The Boxing Day Tsunami

On the morning of December 26, 2004, just before 8 AM local time, the Earth’s crust gave way. Off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia, a massive undersea earthquake struck along the fault where the Indian Plate pushes beneath the Burma Plate. Registering a catastrophic magnitude of 9.1 to 9.3, the event began 30 kilometres beneath the ocean floor. The tectonic shifting was not brief; for up to ten minutes, one of the longest durations ever observed, the fault line ruptured over a length of 1,200 to 1,300 kilometres. This violent movement was so powerful that it displaced an enormous section of the ocean floor upwards by several meters. The seismic waves generated were immense, causing measurable vibrations across the entire planet. As far away as Alaska, the ground shifted by up to 10 millimetres, a planetary shudder from an event that was just beginning.