SETTING A PURPOSE As you read, pay attention to how earthquakes affect people, animals, the land, and the ocean, and think about how people explain and deal with the impact of these damaging events.
Head for the Hills! It’s Earth Against Earth
For centuries, a big chunk of earth under the Indian Ocean known as the India plate has been scraping against another chunk of earth, the Burma plate. At eight o’clock in the morning on December 26, 2004, this scraping reached a breaking point near the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. A 750-mile section of earth snapped and popped up as a new 40-foot-high cliff. This created one of the biggest earthquakes ever, 9.2 to 9.3 on the Richter scale. (Richter Scale - a scale ranging from 1 to 10 that expresses the amount of energy released by an earthquake)
The quake, the longest ever recorded, lasted 10 minutes. Some islands rose up, and others sank, leaving fish now swimming around in once idyllic, palm-fringed villages. The shaking was so severe that it caused the entire planet to vibrate one half inch. And that was just the beginning.
Fishermen watched the water drain from the beach, exposing thousands of fish, then saw a huge wave filling the horizon. Someone yelled,“The sea is coming”—but tourists stayed on the beach, and locals collected flopping fish stranded by the receding water. Few seemed to understand that destruction was rolling their way at the speed of a jetliner.
The Sea Is Coming?
All along the shorelines of a dozen countries, people were in the path of monster waves able to cross the entire ocean. People near the epicenter of the earthquake were swallowed up in less than 30 minutes. (epicenter - the point of the earth’s surface directly above th focus of an earthquake) But the tsunami didn’t reach others for an hour, two hours, six hours or more. Without a warning system, hundreds of thousands of people were caught off guard, completely unaware there was any trouble. Many were so far away they never even knew there had been an earthquake.
Racing at 500 miles per hour, the first wave took 20 minutes to reach Sumatra, 2 hours to Sri Lanka, 3½ hours to the Maldives, and 7½ hours to reach Africa. Traveling across the ocean at just two feet high, the waves piled up in shallow water to form great surges that reached 20 feet, 40 feet, and even much higher.
When the seafloor ruptured, trillions of tons of water were instantly pushed up 40 feet by the rising land. (rupture - to rupture means to break open or burst)Then the water came back down, and the collapse created a series of waves. These were not wind-whipped waves moving along at a few miles per hour. They were tsunami waves, racing out at 500 miles per hour. In deep water, the waves hardly caused a blip. But whenever one reached a coastline, the bottom slowed in the shallow water while the top kept coming higher and higher, until massive walls of water - some over 100 feet high - smashed into land with the strength of many hurricanes.
The waves just kept coming - salty and polluted - with the second more powerful than the first, then the third and fourth, all so cluttered with debris that they became moving piles of concrete and cars, boats and coconuts, wood and tin, nails and glass, survivors and corpses. A shopkeeper said the noise was “like a thousand drums.” As wave after wave smashed through villages, children were pulled from the arms of parents, clothing was ripped from bodies, and people and their possessions were flipped over, cut, and punched. Some were swept two miles inland, while others were caught in the backwash and carried out to sea. (backwash - a backward flow of water)
When the water started to drain, survivors shimmied down from coconut trees or other high places feeling dazed and confused. Weak voices called out to them from vast piles of debris. It was a changed world, soggy and broken; nothing looked familiar, nothing at all.
This was the scene in many countries around the Indian Ocean. The waves swamped, surged, flooded and devoured. Near the epicenter, 169,000 died quickly, but death was also reported 16 hours and 5,300 miles away in South Africa. The tsunami left 225,000 dead, 500,000 injured, and millions without homes or jobs. One-third of the dead were children, and 9,000 were tourists. Plain luck helped some to survive. Only a few received a warning.
Trumpeting Elephants, Skittering Crabs, and the Power of Story
On a beach in Thailand, 10-year-old Tilly Smith was enjoying Christmas vacation and building sand castles with her sister. She noticed hundreds of tiny crabs scuttling out of the water. Then she saw the sea retreat far back into the ocean, like some great monster was slurping it up with a straw. No one seemed to notice, so she started to play again but then stood up in alarm as the sea turned white, churning with bubbles. A great wave was building up on the horizon as far as she could see. Fishermen’s longboats were bobbing up and down like toys in a bathtub. Tilly remembered a geography lesson two weeks earlier at her school in England. These were the warning signs she had just learned. A tsunami was coming! Her mother wasn’t convinced, but Tilly persuaded her father to get the hotel staff to evacuate guests while she alerted those on the beach. With this warning, they became some of the few survivors in the area.
On another beach, an eight-year-old named Amber Mason was riding on an elephant called Ning Nong. The elephant started to trumpet loudly and paw the ground with feet able to sense low vibrations. She tried to calm the animal, but the elephant charged up a hill. While the girl and elephant made it safely to high ground, others on the beach couldn’t outrun the tsunami waves that soon followed.
Before the waves hit Sri Lanka, all the animals in a national park started to behave strangely. Monkeys chattered with terror, snakes went rigid, cattle bolted, and flamingos took flight. All of them scrambled to the highest places they could reach, and the keepers, who had never seen such behavior, decided to follow.
Near the coast of Thailand, local divers saw dolphins jump madly around them and then torpedo far out to sea. “Quick, follow them,” they urged the captain. They knew stories of animals that helped and thought these dolphins could sense something unusual that the divers could not detect. Because they followed the dolphins to deep water, they were spared the smashing blow of the tsunami.
Closer to shore, a fisherman, was eating watermelon when the strangeness began. The water started bubbling and receding. Had there ever been such a low tide? Suddenly he was thrown off his seat by a strange wave that surged past him. It was heading for his village which it would flood to the tops of the coconut trees. He worried about his wife and two daughters, who couldn’t swim. Then he saw the second wave, rising even higher than the first. Should he head straight into it? He watched other fishermen try, and their boats split apart. He decided to go sideways, was lifted up 30 feet, then fell with a slam but survived. Of the 24 longboats in the area, his was the only one still intact.
The ancient tribes on the remote Islands have lived close to nature for centuries. They are said to detect changes by the smell of the wind and sound of their oars. Every minute they pay close attention to the cries of birds and the behavior of animals. These natural clues warned them that something big was about to occur, and the stories of the forefathers told them what to do. “When the earth shakes, the sea will rise up onto the land. . . . Run to the hills or get into a boat and go far out to sea.”
Swamped and Scared
People caught in the tsunami suffered many injuries. After the waves receded, some were caught under deep piles of debris.
A trapped deliveryman named Romi called and called for help but received no response. After two days, rain fell, and he was able to collect water for drinking. Mosquitoes feasted on him at night. On the third day, more people were trudging through the murky water to look for survivors. Four men tried to rescue Romi, but they failed. Finally on the fifth day, 25 men worked four hours and were finally able to haul him through miles of debris.
All around, tens of thousands of corpses needed to be buried quickly. Elephants and bulldozers were brought in to help with the wreckage.
As survivors returned to their villages, they often found that nothing remained—no familiar landmarks, no driveway, car, or motorbike. The house was gone and everything in it, including toothbrush, comb, lipstick, and frying pan. Power was out, and phones were dead. According to one survivor, “Many people were literally left with nothing—not even coins in their pockets or clothes on their backs.” They suffered from breathing problems after swallowing mud, sand, and toxic water. Before starting to rebuild, many spent days, and then weeks, looking for lost relatives.
The tsunami left a huge problem of contaminated water. In Sri Lanka, for instance, 40,000 wells were destroyed and the fresh water underground became toxic. Other countries had similar problems as the salty waves mixed with freshwater and sewers. Thousands of banana, rice, and mango plantations were destroyed by thick layers of salty sludge. For drinking, Spain and Australia delivered gigantic water purifying machines. Military ships from the United States and Singapore made freshwater from the sea, and several companies sent water purifiers, including one that could turn raw sewage into drinking water in seconds. Some purifiers were lightweight and could be flown in by helicopter to areas that lost all road and bridge access.
As people sought help for severe injuries, supplies were scarce. At one hospital only 5 of 956 health workers were available. There were no supplies in the emergency rooms—no IVs, no painkillers, few bandages. When health workers ran out of anesthetic, ice cubes were used to deaden the pain. When they ran out of suture threads, wounds were wrapped in plastic snipped from seat covers or left open. The ones who had wounds cleaned but not stitched were actually lucky. After three days, those with stitches often developed fatal infections when contaminated water was trapped inside their injury.
Relief workers from around the world eventually arrived with vaccines, antibiotics, food, blankets, tents, field hospitals, building supplies, and mosquito nets. (antibiotic - a drug used in medicine to kill bacteria and to cure infection) In general, health care was well planned, but the number of dead and wounded could be overwhelming.
When there was treatment available, it was not always equal. Sometimes tourists were treated before villagers. Other times, villagers were treated before foreigners or immigrant workers. Friends and family were treated before strangers. In India, people called Dalits, “untouchables,” were judged to be “less than human” and were denied aid - even fresh drinking water. Social problems that exist before a disaster get magnified or changed afterward.
Rebuilding
Rebuilding lives after the disaster was easier in some areas than others. A variety of issues affected efforts.
Parts of India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia were war zones before the tsunami, and these situations complicated relief efforts. After the disaster, peace talks were held to aid the relief efforts because workers were afraid to go into war zones. Groups felt it was time for Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists to work together as members of a world community.
In many areas it was both the custom and law that women could enter the water only if fully clothed and wearing a headscarf. Therefore, most of them had never learned to swim, and the waves killed three times more women than men.
In some areas, dishonest and immoral people saw a chance to increase their wealth during the chaos. For instance, a powerful corporation called the Far East Company tried to take land from villagers in Laem Pom, Thailand, who had lived on a beautiful beach for many years. With all official documents ruined and gone, it was hard to prove ownership of the land. A local woman named Dang decided to fight when the company posted a bodyguard to keep them out. Not only did the survivors want to rebuild, but they were desperate to search through the debris for bodies. Dang told her story to the government, but nothing changed. Finally she asked her neighbors to bring whatever documents they had; as a group, they would challenge the bodyguard. “He might be able to stop one of us, or even a few or us, but he can’t stop all of us,” she said. Twenty-seven families gathered together and were able to walk past the bodyguard. They set up a camp on a concrete slab. Dang refused to back down - even when being bribed or threatened. Eventually, they received donations of money and building materials, and help from Thai students. It reminded her that there were still good people in this world—people whose hearts were large enough to care about the people of Laem Pom.
Relief workers had the best success when they found out what the local people needed, included them in the planning, and then made sure necessary materials were delivered. For example, when villagers wanted to rebuild using traditional methods, engineers gave them a demonstration showing that a similar but stronger house design would hold up better in the next earthquake. Models were made of both types of houses and put on a “shake table” to imitate an earthquake. When the traditional house crumbled and the reinforced house did not, all agreed the new design would be better. Then they worked together to include features that fit the lifestyle of the village.
Warnings
The 2004 tsunami revealed that the Indian Ocean was in desperate need of a tsunami warning system, and 25 seismic stations relaying information to 26 information centers were installed. Signs were also put up to identify evacuation routes. The 2004 event also revealed that the Pacific Ocean warning system - used since the 1960s - had only three out of six seafloor pressure sensors working. After the 2004 tsunami scare, the United States provided more funds to expand and update the warning system.
When it’s earth against earth, nature keeps a record, and human survivors will always have a story to tell.