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Earthquake & tsunami - Indian
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Catastrophe Report 6
July 21, 2004 - February 18, 2005 |
Earthquake and tsunami - Indian Ocean
| Territory: |
|
Indian Ocean |
| Region: |
|
Indonesia (northern Sumatra), Thailand,
Malaysia, Myanmar, southern India, Nicobar and Andaman Islands,
Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, East Africa. |
| Date: |
|
26 December, 2004 |
| Event: |
|
Earthquake and tsunami |
| Impact: |
|
With the death toll currently standing at almost
300,000, nine states directly affected and visitors from another
forty countries losing their lives, this stands as the greatest
natural disaster ever. With no tsunami warning system in place
and no education about tsunami and their characteristics, both
the inhabitants of countries affected and tourists had little
chance of survival. Aceh province in northern Sumatra was worst
hit, with waves 15 m high arriving within 10 minutes of the
quake travelling several kilometres inland, obliterating the
capital Banda Aceh, and taking close to 230,000 lives. The tsunami
reached southern India and the tourist resorts of Thailand and
Sri Lanka around two hours later, taking a further 70,000 or
so lives, and remained powerful enough to cause more than a
hundred deaths when they reached the east coast of Africa, seven
hours after the quake. In northern Sumatra, the level of destruction,
arising from the earthquake and the tsunami, is almost total,
and a similar situation prevails on most of the Andaman and
Nicobar Islands. Coastal properties in Thailand, India and Sri
Lanka suffered massive damage, mainly due to impact by the waves
and debris and to floatation of structures from their foundations.
The economic cost of the catastrophe is enormous and remains
impossible to constrain accurately, with estimates ranging from
US$ 15 to 80 billion. Insured losses are also currently poorly
defined, although most estimates predict less than US$ 10 billion,
a relatively modest figure for the greatest natural catastrophe
in human history. |
| Summary: |
|
A magnitude 9.0 (Moment Magnitude Scale) earthquake
occurred just before 08.00 h (local time), 160 km off the western
shore of Indonesia’s Aceh province in northern Sumatra.
The huge size of the quake, together with its shallow depth
– just 30 km below the sea floor – contributed to
the formation of ocean-basin wide tsunami. The earthquake was
associated with the rupture of the fault boundary between the
Indo-Australian and Burma plates, with the crust tearing for
a distance of more than 1000 km north of the epicentre. The
lateral displacement, by several metres, of the Burma plate
- up and over the Indo-Australian plate - caused the ocean above
to oscillate vertically and then move west and east as a series
of tsunami. Formation of the tsunami may also have been augmented
by submarine landslides occurring along much of the length of
the rupture in the sea bed. In deep water, wave heights were
around 60 cm, at the affected coastlines, however, the tsunami
built to 10 m in height, and locally perhaps as high as 15 m. |
| Data sources: |
|
Benfield
Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami. GAPResponse reports 1,
2 and 3.
http://www.benfieldgroup.com/media+centre/research+and+publications/
Glencairn Limited
The Asian Earthquake/Tsunami Disaster: an Insurance Perspective.
Contact: Peter Cheesman. pcheesman@glencairngroup.com
|
| Additional sources:
|
|
Earthquake Engineering Research Institute
http://www.eeri.org/lfe/clearinghouse/sumatra_tsunami/observ1.php
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