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The Asian Earthquake And TsunamiThe Asian Earthquake And TsunamiSunday December 26, 2004 was like any other morning in Kuala Lumpur. I had my breakfast, watched the news, and was getting ready to go to church. I caught a glimpse of a TV report that an earthquake had hit Sumatra, Indonesia. However, I was in a hurry to leave the house and so paid no attention to it. Besides, earthquakes had struck Sumatra before, and generally speaking, Malaysia was never really affected by it. The most people had felt in Malaysia were slight tremors, and this was typically felt in the tall buildings in Penang and Kuala Lumpur. Given this, I did not pay too much attention to this, and so left for church.
I went to visit my friend Garnet, after church. As I was driving, I heard a radio report that several countries bordering the Indian Ocean had been hit by a massive tsunami, as a result of the Sumatran quake. This caught my attention. I had never heard of tsunamis occuring in the Indian Ocean region before! Anyway, I reached Garnets place. It was a few minutes later that I received a SMS from a friend in Penang talking about deaths and injuries. It was then that Garnet and I began watching the TV reports. We could not believe the scale of what was happening.
As night came, more reports started filtering in. Some reports came from friends in Penang. Others reports were from actual news services. Now, I now what happened; a massive undersea earthquake off the coast of Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia sparked a massive tsunami affecting several nations in South Asia, South East Asia and East Africa. This 9.0 magnitude earthquake, now billed as the strongest earthquake in 40 years, started at 6:58 a.m. (0058GMT) Indonesian time on Sunday December 26, 2004. It is now officially recorded as the fifth most powerful earthquake in the world, eversince scientists started recording the details of earthquakes.
The tsunami hit several nations bordering the Indian Ocean - Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Maldives, Seychelles, Bangladesh, Burma, Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania. At the time of writing, more than 23,000 people have been killed, many thousands more injured and more than a million have been left homeless. The worst affected countries are Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, and Thailand. Casualties are expected to climb. Yes, this is a catastrophe of Biblical proportions.
A total of 53 people are known to have been killed in Malaysia by the tsunami at the time of writing. Most of the worst affected states tend to be in the northern part of peninsular Malaysia. The worst affected being the tourist haven of Penang island.
Although we suffered casualties, I think that Malaysia can consider itself to be relatively fortunate that it did not suffer worse. We are in fact quite close to the epicenter, and this could have been devastating. Had the earthquake occurred on the other side of Aceh, Sumatra, like Medan (which is closest to Malaysia), there's a good chance that Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore with its skyscrapers would have been flattened.
Most victims had no warning, as there is no tsunami warning system in place. The problem here is that tsunamis are practically unheard of in the Indian Ocean region! So people were really caught off their guard.
There is no doubt that the everyone is stunned by the scale of the devastation. It seems so unprecedented. Or is it? There was another tsunami that was generated by a volcanic explosion on [Krakatoa (Krakatau)], near Sumatra, back in 1883, that killed 36,417 people. Most died from a tsunami with waves reaching heights of over 40 m. The explosion was felt as far away as England.
Krakatoa though is considered a minor event compared to an even bigger volcanic explosion that took place almost 73,000 years ago on [Mt.Toba] , which is also in Sumatra. The explosion from this super volcano was ten thousand times bigger than Mt St Helens; it created a worldwide devastation dramatically affecting life on Earth.
So Sumatra is home to some killer quakes and tsunamis. We had all better be prepared. So lets have that tsunami warning in place.
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