WATER WALL By 7 29 a m on December 26 2004 Jaloe had nudged his fishing boat out to sea The skies were clear in Sumatra Indonesia Suddenly Jaloe felt his boat shake The ocean looked like it was about to boil He thought the shaking and boiling were from a ghost in the water He didn't know it was an earthquake The quake measured 9.0 on the Richter scale and its epicenter was located just 50 miles 80 kilometers away The 2004 tsunami was so powerful it lifted fishing boats from the sea and dropped them on land In some areas the waves carried the wreckage almost four miles six kilometers inland YOU
Like a pebble plunking into a pond the earthquake set off a series of powerful waves called a tsunami The waves rushed toward land faster than jet plane speeds up to 500 miles 800 kilometers per hour As the waves neared shore they sounded like a jet plane too And they delivered disaster Bangladesh Burma India Thailand Malaysia Indonesia Somalia Sri Lanka Kenya Tanzania Affected areas from the 2004 Indonesia earthquake-created tsunami The tsunami’s waves traveled more than 4,000 miles 6,400 kilometers It damaged property and hurt people as far away as Africa 5
Approaching land the waves grew into a wall of water five stories high When they crashed down they leveled Jaloe’s hometown of Banda Aceh In the final count more than 250,000 people died or went missing More than a quarter of those people came from the town of Banda Aceh Within hours of the earthquake huge waves radiating from the epicenter slammed into the coastlines of 11 countries damaging countries from east Africa to Thailand 6
Jaloe was lucky He steered his boat out to sea as the wave approached He survived But other fishermen headed straight for shore They perished Along the shoreline many people had no idea what was happening Some clung to coconut trees as the waves rolled in A few scrambled to higher ground Still others rushed toward the water to capture fish flopping around on the ocean floor In the town the tsunami swept away buildings homes and schools Jaloe later found an empty lot where his home once stood He never found his wife Although there were several hours between the earthquake and the impact of the tsunami nearly all of the victims were taken completely by surprise because there were no tsunami warning systems in place 7
