Tsunami Thailand (Koh Phi Phi) - 2004. Incredible tsunami footage. Crazy guy almost killed by Tsunami. Asian Tsunami 2004(Original soundtrack) Koh Phi Phi Tsunami II. Tsunami Strikes Sri Lanka. On December 26, 2004, tsunamis swept across the Indian ocean, spawned by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra. Aside from Indonesia, the island nation of Sri Lanka likely suffered the most casualties, with the death toll reported at 21,715 on December 29th.
DigitalGlobe's Quickbird satellite captured an image of the devestation around Kalutara, Sri Lanka (top), on December 26, 2004, at 10:20 a.m. local time—about an hour after the first in the series of waves hit. (A Quickbird image taken on January 1, 2004 (lower), shows the normal ocean conditions.) Water is flowing out of the inundated area and back into the sea, creating turbulence offshore. Some near-shore streets and yards are covered with muddy water. It is possible that the image was acquired in a “trough” between wave crests. Imagery of nearby beaches shows that the edge of the ocean had receded about 150 meters from the shoreline. More images are available on the DigitalGlobe web site. Breaking Tsunami Waves along India’s Eastern Coast. At 00:58:53 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) on December 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurred off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. This was the fourth largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and the largest in over 40 years.
It is estimated that the sea floor was displaced several meters due to the quake, resulting in large ocean waves, called “tsunamis” from the Japanese for “harbor waves.” The tsunamis moved rapidly across the deep ocean, with speeds estimated around 640 kilometers per hour. When the waves reach shallow water near land, they slow considerably, but their size increases dramatically. They strike with catastrophic force. With human casualties exceeding 200,000, this event is one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern history, causing devastation along the shores of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and other countries. A series of frames spanning nearly 6 minutes has been made into a small animated GIF (588 kB).