The Indian Ocean Tsunami : The Sumatran Andaman Earthquake

The 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami was an horrific natural disaster. On Sunday 26th of December 2004 at 7.58 am local time there was an earthquake of a massive magnitude 9 on the Richter scale. The earthquake struck off the northern tip of Sumatra in Indonesia. It was the result of the Indio-Australian Plate subducting below the Eurasian Plate. Indonesia was hit by the tsunami first. Forty-five minutes later it reached Thailand.

The intensity of the earthquake was a major factor because its magnitude played a huge role in the damage that the disaster caused. It was reported to have hit a magnitude of 9-0 with the epicenter being located at least 80 miles away. The focus was 18.6 miles lower than the western Pacific. The result was a rapture of the subduction zone and thus led to the Japan Trench being affected. Several foreshocks reached as much as 6.0 and greater effects that ended up acting on the land in the following days and months even after the quake had subsided. The tsunami that accompanied the earthquake originated from a fault along the convergent plate boundary at the section where the Pacific plate joins with the west beneath Japan. The subduction zone was very active seismically at the time of the occurrence of the earthquake. Thus based on my understanding of earthquakes, the March 11 disaster was among the strongest earthquakes ever recorded because of the effects that followed because a portion of the ocean trench immediately went off-shore. In fact, it was later reported that a satellite that was orbiting around the Earth, infrasonics could be detected on the outer edge of the Earth’s atmosphere. The low-frequency waves meant that there were adverse effects that could be felt weeks after the real disaster had hit, hence the reporting that it was the

The Boxing Day Tsunami had occurred on the 26th of December 2004. The tsunami had started under water, in the Indian Ocean. The cause of the tsunami was that the Indo-Australian plate had subducted below the Eurasian plate, this process is called a convergent plate boundary. This resulted with an underwater earthquake, making waves approximately 20-30 metres high and travelling at speeds up to 500km/ph. Theses waves travelled throughout Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand and left each country in terrible conditions. The earthquake that occurred underwater had

On Friday March 11th, 2011 at 2:46 pm, the fifth largest earthquake recorded since 1900 with a magnitude of 9.0, 1.7 Richter scale points greater than the devastating Vancouver Island earthquake of 1946, struck the coast of Japan, 231 miles northeast of Tokyo1, causing a devastating regional and global catastrophe.

There are many dangers to an earthquake. Earthquakes can cause damage to cities and many people end up injured or dead. The shaking of the ground can cause mudslides and landslides.Earthquakes can also cause terrible tsunamis.Earthquakes can occur on convergent, divergent, and transform boundaries. They can also can occur on subduction zones. In this case, the earthquake occurred on a subduction zone. Subduction is the process of which the denser plate sinks under the less dense

According to the records of earthquake intensity, this is the strongest earthquake occurred in Japan and one of the most powerful earthquakes in the world ( ). When the Pacific land crashed down and the North American land slide up, the resulting of landslide and outburst of the bottom turn to create earthquake in the Pacific Ocean, and it was the biggest impact in 1200 years. Furthermore, the earthquake occurred from 130 kilometer east of the city of Honshu, Japan on March 11, 2011, and the main shock lasted for 40 minutes. The earthquake created magnitude scale to 9.0 Mw, and 165-foot movement occurred to the seafloor during the earthquake ( ). Moreover, at that time, most city of Japanese affected by that earthquake, and a nuclear power industry is one of the victims which was crashed by the earthquake. Because of that, it release of radiation to large area not only in Japan but also get oversea to another country such as China, Viet

This generated one of the deadliest tsunamis known to mankind, killing over 230,000 people and leaving over two million people displaced. The epicenter of the earthquake was located in the Indian Ocean, right off the west coast of Sumatra. The tectonic plates beneath the ocean floor had been colliding and building up pressure for hundreds of years, until this day when subduction occurred between the Indian and the Burma plates. The process of subduction displaced billions of tons of water, creating waves that traveled towards the shorelines at hundreds of miles per hour and as high as sixty to one hundred feet. There was absolutely no warning for the people of Southeast Asia, as the tsunami progressed quite rapidly. (National Geographic,

Tsunamis occur when there is sudden movement in an extensive body of water such as earthquakes, landslides on the sea floor, major volcanic eruptions or meteorite impacts. The most common source of a tsunami is earthquakes, which are another type of geomorphic hazard that is caused by the friction and stress that tectonic plates put on each other. Tsunamis primarily occur in coastal or island regions where there is a tectonic border or what is known as the ring of fire. As shown in the diagram below the ring of fire is located along the coastal and island regions of the world.As a result of the Pacific Plate diving beneath the Eurasian plate, on March 11, 2011, there were 2 geomorphic hazards, a magnitude-9 earthquake struck north Japan, which caused a deadly tsunami that reached heights of 39 meters. The destructive dilemma was dubbed ‘The Great Sendai Disaster’. The earthquake was caused by multiple centuries of stress on the tectonic plates surrounding the island. The earthquake caused a tsunami that reached the height of 39 meters (128 feet). Japanese scientists had previously discovered that there was another tsunami just like the one in 2011 that took place in 869 AD. But their warning was unhindered. The tsunami, which occurred in 869 AD, was caused by the same tectonic fault as the 2011 tsunami. The epicenter of the earthquake was off the northeast cost of Japan leading to a devastating tsunami that killed many and left many wishing they were. The massive earthquake caused an upward wave that headed towards the city of Sendai. Researches have recently uncovered a thin layer of clay that lubricated the fault zone causing the deadly tectonic slip, thus creating a tsunami that could wipe out an entire city as it did in 2011.The aftermath of the 2011 tsunami and earthquake was not pretty; it caused many deaths, injuries, traumas, financial difficulties, destruction of property, health bills and the destruction of the landscape as a whole. The natural disaster caused nearly 16,000 casualties and there are an estimated 2,500 people still reported missing. Although drowning caused most deaths others include, crushed by debris, suicide and diseases caused by nuclear radiation (cancer) spilled from nuclear

Scientists recently reported in a new study a likely explanation for this unexpected incident, some tiny pieces of the mantle under the region have been breaking off and moving deep down into the Earth. Thereby weakening the remaining plates and making it more prone to slipping that causes earthquakes. Most study authors have concluded that this process is ongoing and very likely

on may 22, 1960, the world’s largest earthquake struck southern Chile, Hawaii, Japan,the Philippines, eastern New Zealand, southeast Australia, and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.due to how widespread the earthquake and following tsunami was, the death toll is still unknown. This earthquake was a megathrust earthquake, which was a result of the release of stress between the Nazca Plate and the South American Plate, on the Peru–Chile Trench. The focus was relatively shallow at 33 km, considering that earthquakes in northern Chile and Argentina may reach depths of 70 km. The earthquake's rupture zone was 800 km long, stretching from Arauco to Chiloé Archipelago. The rupture velocity has been estimated as 3.5 km per second.

The 9.0 magnitude Indian Ocean earthquake was caused by subduction under the Indian Ocean. Earthquakes are usually caused by convection currents leading to subduction/convergent currents. Convection currents is caused by magma rising from the deepest part of the earth, then slowly cooling, sinking again then re-heating, then rising upwards basically repeating the rising and cooling then re-heating cycle over and over again. The plates are separated from each other and they move apart, the plates then obviously hit another plate right next to it causing subduction. This earthquake was caused on the Oceanic crust, in the Indian Ocean, creating tsunamis that caused disasters and thousands of life loss throughout the Indian Ocean basin. The

The Indian Ocean Earthquake happened on December 26th, 2004. This was a massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake that occurred under the Indian

On March 11, 2011 Japan experienced an earthquake, which has become the most terrible and destructive in the history of this country. In term of geography, Japan is situated in the earthquake-prone area, on the junction of four plates: the Eurasian, Pacific, North American and Philippine. The Eurasian plate is slowly moving to the east, and three others – to the west, so their friction causes earthquakes. Japanese know about the danger based on their country geography, but they were not ready for this kind of disaster. A 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck at 2.46pm about 70km east of Tohoku at an offshore subduction zone, where two tectonic plates collide and one slides beneath the other. According to IBT news, Its centre was on the seafloor at a 24km depth, this earthquake was so powerful it shifted Earth on its axis of rotation. The energy released by the earthquake produced a huge tsunami, with waves up to 30ft beginning to hit the

Earthquakes cause landslides, tsunamis, fires, mudslides, liquefaction, building and roadway collapse, and deaths ("Types of damage"). Cleanup efforts and the repair of damage caused by earthquakes often total in the millions of dollars and in the instance of the Hyogoken-Nabu earthquake in January of 1995 one-hundred and fifty billion dollars of damage occurred (Ammon, 2010). Death tolls have typically exceeded over fifty-thousand people as the result of many earthquakes. The most devastating earthquake

Tsunamis are deadly and destructive natural disasters and have caused huge damages to population in recent history. The Tsunami of 2004 struck Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand mainly and marginally many other countries scaled 9.0 on hector scale. Tsunamis can be initiated by many means but this one was triggered by an earthquake. The coastal cities of areas struck were ruined. In the living history, this Tsunami is considered the deadliest of all. It is recorded to have killed about two hundred thousand people (The Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters 2009). The affected areas received billions of dollars in aids but could not be built again in a day the way they were destroyed. The 2004 Tsunami destroyed the fishery, agriculture, residence and transport system of the affected areas. Indonesia lost its 70% of fishing fleet of small scale. Thailand lost about 80% of its infrastructure and got 5,000 fishing vessels damaged. A big portion of coral reeves were lost in Tsunami and even after that the huge number of cars and concrete walls in the sea kept destroying coral reeves. Since the population of Indonesia is very high in the region and especially in the coastal areas, the loss was much higher than