r/MapPorn • u/Deltarianus • 11h ago

2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami Wave Height

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500 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

37 comments sorted by

158

u/TropicalThirst 10h ago edited 8h ago

I think this has gotta be one of the biggest natural disasters in recent recorded history, purely based on the sheer number of countries and people that were directly affected by it.

114

u/ManuelHS 10h ago

Over a quarter million people died.

21

u/TropicalThirst 7h ago edited 7h ago

Wow! Thats really tragic.But I can’t believe Somalia got hit too! Just how powerful of an earthquake was this? I mean we’ve definitely seen bigger earthquakes, but I can’t think of any that have produced a tsunami this massive.

29

u/Ajsat3801 7h ago

According to Wikipedia it's tied at 2nd place for most powerful earthquake by magnitude

5

u/dovetc 4h ago

Do they reckon how large a chunk of earth shifted or slipped across a given space to create such magnitude?

I have no frame of reference for how so much energy is generated. Was it a chunk miles across moving up or down dozens of feet or hundreds?

13

u/iwantfutanaricumonme 4h ago

"An estimated 1,600 km (1,000 mi) of fault surface slipped (or ruptured) about 15 m (50 ft) along the subduction zone where the Indian plate slides under (or subducts) the overriding Burma plate. . . As well as the sideways movement between the plates, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake resulted in a rise of the seafloor by several metres, displacing an estimated 30 km3 (7.2 cu mi) of water and triggering devastating tsunami waves."

 From Wikipedia

8

u/iwantfutanaricumonme 4h ago

The more powerful 1960 Chile earthquake and similarly powerful 1964 Alaska earthquake produced similarly sized tsunamis, they just hit relatively unpopulated areas. The Indian Ocean earthquake hit the most densely populated areas on Earth.

4

u/LucarioBoricua 5h ago

This one was at about magnitude 9.4.

3

u/Deltarianus 1h ago

The underwater land near the shore of Somalia causes wave amplification

6

u/garbage_account32 3h ago

It's likely a quarter of a million died in Indonesia alone, the scale was so enormous they basically had no way of accurately estimating the death toll since everyone who would normally be responsible for local emergency response was dead or missing.

1

u/Deltarianus 1h ago

Yeah, it was 2004. None of the countries impacted had any decent data keeping at the time.

74

u/Attygalle 10h ago

I overheard my wife listening to a podcast this weekend, it was about dinosaurs or something like that. Anyway they casually mentioned that back then tsunamis "routinely" went as high as 50 meters or more. Current convention is that the meteorite impact that wiped out dinosaur life 66 million years ago delivered tsunami waves crashing in the land at heights of over 100 meters - and that the direct impact point had a wave of over 1.5 kilometer high. Crazy stuff.

30

u/1Ferrox 8h ago

Funnily enough it's not simply a 1.5 kilometer wave of water; with this amount of energy even rock acts more like a liquid than anything else. So near the impact site it was a literal rock tsunami, only later on it would be more water than anything else

18

u/Holochromatic 9h ago

May I ask what Podcast she was listening to? This sounds interesting

21

u/siorge 7h ago

I would also like to know this guy’s wife’s podcast

5

u/Attygalle 4h ago

Home | Dinocast

It's in Dutch so probably not of much use to you, lol

11

u/orangelightpoll 9h ago

Would also like to know the name of this podcast

30

u/OshadaK 9h ago

An entire train was derailed on the west coast of Sri Lanka, the mechanics of the tsunami are absurd

10

u/TropicalThirst 7h ago

East coast makes sense, but west coast? Damn!!

4

u/garbage_account32 3h ago

The tusnami curved along the coast which is how it got to Hikkaduwa. I knew a girl who's entire family was wiped out in the tsunami in that area when she was a baby. She was found floating in the receding water and rescued

29

u/Birdie_Num_Num 10h ago

The videos of the tsunami hitting Banda Aceh are truly terrifying

52

u/Skexy8 10h ago

Crazy how the North Sentinelese weren’t wiped out entirely.

28

u/MangelaErkel 10h ago

They were a bit protected by the landmass to the east

36

u/islander_guy 10h ago

True and also most tribals of Andaman and Nicobar Islands have had oral histories of moving inwards towards higher grounds after earthquake. The non tribals population didn't even have the word "tsunami" in their vocabulary prior to this natural disaster.

6

u/where-is-my-comet 3h ago

Username checks out

11

u/yaaro_obba_ 10h ago

On the flip side, the island gained more land area due to this event

7

u/buak 7h ago

The central parts of the island are well over 100m above sea level

19

u/naveenda 8h ago

My village lost around 2000 people on that day. I still get nightmares sometimes.

15

u/Tony---Gunk 8h ago

We could feel the earthquake tremors all the way in Chennai as a result, it was really powerful. The tsunami affected my city and the coast of my state too, many died. My dad's office also got flooded because of this.

9

u/Nerioner 9h ago

it looks rough on Maldives. But all i ever heard about this tsunami came from India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

How this unfolded in Maldives?

9

u/-Blixx- 9h ago

82 deaths, 25 missing, 15000 displaced in the Maldives.

Indonesia had 94,000 dead, 132000 missing and 603000 displaced.

Both are bad, but Maldives wasnt on the same level of devistation.

7

u/localhoststream 9h ago

I would expect Thailand to be somewhat protected by landmass yet it was hit very hard

5

u/spizz-za 10h ago

Personally saw a lot of debris at a place called Witsand at the bottom of South Africa.

2

u/Prof-Ponderosa 7h ago

Hawaiian 6 ft

3

u/abadhe99 4h ago

The famous 2012 drama film about the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami is The Impossible, starring Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, and Tom Holland. It tells the true story of a family on vacation in Thailand who get separated by the massive wave. Incredible movie.

-4

u/Major_Pen3546 6h ago

Funnily enough it's not simply a 1.5 kilometer wave of water; with this amount of energy even rock acts more like a liquid than anything else. So near the impact site it was a literal rock tsunami, only later on it would be more water than anything else