Twenty years after the most devastating tsunami in history, survivors and relatives of victims will gather on Thursday in countries bordering the Indian Ocean to pay tribute to the more than 220,000 people swept away by the gigantic waves that hit the coasts.
Twenty years after the most deadly tsunami in history, survivors and relatives of victims are to gather on Thursday in countries bordering the Indian Ocean where more than 220,000 people perished under the effect of the immense waves that hit the coasts.
On December 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra sent huge waves sweeping across Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and nine other Indian Ocean countries, with casualties as far away as Somalia.
At their peak speed, the waves traveled at nearly 800 km/h and reached heights of up to 30 meters. “I hope we never experience something like this again”, says Nilawati, a 60-year-old Indonesian woman who lost her son and mother in the tsunami.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000“I learned how devastated you can be by losing a child, a pain that cannot be explained in words”, she breathes. “It feels like it happened yesterday”. In total, the tsunami killed 226,408 people according to EM-DAT, a renowned global disaster database.
Religious ceremonies are to be held across the region, as well as vigils on beaches where many tourists celebrating Christmas in the sun have lost their lives.
In Thailand, more than 5,000 people have died, half of them foreign tourists, and 3,000 others are missing.
At a hotel in Phang Nga province, an exhibition on the tsunami has been set up and a documentary is to be shown, while government and UN officials are to speak on disaster preparedness.
“Tragedy”
Experts say the lack of a system The poorly coordinated warning system in 2004 made the disaster worse. Since then, some 1,400 stations worldwide have reduced warning times after a tsunami strikes to just a few minutes.
The earthquake generated waves more than 30 meters high, releasing energy equivalent to 23,000 times the power of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
The worst-hit area was the north of the island of Sumatra, where more than 120,000 people were killed out of a total of 165,708 dead in Indonesia.
In Aceh province, a minute's silence is to be observed on Thursday before a visit to a mass grave where nearly 50,000 bodies lie and a prayer at the grand mosque in the capital, Banda Aceh.
In Sri Lanka, where more than 35,000 people lost their lives, relatives of victims and survivors are to board the Ocean Queen Express train to Peraliya (90 km south of Colombo), where carriages were swept away, killing around 1,000 people.
Religious ceremonies, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Muslim, are also to be held across the island. The waves also reached Africa, killing 300 people in Somalia, but also more than a hundred in the Maldives.
“I couldn't stop crying”, recalls Marziani, an Indonesian teacher, who goes by one name and lost a child in the tsunami. “I felt guilty for not having been able to protect my child. This feeling of guilt followed me for months”.