The earthquake that made the water shake

The most famous earthquake this century is not known for its seismic power, it is known for what the seismic power caused, a tsunami that spread around the Indian Ocean on an unimaginable scale. The devastation surrounding it was in the headlines for weeks, and overall claimed 229,866 lives. Here I will take a brief look at the cause, the impacts and the response.

The main factor that helped create the tsunami was that it was a megathrust earthquake. This meant that the Indian plate subducted beneath the tiny Burma plate. This led to the Burma plate being pushed up, so a lot of energy was pushed upwards underwater. This led to a large body of water being taken to the shoreline, like any other wave, in the form of a tsunami. There was also a fairly shallow focus of 30km, which allowed less energy to be lost. Indonesia was the worst country affected, because of it's long coastline allowing the tsunami to devastate its entire west coast and it closest to the epicentre, which was 100km from the nearest Indonesian coastline, Aceh.

Economically the entire infrastructure in Banda Aceh was ruined, so schools, roads and communication links had to be rebuilt. An important social impact was that the destruction of many coastline hospitals made it difficult for people to be relieved of injuries and get treatment for water-borne disease, increasing the death toll. Millions were also made homeless. Environmentally, a lot of animals have been killed by the tsunami as well as humans, as well as the salinisation of soils and the destruction of agriculture. Politically it did nothing to help the civil war in Sri Lanka and there has since been civil unrest in Kenya and Thailand, but it is doubtful that the tsunami was a direct cause of this.

Soldiers were originally sent in to help the victims, until the realisation hit in that they too had either lost a family member or been killed. Countries who sent a lot of aid include the UK, Germany, Sweden, Japan, the USA and many other EU nations and MEDCs. Many charities, such as Save the Children, were key in the giving of food and clean drinking water.

Hopefully, the Indian Ocean Tsunami was a one off event that will only be experienced one in a life time, certainly on that scale. This has been the worst natural disaster in the past 30 years, and now people will be better prepared to respond to a freak rarity, such as a tsunami.