A huge earthquake measuring 9.0 struck beneath the Indian Ocean on Sunday. Two hours after the quake, a 20 foot Tsunami hit several Asian countries, spreading across thousands of miles.
This was the strongest to hit earthquake in 40 years, and the 4th largest in a century.
New estimates are that in southern India more than 9,500 are dead and in Indonesia more than 27,200 are dead. In Sri Lanka, more than 18,000 people were killed, along with at least 200 tourists. Additionally an unconfirmed 1,500 deaths reported by rebels who control part of the country.
In this region, the Burma plate is characterized by significant strain partitioning due to oblique convergence of the India and Australia plates to the west and the Sunda and Eurasian plates to the east.
Off the west coast of northern Sumatra, the India plate is moving in a northeastward direction at about 5 cm per year relative to the Burma plate.
Preliminary locations of larger aftershocks following today's earthquake show that approximately 1000 km of the plate boundary slipped as a result of the earthquake. Aftershocks are distributed along much of the shallow plate boundary between northern Sumatra (approximately 3 degrees north) to near Andaman Island (at about 14 degrees north).
Sunday, December 26, 2004 at 00:58:50 (UTC) = Coordinated Universal Time
Sunday, December 26, 2004 at 6:58:50 AM = local time at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
250 km (155 miles) SSE of Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia
320 km (200 miles) W of Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia
1260 km (780 miles) SSW of BANGKOK, Thailand
1605 km (1000 miles) NW of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia
At least 3,000 people killed in Sri Lanka, 2,300 in India, 2,000 in Indonesia, 289 in Thailand, 42 in Malaysia, 8 in Somalia and 2 in Bangladesh by tsunamis. Tsunamis also occurred on the coasts of Maldives and Cocos Island. At least 200 people killed, buildings destroyed or damaged in the Banda Aceh area, Sumatra. Felt widely in Sumatra. Also felt in Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand. This is now the fourth largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and is the largest since the 1964 Prince William Sound, Alaska earthquake.
