Short History Of... - Indian Ocean Tsunami

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

On the morning of December 26th, 2004, a massive earthquake struck the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, triggering an enormous tsunami that hit Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and more. Killing at least 275,000 people, and impacting 20 countries, it remains the deadliest natural disaster of the 21st Century. But what exactly caused the earthquake and subsequent tsunami? How did it hit with no warning? And has enough been done to limit the effects of such an event if it happens again? This is a Short History Of the Indian Ocean Tsunami. A Noiser production, written by Lindsay Galvin. With thanks to Jose Borrero - a coastal and environmental scientist, and Tsunami Hazards specialist.  Get every episode of Short History Of a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's in this McDonald's bag? The McValue Meal. For $5.79 plus tax, you can get your choice of junior chicken, McDouble, or chicken snack wrap, plus small fries and a small fountain drink. So pick up a McValue Meal today at participating McDonald's restaurants in Canada. Prices exclude delivery. This podcast contains content listeners may find upsetting. It is just after 8 a.m. on the 26th of December, 2004 2004 in the city of Banda Aceh on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

A teenage boy in shorts and flip-flops runs through cracked streets and he's terrified. There's just been an earthquake, a bad one. His mouth covered by his t-shirt against the clouds of dust, he blinks grit from his eyes as he flees through the narrowing lanes at the coastal edge of the city. Frightened voices call out around him. As people check their family, friends and neighbors are safe. With the earth still settling, the boy narrowly dodges a telephone pole as it crashes onto the road in front of him. as it crashes onto the road in front of him. Just a few minutes ago, he was playing football on a patch of wasteland when the earth started shaking. He was knocked to the ground, unable to comprehend what was happening.

As soon as it was over, he and his friends, all from fishing families, split up and started racing back to their homes. The boy swerves onto the coast road, his home now just a few hundred meters ahead. To his left is the beach, but it looks utterly wrong. Wet sand stretches far further back than it should do, even at the lowest tide. Across the shoreline, the boats are grounded, lying at strange angles. He hears the shouts of children, and turns to see them running towards the sea, calling out in wonder at the absence of water that should be up to their waists.

One holds up a large beached crab, and all around, fish flap desperately, gasping for water. But beyond them is something even stranger. Where the familiar blue horizon should be is now what appears to be a wall of black, topped by a thin white line. And it's coming closer. Rounding the corner to his small, part-conc concrete bungalow, he sees his mother, father and sister climbing into their battered minivan.

They wave to him to hurry, and by the time the boy throws himself inside, his father has already started the engine. They pull away, and the two children turn to stare out to the rear window, frozen in shock. They realize that what they're looking at is a wave, and there's no way they're going The two children turn to stare out to the rear window, frozen in shock. They realize that what they're looking at is a wave, and there's no way they're going to outrun it. Seconds later, the water slams into the side of a van. It's lifted up and spun around as if it's no heavier than a children's toy.

The boy's head cracks against metal. There's a blinding blast of pain before everything goes dark. But then, through semi-consciousness, he feels hands pulling his arms. Utterly disorientated, he knows only that he is somehow out of the van and in the sea. The sucking, churning water drags him through the city, the tops of concrete buildings and trees racing past him. The vicious current makes it almost impossible to keep above water, let alone try to look for his family.

Now the boy clutches onto something solid, a broken chair. The flood is slowing, but he's dragged into a swirling eddy and down. By the time he manages to kick back to the surface, he realizes he is being hauled back out to sea. When the tsunami finally subsides, this boy, like tens of thousands of others, will be deposited on an entirely unfamiliar shoreline. Everything he has ever known has been wiped away. He is eventually reunited with his father in a makeshift field hospital.

His mother and sister are never found. The Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004, also known as the Boxing Day Tsunami, remains the deadliest natural disaster of the 21st century, and one of the worst in recorded history. Banda Aceh in Sumatra was one of the worst hit areas, closest to the earthquake that caused the deadly wave. At least 275,000 people were killed by the catastrophe, which impacted 20 countries and traveled the entire breadth of an ocean.

So what caused it? Why did it kill so many? How did it hit with no warning? And has enough been done to limit the effects of such an event if it happens again? I'm John Hopkins from Noisa. This is a short history of the Indian Ocean Tsunami. A tsunami is a giant wave, usually caused by a large-scale disturbance of the sea floor, often due to an earthquake. But while tsunamis are rare, earthquakes are a common geological occurrence.

The Earth's crust is made up of immense tectonic plates, irregularly shaped slabs that fit together like a puzzle. Because these plates sit on the thick, flowing layer of the Earth's mantle, they're constantly moving. At a snail's pace, but with relentless power. Earthquakes occur when these shifting plates meet to cause a fault, meaning rock is displaced or fractured. One of these types of faults is known as a subduction. Jose Barrero is a coastal and environmental scientist and tsunami hazards specialist. He was also one of the first Western scientists to visit the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster zone. A subduction zone is where one tectonic plate dives underneath another tectonic

plate. And as one dives under the other, they're locked and the diving plate drags the overriding plate down with it until enough stress accumulates. And finally, that stress can break the rock that's holding it together and then it snaps apart. the rock that's holding it together, and then it snaps apart, and then that's what kicks off the earthquake. Earthquakes are always happening somewhere. The National Earthquake Information Center in the USA locates around 12,000 to 14,000 earthquakes each year. Most of these register low on the magnitude scale, which is now used

by scientists instead of the old Richter scale because of its greater accuracy. An earthquake's magnitude depends on the energy released, which is determined by the distance a fault moves and the force required to move it. Around 10,000 magnitude 4 earthquakes, which are minor but strong enough to be felt by humans, are identified per year. In comparison, only 1,500 per year reach magnitude 5, meaning they're powerful enough to cause some property damage. At the other end of the scale, those measuring over 8 on the magnitude scale are known as great earthquakes and occur only once a year or two. Tsunamis, in contrast, are infrequent. Any wave caused by an earthquake or other geological hazard is considered a tsunami, no matter the size. Between 10 and 20 are detected each year,

but those large enough to result in significant damage and loss of life only happen once or twice a decade. Despite their infrequency, tsunamis have long been recognized as a major threat to life. The first recorded tsunami occurs off the coast of Syria in 2000 BC. But the most powerful on record is the Valdivia earthquake and tsunami which hits Chile in 1960. Measuring 9.5 magnitude and killing thousands of people, its effects are felt on the other side of the Pacific in Japan. The Chilean disaster leads to the establishment of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. By coordinating coastal tide gauges and data

from its six deep-ocean pressure sensors, it detects when and where tsunamis may be forming. This information is then relayed to the coastal areas likely to be affected, where evacuation plans can be put into action. But a tsunami travels fast, and though the Warning Center has saved countless lives, its alerts can't always reach the communities before the waves do. And it only serves the areas inside its range.

80% of the Earth's major earthquakes occur around the edges of the Pacific Ocean, the tectonic fault zone known as the Ring of Fire. Sumatra sits beyond the western edge of the ring. But the earthquakes that are common here are often thanks to a fault running the length of the island and another in the Indian Ocean. And there is no warning system in the Indian Ocean. So at the time, there was only the Pacific tsunami warning system. Of course, tsunamis were well known in Indonesia before then. There had never been a major trans-oceanic Indian Ocean tsunami in human history that would have prompted

the need for a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean. But all of that is about to change. On the 26th of December 2004, at 7.58 local time, Jakarta's Geophysical Center registers an earthquake measuring a magnitude of 6.4 off the island of Sumatra. That particular part of the earthquake zone had not experienced an earthquake of that magnitude as far back as anyone knew. an earthquake of that magnitude as far back as anyone knew. This is an area that has thousands of years of recorded history, and there's no records of a tsunami or an earthquake of this nature having occurred before. Banda Aceh is located on the northwestern tip of Sumatra, in a region currently in the midst of a violent conflict

with the rest of Indonesia. The bustling provincial capital is home to around 300,000 people, and when the earthquake hits they don't need sensors to tell them what's happening. People take shelter or simply huddle in the streets as the ground tremors go on and on. Dust rises around them while buildings shiver, some crumble and collapse. When the quake stops after eight to ten minutes, the people of Banda Aceh tend to their injuries, grateful that most are not severe. They begin the clear-up and repair that is a familiar part of their lives on this geologically volatile island.

But what they don't know is that just 250 kilometers to the southeast of the island, a 1,200 kilometer stretch of fault line has just ruptured across the ocean floor at a depth of 30 meters. The energy released is 23,000 times that of a Hiroshima-type atomic bomb, enough to displace billions of tons of water. And that water has already formed a lethal wave, which is now hurtling towards them at up to 800 kilometers per hour. When the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii registers the quake, it alerts all its affiliated countries that there is no threat of tsunami to the Pacific. But as the data evolves, the quake is determined to have a magnitude of 9.3. It's the strongest earthquake registered anywhere for 40 years, and the third most powerful on record. There is no way of sharing that information

with those in the Indian Ocean. Out here, the wave builds. Ships pass over it in the open ocean, where it's spread over hundreds of kilometers and is virtually undetectable. But as it hurtles ever outwards from the epicenter, the quake that caused it is picked up by a monitoring station in Thailand. However, there is no tsunami-sensing equipment there,

rendering the scientists powerless to assess the likelihood of one forming. But all the while, back down in Sumatra, the great wave is gathering pace. The word tsunami is Japanese for harbour wave, so named because it's only when the affected water reaches the shallows that it appears as a wave at all. Because they're powered by geological force, the entire mass of water from seafloor to surface is displaced, unlike normal wind-generated waves that only affect the top layer. When a tsunami nears its first landfall, as this one does as it approaches

Sumatra, it decelerates as the seabed rises. The front of the wave slows, and when the back catches up, it transforms it into an unstoppable wall of water. Only 20 to 30 minutes after the earthquake, at around 8.20 a.m. local time, the tsunami strikes the shorelines of the Sumatra and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. If you were standing on the shoreline, you would have and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

If you were standing on the shoreline, you would have just seen this line of whitewater way out on the horizon that just kept coming towards you. And it would be moving probably slower than you would think. And it would just keep coming closer and closer, but it would take quite a while to get to you until by the time you realize what it was, it was too late because then it just shoots across the shallows and has a high enough speed to knock people over and then you're done. The waves are 35 meters high, rising in places to 50, the height of an 18-story building. Banda Aceh, home to thousands of people, is decimated in minutes. Trees are uprooted as easily as grass. Vehicles and anything freestanding are swept up in the churning water. The homes of entire communities splinter into matchsticks, joining the concrete and metal pilings of larger buildings in the roiling current.

The debris makes the tide all the more deadly, and few people engulfed by it will survive. Gathering a lethal load of wreckage, including trucks, boats, and roofs, the tsunami barrels into the built-up areas of Banda Aceh and up to five kilometers inland. And it moves fast. At the leading edge of the tsunami, and we're at a place that's about three kilometers from the open ocean here in the center of Banda Aceh, and the people are actually walking faster than the leading edge of the tsunami.

They're sort of at a little medium trot and they're staying ahead of it. But then as the water gets deeper and deeper and comes in more and more, it goes faster and faster and faster. So the speed picks up as the water gets a little bit deeper and as it's channeled through the city streets. So the concrete buildings themselves act as flow guides and speed up the flow through the city streets. Some reports state that three initial waves hit bandaache but once a tsunami makes landfall it becomes as unpredictable as it is destructive what happens is that when waves

interact with shallow features they actually split apart and break into sub harmonics different ways and then non-linear effects start to take over. So it's waves upon waves upon waves, and then there were some big ones, and there's some smaller ones, and they're all overlapping and interacting. As the tsunami proceeds down the east coast of Sumatra, dozens of villages are wiped from the map.

Indonesia will ultimately count around 170,000 dead or missing. Lack of basic education supercharges the death toll. When they see the wave, most people have no concept of what it is. Confusion and panic reign, and there simply isn't any time to take action. And when the water recedes, what's left behind in Sumatra almost defies comprehension, even for the most experienced disaster experts. It was basically kilometers inland from the shoreline,

completely flattened, all trees removed, all houses removed, all of the dirt removed, everything. And then it would hit the slope of the hillside, which would maybe a kilometer or two inland. And then it stripped off all of the trees all the way up to an elevation of maybe 15 to 25 meters, uniformly over 100 kilometers of the coastline. Banda Aceh is a very flat city. There's some big rivers there, so it's a big flat river plain. And the tsunami penetrated there three, four, five kilometers in places. In the minutes following the retreat of the water,

survivors cling to trees and huddle on taller structures, petrified of further waves. If they were swept up in the water, they are lucky to be alive, typically badly bruised and lacerated by the debris or nursing broken bones. The pressure of the wave has forced sand, splinters, and filth into their sinus cavities, an environment ripe for infection. Many have breathed in the muddy, bacteria-laden water, which will quickly form a pneumonia-type infection known as tsunami lung.

The force of the surge has ripped off clothes and shoes. Survivors are left to stagger over treacherous piles of rubble, utterly disorientated, possibly far from where they were when the wave carried them off. The tropical heat beats down on unrecognizable shorelines, where the bodies of victims who were alive just minutes before now form part of the wreckage. While Banda Aceh reels, the Indian Ocean tsunami is only just beginning its trajectory of devastation. The wave spreads in all directions from the epicenter of the earthquake. As it travels over deeper water, it speeds up, racing across the Bay of Bengal and towards

the tourist-packed beaches of Thailand. A third of the globe away, in Hawaii, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center buzzes with activity, and fears are growing. Though the scientists here are severely limited by the absence of tsunami sensors in the Indian Ocean, their modeling programs are calculating a possibly catastrophic risk to life. But by the time they issue an alert for a tsunami in the Indian Ocean, an hour has passed since the earthquake, and it is far too late. The scientists have no official point of contact in the Indian Ocean countries. They call the military, embassies, any local government officials,

desperate to share their knowledge as the tsunami speeds on. I think the basic reason why it was difficult to get the warning out to the rest of the Indian Ocean was basically the communication links weren't there. Who do you call? How do you call the harbor master in Chennai, India if you had to call him right now? Who do you call? It's not that easy. And I think efforts were made and people tried their best,

but at the end of the day, trying to get that message down for the first time ever to pre-widespread broadband internet and connectivity that we have now, just 20 years later, it was a lot different in 2004. The remote Indian islands of Andaman and Nicobar, halfway between the Indian coast and the epicenter, are among the first hit in the Bay of Bengal. People rush from their houses, clutching their children and attempting to flee as colossal waves smash into the shores, almost swamping entire islands.

Many residents who have relocated there from mainland India don't have the benefit of generations of knowledge of coastal hazards, so they have no idea how to respond. Some indigenous communities fare better. On Nicobar's north sentinel island live the Sentinelese tribe, one of the world's last uncontacted societies, who are notoriously wary of outsiders. Noticing the strange movement of the sea and observing the behavior of seabirds

that suddenly fall silent and rush away from the shoreline, they evacuate their village. Their whole tribe survives. 65 kilometers from mainland Thailand, the Surin Islands are the next in the tsunami's path. They are home to 200 members of the Mokhan tribe, who have recently become world famous for their ability to free dive to great depths and see clearly underwater. Though these people were mostly nomadic until very recently, they now live in a beach village of thatched huts on stilts, straddling the sea. the sea. It is mid-morning on the 26th of December 2004, and a young Mokun fisherman is cruising across turquoise waters, hand on the tiller of his long-tail boat's outboard engine.

Other fishermen are working their own boats nearby, each with their own halo of seabirds squawking above it. Looking back towards the land, he can just make out the shape of the stilted housing of his village, silhouetted against the yellow sand. He pauses above one of his squid traps, then slips into the water and dives down to check it. and dives down to check it. When he's down there, he feels a slight suck of water, as if he's being drawn slowly back. But he turns his attention nonetheless to the cage of bent bamboo. It's empty, so he leaves it where it is.

But as he blinks into the water, his vision clear, he sees a fish powering towards him, a type he doesn't recognize. It's silvery, and he catches a glimpse of transparent needle teeth and small, flat eyes. He springs to the surface and holds himself back onto his boat. Shaking off water, the fisherman frowns, thinking how strange it is to see a deep-sea fish so close to the shore. And now the boat begins bobbing inexplicably. He looks up at the circling birds, just as they fall silent. All at once, they fly away from their food source towards land, and he's definitely never seen that happen before.

Right out to sea, though, there's something even stranger. When he spots the white crest, he presumes it is a giant ship of some kind, and the noise that seems to be coming from it is certainly like an engine. But inland, the fishing boats that usually float in the bay are sitting at strange angles along the sand shore.

The stilted legs of his village's huts are no longer in the water. Laboon. The word springs into his mind, the word the elders use to describe a deadly wave that eats people. The other fishermen are already standing, watching the water in horror. He tries to warn a tourist, paddling serenely in a kayak, and another churning tracks of wake on a jet ski. Behind them all, the wave is charging closer, a mountain of water. He knows he has no chance of beating a wave like this to shore.

An experienced fisherman, he realizes his only option is to treat it as he would any wave. So he revs the engine hard and steers directly into it. He maintains his course despite the tiller jerking his hand and the spray of the white water blinding him. His long-tailed boat climbs up and up impossibly high until he's certain he will topple backwards. Then suddenly, he's weightless,

cresting for just a moment before slamming down behind the colossal wave. Watching the wave from behind it now, he's horrified to see it still growing, rising higher as it bears down upon the shore. The jet ski has disappeared, as has the kayak. He spots one orange life jacket and speeds towards it as, out at the horizon, another wave is rising. out at the horizon, another wave is rising. And a moment later, when he glances behind him, back at the shore, it's like looking at another world.

Nothing of his village remains. Some Mokan fishermen managed to rescue tourists out at sea. But when they returned to their village, they were relieved to find everyone safe, even the elderly, infirm, and the smallest children. When the cicada song fell quiet and the sea receded, the village elders had directed everyone to head for the forested hills. The Mokin have survived, but are displaced, their homes swept away, and their fragile coastline ecosystems wrecked. Elsewhere, some report that with everything else washed away, the only sign of the catastrophe is the appalling sight of hands sticking out of the new layer of sand. Minutes later, the tsunami reaches the coast of Thailand.

It is prime tourist season, just one day after the Christmas celebrations. In the packed hotels lining the beaches, Western families are sitting down to breakfast, while staff work hard around them and locals go about their daily lives. When the sea disappears, astonished visitors wander onto the exposed foreshore, taking photos and observing the flapping fish. At first, they don't even associate this strange phenomenon with the line of white water in the distant sea. When they see the wave, tourists and locals alike run for their lives. Tourists and locals alike run for their lives. The lucky ones manage to climb the stairs of taller, stronger buildings and watch from the rooftops as the flood rips through resorts and villages indiscriminately, wiping out everything

in its path. Three main tsunami waves hit Thailand, and the third is the largest. Those caught in the water are dragged in and back out, tumbled and battered. The majority of victims are thought to be killed in the outrush, when the water races back out to the sea, laden with killer debris. 5,400 people are killed in Thailand, the majority of whom are Thai.

Among the dead are also 2,000 foreign tourists from 37 different nations. Of these, Sweden is the hardest-hit European nation, with over 500 Swedish lives lost. A quarter are children, and it's the biggest natural disaster to affect Sweden since a catastrophic snowstorm in the 1700s. snowstorm in the 1700s. The wave doesn't only affect the countries on this side of the ocean. To the west of the epicenter, the displacement is still speeding through the deeper water at an incredible speed. You always hear this line that a tsunami travels at the speed of a jetliner.

And that is sort of true, but only in the deepest parts of the ocean. Even through shallower water, the tsunami makes speeds of 80 kilometers per hour. Half an hour after it strikes Thailand, it hits Sri Lanka. Though warnings have been received here, the country has been battling a prolonged civil war that's limited its communications and infrastructure, and there is no evacuation. To make things worse, the tsunami strikes on a puya, or full moon, meaning it's a public holiday and many families are at the beach. Southwestern Sri Lanka is almost entirely submerged by the waves.

And though the Galle area is on the west coast, not facing the Indian Ocean, when the tsunami hits the Maldives just off its shore, it ricochets back to the mainland, killing 4,000 people. All told, 30,000 Sri Lankans are left dead or missing. The coastal pummeling is now relentless. At almost the same time as the tsunami slams into Sri Lanka, it reaches southeastern India. Although it is 90 minutes since Indian territory in the Andaman Islands was hit, no warning has made it here either. Over 7,000 kilometers of low-lying Indian coast is devastated by waves reaching 10 meters in height.

In places, the tsunami obliterates everything up to 2 kilometers inland, leading to the loss of over 16,000 Indian lives. And the tsunami is still traveling. Now 7,000 kilometers from its source, almost twice the distance from England to the USA, it hits the east coast of Africa with waves of up to 10 meters. One vulnerable fishing town in Somalia suffers 300 deaths. Many more are rendered homeless, with drinking water ruined and countless homes and livelihoods destroyed. The only place that manages an official and coordinated evacuation is Kenya, and as a result, the fatalities are limited to just one person.

The last casualties swept out to sea are in South Africa, many hours later, and a full seven time zones away. As the waters eventually start to settle, the decimated coastal populations of the Indian Ocean struggle to comprehend the devastation. Police, hospitals and local organizations bring medical supplies into the disaster zones, but the need is unfathomably great. Clean water, food and shelter are all an immediate issue. It is sunset on the evening of the 26th of December and a German tourist is stumbling across what was once an idyllic beach in Sri Lanka.

As she picks her way over the ragged mass of splintered wood and debris left behind by the wave, she's trying, in vain, to work out where she is. Hours earlier, she was enjoying breakfast with her sister at a beach restaurant when the tsunami hit. She was swept out in the first wave, but managed to cling on to a palm tree in the later surges. But she's got no idea where her sister is, or if she's even alive. The woman is one of a scattered group of survivors making their way inland. Ahead of her, a local girl walks slowly with a man who might be her father, wearing a torn waiter's shirt.

Now the tourist stops, finding a single sandal that might be a better fit than one of those she's wearing, which she foraged from the debris after the waters beside it. She tries it on, wincing as it catches on her lacerated foot. Limping on, she forces herself to scan the wreckage around her to look for any sign of her sister. There are so many bodies, so many children. The girl ahead pauses and comes over, offering her water from a small plastic bottle. Eventually the group reach the forest at the edge of the wrecked beach.

The woman joins a mud track, snaking uphill. The debris was not carried this far inland, and it's a surreal relief to no longer have to scramble over wreckage. Soon she hears the sound of people up ahead and the gentle chime of temple bells. She speeds up, praying silently that her sister will be among them. She speeds up, praying silently that her sister will be among them. They've reached a Buddhist hill temple. She enters a bustling open courtyard. Monks in saffron robes mingle amongst people in western clothing,

attending to others lying in various states of injury across the floor. It looks like a war zone. She can't see her sister, so she surveys the area for someone official, a uniform. But it doesn't look like anyone is in charge. A man rushes over to question her, thrusting photos in her face. Has she seen his wife, his children? She shakes her head, and he moves on, desperate. She shakes her head and he moves on desperate. She recognizes English, Dutch and French voices, as well as the local Tamil and Sinhalese languages. And almost everyone is as ragged, bleeding and bruised as she is.

Along one wall lie two neat lines of long bundles covered in sheets and sarongs. Incense sticks are propped nearby, with their rich smoke swirling. She averts her eyes from the bodies, not allowing herself to imagine. But then, suddenly, she feels arms around her, and hears the voice she'd been praying for. around her and hears the voice she'd been praying for. Her sister, battered but alive, sobs with relief into her shoulder, unable to speak. Then a commotion starts up outside. Vehicles are arriving. Soon there are men in blue uniforms walking through the temple and others in white carrying stretchers. One of them singles out the two German women and beckons them over. Outside, they gratefully climb onto a waiting coach, but as the woman sits down, she realizes only the Westerners are being evacuated.

Through the coach window, she sees the small girl who offered her the water standing alone. And as they pull away, the child raises her hand and waves, her face blank. Tourist areas undergo extensive evacuations to get Westerners repatriated. But the thousands of locals whose homes have been destroyed have nowhere to go. The catastrophe is soon classified as a global tsunami, with its waves detected in every ocean over the next 24 hours. Scientists discover that the Earth has literally been rocked by the violence of the earthquake,

shifting on its axis by around two and a half centimeters. In the disaster zones, help moves in. It was just pure survival for the first few days, and the Indonesian military moved very quickly. At that time, Aceh was in a civil war with the rest of Indonesia, so there was a large military presence in the area. I believe that they would have stepped up straight away and gotten involved in the rescue and recovery.

But I think in those first stages, it would have been extremely difficult to find survivors. And there probably wasn't a whole lot that could be done, especially in some of these remote communities where there would have been limited medical options and you were basically on your own. After a tsunami, efforts focus more on relief than rescue. After two to three days, most of the victims have been found

and those with severe injuries are beginning to succumb, particularly in remote and cut-off areas without water. Authorities must clear tons of wreckage to reach pockets of survivors and provide treatment, and major efforts are needed to restore water systems. The Indonesian military ships bring in desalination equipment with assistance from the US military, who reach Banda Aceh within days. On the ground, in the worst-hit areas, the horror is unrelenting.

I do recall seeing buildings with thousands of photos and notes and people pinning things up. It was all written in Indonesian, of course, but you could just tell that they were all, I'm looking for this person, I'm looking for this person, if you've seen this person. And those were pretty haunting, those billboards that were everywhere. I know that my first visit there, we would set out from our camp to go do measurements and field survey work in the morning, and we would drive along this road. And on our way back at each intersection along that road there would be a pile of bodies in body bags. Eight, ten, twelve

days later and they were still just pulling bodies from the rubble and I think it was a lot of mass graves and this sort of thing. Aid agencies like the Red Cross respond at speed, helping coordinate and provide resources to local efforts. It's estimated that up to 1.8 million people are displaced, with almost half a million homes destroyed. But the numbers will always be provisional, as the scale of the disaster is just too large to accurately quantify.

An Oxfam survey finds that four times as many women are killed as men in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India. In these areas of traditional culture, women were much less likely to climb or be able to swim, and many waited in their houses rather than attempting to escape. swim, and many waited in their houses rather than attempting to escape. As the days pass, the identification of the dead is undertaken by teams of dentists. Thousands of bodies in Banda Aceh lie in refrigerated containers, but many are simply piled under the scant shade of the remaining trees, creating yet another health risk. trees, creating yet another health risk. The Disasters Emergency Committee, or DEC, leaps into action, coordinating 15 leading UK aid charities to raise funds.

£10 million is donated to its tsunami earthquake appeal in the first day, setting a new Guinness World Record. Over the next two months, the appeal will bring in an unprecedented £392 million. The organization decides that the money should be spent over three years instead of its usual 18 months, because member agencies are faced not just with recovery work but wholesale reconstruction. Three quarters of a million families will benefit from DEC funds across seven countries, with the majority of the money being spent in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and India. The cash donated helps to build almost 14,000 houses, as well as 55 schools and 68 health centers. A lot of money flowed into the region for disaster relief efforts ongoing and disaster education and preparedness.

A lot of initiatives were done to make tsunami inundation maps for future events. So to draw out for places in Indonesia that hadn't been hit by this event where they would be flooded. And these are just tools for education moving forward. Also in Banda Aceh, they built a lot of what we call vertical evacuation structures. So these look essentially like a parking structure, but they're made for people to run to, so they can get up to higher ground, especially in these very flat plateau areas. In the wake of the 2004 catastrophe, tsunami studies moved to the forefront of disaster

management research. The next year, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center's responsibilities expand to include tsunami guidance for the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, and the Caribbean Sea. But its authority to issue warnings remains limited. When we had the 2004 event and basically a quarter of a million people were killed and the entire Indian Ocean basin was affected, a lot more people noticed and the tsunami research community really expanded and the amount of resources put into tsunami research just expanded exponentially. So it really did do a lot for pushing tsunami as an issue that

needs to be confronted globally and scientifically. So in that respect, we are now better informed and we know more and we're more appreciative of the hazard. And hopefully that information keeps percolating along. Experts looked at Japan as an example of a tsunami-aware population, alongside a technologically advanced warning system and rigorous evacuation procedures. But there's only so much that can be done for coastal areas close to the epicenter of a major earthquake. Tsunami warnings are difficult. So the bulk of the casualties in the Indian Ocean tsunami, probably two-thirds of the people who died, all died in the near-source region. So less than half an hour or an hour travel time from where the tsunami originated.

And even today, if that happened again, with all the stuff we've learned, it would be very difficult to reduce that number significantly. And this is because in the near source region, when you have just that half hour to 45 minutes or maybe less to react, there essentially is no time for an official government warning saying evacuate. Four years after the Indian Ocean tsunami, a multinational disaster management board implements an early warning system for tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. Twenty-two sensor-laden buoys cost half a million dollars each and go online in 2009.

But schools of fish gather in the electric fields emitted by the buoys' computers, drawing poverty-stricken fishermen whose livelihoods have never fully recovered from the disaster. Within months, some of the equipment is being raided for its copper wiring that can be scrapped and sold. Funding cuts soon lead to poor maintenance. And even if the system had been maintained, it's no guarantee of protection. When a Pacific earthquake of 9.0 magnitude takes place in March 2011 off the coast of Japan, tsunami sensors kick into action. The population is warned of an incoming tsunami of around six meters.

But knowing that they are protected by an extensive reinforced sea wall, many are not overly concerned. They've had warnings before, and the waves haven't been as big as predicted. But even with the latest technology, tsunamis are impossible to forecast with certainty. This time, the waves are double the predicted height. They surge into Japan's coastal cities, engulfing the sea wall

and knocking out the Fukushima nuclear power station. There is widespread panic, and people are swept away in their vehicles as they try to outrun the water. Some of the evacuation structures are not far enough inland and not tall enough. People become trapped in the places where they should be safe. It was proven a few years later in Japan that the most technologically advanced country in the world with the most tsunami-aware population,

and they had an earthquake bigger than they thought was possible and they ended up losing 20,000 people to the tsunami. It all boils down to heating the natural warnings and reacting and no amount of government money, technology is going to help you because a warning cannot be issued that quickly. By the time it's recorded on an instrument, whether it be a buoy offshore or a tide gauge onshore,

it's already affecting you. In 2016, an earthquake in western Indonesia reveals that none of the new tsunami buoys are working. Though Banda Aceh is now equipped with tsunami sirens, the earthquake knocks out their power. A text message alert system fails to activate as many cell phone towers have already been destroyed. But this time no one watches the wave in confusion. Communities know to flee on foot to evacuation structures and high ground.

Though over 4,000 die and 10,000 are injured, without the lessons of the disaster of 12 years previously, it could have been much worse. Looking ahead, experts know that prediction is an inexact science. In the 44 years between the Chilean tsunami of 1960 and the 2004 disaster, there was no other single tsunami event of such a scale. But it seems like that time of relative geological calm may now be over. We've had a flurry of events, you could say, 2004, 2010 in Chile, and then 2011 in Japan,

with Samoa thrown in there in 2009. So there's been a bit of a flurry. Now, we may sit and not have another major tsunami event for another 50, 100 years, who knows? Or we could have a giant one tomorrow, you just don't know. So that's why tsunami education awareness is a generational effort and has You just don't know. So that's why tsunami education awareness is a generational effort and has to be continuous and ongoing.

When it comes to tsunami hazard management, rather than being led by the technologically advanced nations, it would be wise to learn from the indigenous communities. Tribes such as the Moken and some of those in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands survived. Their knowledge of the sea, with their lives lived close to nature, when they could make the observations, it saved them. It is immediate action that saves lives. What practical action can people take?

Heed the natural warning. So there's the saying, long or strong, get gone. And that's just the bottom line to it, that if you're in an earthquake prone zone and you feel strong ground shaking that lasts for a long time just go to high ground immediately Though many areas will never recover from its effects, the Indian Ocean tsunami resulted in a huge increase in tsunami awareness. Many lives in Thailand, India and Sri Lanka could have been saved by warnings in 2004. And if it happened again today, the death toll would be lower because of new evacuation

procedures and education. Thankfully, tsunamis remain uncommon events, but people will continue to live along coasts which are rich in natural resources, as they have since pre-history despite the risks. And as always, the poorest will have the least choice. The Disasters Emergency Committee marked its 60th anniversary in 2023. £2.4 billion have been donated by the UK public across 77 DEC appeals, aiding millions of people in life or death situations. Right now, it's providing a lifeline to people worldwide who have been affected by crises just like the Indian Ocean Tsunami.

Next time on Short History Up, we'll bring you a short history of Boudicca. Boudicca is a personification of Britannia. It's one person and one woman against the world. Somebody living in a rural backwater in Britain, taking on the might of Rome. And there was so much firepower in the Roman army. And here was somebody who just said, excuse me, I'm not having this. And that's wonderful. That's next time.