Tsunami Hits Thailand & South East Asia!

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 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.