‘There was nothing but death and debris’ – The Boxing Day tsunami 20 years on
Exactly 20 years ago, the Indian Ocean tsunami changed the course of history.
Shortly before 8am on December 26, 2004, an earthquake measuring 9.3 on the Richter scale was registered beneath the Indian Ocean, around 250km from land.
It was one of the most fierce earthquakes the Earth had ever seen, the energy it released was equivalent to 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs.
Within just a matter of minutes, reams of killer waves were heading towards unsuspecting tourists holidaying on Indonesian shores – and the disaster they were about to cause was unparalleled.
The city of Banda Aceh in Sumatra, western Indonesia, was the first coast met by the endless bombardment of waves.
320,000 people resided in Banda Aceh in late 2004 – within minutes 100,000 were killed by the tsunami.
Southern Thailand was next to be approached by the strange ‘bubbling white line in the sea.’
Beaches and coastlines at Phang Nga and Phuket were quickly engulfed by water. As trees fell, houses folded like cards and streets turned into debris-filled rivers. Around 5,400 people were killed, including 2,000 tourists.
With alarms raised, the tsunami, travelling at 500mph, then headed east.
Within an hour, the merciless waves of destruction were bearing down on the southern Indian city of Chennai. A further 10,000 were killed by the rushing waters.
Sri Lanka, an island just 27km from the most southerly Indian coast, was the next nation to be shattered by one of the most catastrophic natural disasters in history.
Virtually all of Sri Lanka’s east coast was wiped out – 30,000 people died, villages were swept away and thousands were left homeless in disastrous scenes which are still felt in the country to this day.
In one instance, a train carrying more than 1,000 passengers was bulldozed off its tracks by the tsunami, killing almost everyone on-board. It remains the the most significant rail disaster in history.
20 years later, one of the Matara train’s carriages sits outside the city’s Tsunami Museum as a haunting reminder of Boxing Day of 2004.
The effects of the 9.3 Richter scale earthquake did not relent until eight hours later, when unaware swimmers off the coast of South Africa felt the force of the waves.
During the tsunami’s eight hour reign of terror, it reached the shores of 14 countries and wiped away towns, villages and entire communities.
It killed a staggering and devastating 225,000 people.
Gareth Owen was part of a rescue team with the charity Save the Children.
When he arrived on the island, he said he saw ‘nothing but debris and death.’
‘There were giant ships in-land where they had been lifted by waves. The coastline was totally wrecked,’ he told Metro.
‘The waves had churned up everything, everything was scoured. Many Sri Lankans lived in little huts on the coast, they were all washed out to sea.
‘Thousands of Sri Lankans were left homeless. We had never seen anything like this, the tsunami stretched from Asia all the way to Eastern Africa.’
He recalls being sat on a beach in Takua Pa, South Thailand, on the morning of the 26th, his dad saying to him: ‘Come, look, something’s happening in the water.’
Those would be the last words Louis and his 12-year-old brother, Theo, ever heard their dad say. Both Louis’ father, Leonard Barratt, and mother, Catherine Mullan, were killed when the ‘rushing water’ reached the shore.
In the aftermath of the tsunami, millions of people spent years trying to restore their home countries to some sort of normality.
Twenty years on, through the tireless work of those involved, the countries that suffered most during the tsunami have been largely cleaned up and repaired.
But the nightmarish memory of Boxing Day 2004 lives on for so many, and the 225,000 lives lost will never be forgotten.
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