Many of the missing are presumed dead. Maldives: 82 dead, 26 missing.
Sri Lanka, which was second hardest hit by the catastrophe, stood at 30,957, according to the Centre for National Operations. The number of people listed as missing was 5637. In India, the official death toll was 10,749 with 5640 still reported missing and feared dead.

The latest disaster to hit Asia, Cyclone Nargis struck May 2008, bringing winds of up 120mph and flooding to the badly affected Irrawaddy Delta region, Burma Myanmar. The cyclone had left twice as many people vulnerable as the 2004 Asian tsunami.