The 2004 Asian tsunami was the greatest natural disaster in recent times. Almost 230,000 people died. In response, governments in Asia and the broader international community announced large aid programs. The resulting assistance effort was one of the largest humanitarian programs ever organised in the developing world. This book discusses the lessons of the aid effort for disaster protection policy in developing countries.

The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 is considered to have been one of the worst natural disasters in history, affecting twelve countries, from Indonesia to Somalia. 175,000 people are believed to have lost their lives, almost 50,000 were registered as missing and 1.7 million people were displaced. As well as this horrendous toll on human life

*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the tsunami written by survivors *Includes a bibliography for further reading "Whenever an earthquake or tsunami takes thousands of innocent lives, a shocked world talks of little else." - Anne M. Mulcahy In the Christian world, December 25 is a time of great rejoicing and celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. It is by far the most festive time of year, marked by parties, church services and giving gifts. It is also a popular vacation time, as families use the breaks given by offices and schools to travel, often to exotic destinations. That is why so many of those who witnessed the Great Tsunami of 2004 were not native to the areas struck but had traveled there to enjoy the sun during the dead of winter. Most of them slept soundly on Christmas night and woke up the following morning with plans to enjoy a fun day playing along white beaches or exploring dense jungles. For many, it was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime, but for everyone in the region, it would instead become a fight for survival. Around 8:00 a.m. on December 26, a massive earthquake registering a 9.1-9.3 on the Richter Scale struck off of Sumatra, Indonesia, making it the 3rd strongest earthquake ever recorded by seismographs. On top of that, the earthquake shook for nearly 10 minutes and generated incredibly strong tsunami waves, some of which topped out at over 100 feet tall as they crashed inland in places like Thailand, India, and Indonesia. Given the great distances traveled, some of the tsunami waves didn't reach shore until 7 hours after the earthquake, but thanks to the element of surprise, people in the region had virtually no warning of what was coming. With more energy than that generated by every weapon and bomb used during World War II combined, the tsunami waves pulverized entire towns and swept away hundreds of thousands of people across Southeast Asia, in addition to displacing more than a million people. Given how calamitous the events were, a massive outpouring of humanitarian support was sent to the affected areas, and over $10 billion was poured into relief efforts. Not surprisingly, a better tsunami detection system was also designed to prevent against any similar occurrence, even though it's believed that the last similar event in that region took place over 500 years earlier. The 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami: The Story of the Deadliest Natural Disaster of the 21st Century chronicles the incredibly powerful earthquake and the deadly tsunami waves it triggered in Southeast Asia. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the 2004 earthquake and tsunami like never before, in no time at all.

December 2004, a tsunami swept over the coasts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and other South Asian countries, leaving hundreds of thousands dead and many more without the resources to rebuild their lives. With casualties as far away as Africa, the aftermath was overwhelming: ships could be spotted miles inland; cars floated in the ocean; legions of the unidentified deadùan estimated 225,000ùwere buried in mass graves; relief organizations struggled to reach rural areas and provide adequate aid to survivors. The Indian Ocean Tsunami: The Global Response to a Natural Disaster is the first comprehensive assessment of the environmental, social, and economic costs of this tragedy. Soon after the tsunami, an international team of geographers, geologists, anthropologists, and political scientists traveled to the most damaged areas to observe and document the tsunami's impact. The Indian Ocean Tsunami draws on data collected by this team. Editors Pradyumna P. Karan and Shanmugam P. Subbiah, along with contributors from multiple disciplines, examine numerous issues that arose in the aftermath of the tsunami, such as inequities in response efforts, unequal distribution of disaster relief aid, and relocation and housing problems. The Indian Ocean Tsunami is organized into several sections, the first of which deals with the ecological destruction of the tsunami. It includes case studies and photographs of the damage in Japan, Indonesia, South India, and other areas. The second section analyzes the economic and social aspects of the aid responses, specifically discussing the role of NGOs in tsunami relief, the strengths and weaknesses of the reconstruction process, and the lessons the tsunami offers to those who are responsible for dealing with future disasters. In the tsunami's aftermath, the inadequacies of governmental and privately funded aid and the challenge of rehabilitating devastated ecosystems quickly became apparent. With this volume, Karan and Suhbiah illuminate the need for the development of efficient, socially and environmentally sustainable practices to cope with environmental disasters. They suggest that education about the ongoing process of recovery will mitigate the effects of future natural disasters. Including maps, photographs, and statistical analyses, The Indian Ocean Tsunami is a clear and definitive evaluation of the tsunami's impact and the world's response to it.

The Asian tsunami in December 2004 severely affected people in coastal regions all around the Indian Ocean. This book provides the first in-depth ethnography of the disaster and its effects on a fishing village in Tamil Nadu, India. The author explores how the villagers have lived with the tsunami in the years succeeding it and actively worked to gradually regain a sense of certainty and confidence in their environment in the face of disempowering disaster. What appears is a remarkable local recovery process in which the survivors have interwoven the tsunami and the everyday in a series of subtle practices and theorisations, resulting in a complex and continuous recreation of village life. By showing the composite nature of the tsunami as an event, the book adds new theoretical insight into the anthropology of natural disaster and recovery.

On the morning after Christmas, 2004, scientists detected a major earthquake in the Indian Ocean. They had no idea it had triggered a deadly wave. This tsunami would leave about 280,000 people dead and 1.5 million children homeless. Learn about the largest aid operation in the history of the world and the miraculous survival of some of the people who were washed out to sea. This book explains why tsunamis occur and what can be done to minimize their damage. Timelines, a glossary, ideas for research, and suggestions for future reading are included in this gripping read about this devastating natural disaster.

Edith Fassnidge was kayaking with her boyfriend, mother and sister in 2004 when the Indian Ocean tsunami struck. Separated from her family, Edith battled to make it to safety, hoping that she wasn’t the only one to survive. Rinse, Spin, Repeat is the story of the day that changed her life forever and how she found the strength to face shock and loss—and eventually find peace—in the aftermath.

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami caused immense destruction and over 170,000 deaths in the Indonesian province of Aceh. The disaster spurred large-scale social and political changes in Aceh, including the intensified implementation of shari‘a law and an end to the long separatist conflict. After the Tsunami explores Acehnese survivors’ experiences of the deadly waves and the subsequent reconstruction process through the stories they tell about the disaster. Narratives, author Annemarie Samuels argues, are both a window onto the process of remaking everyday life and an essential component of it. Building on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, Samuels shows how the everyday work of recovery is indispensable for any large-scale reconstruction effort to succeed. Recovery is an ambiguous process in which grief remains as life goes on, where optimism and disappointment, remembering and forgetting, structural poverty and the rhetoric of success are often intertwined in individual and social worlds. Such paradoxes are key and form a thread through the five chapters of the book. Addressing post-disaster reconstruction from the survivors’ perspectives opens up space for criticism of post-disaster governance without reducing the discussion of recovery to top-down interventions. Individual histories, emotions, creativity, and ways of being in the world, the author argues, inform the remaking of worlds as much as social, political, and cultural transformations do. After the Tsunami is a provocative and highly significant contribution to studies of humanitarian aid and disaster, psychological anthropology, narrative studies, and scholarly studies of Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Its elegant style, pointed theorizing, and moving ethnographic descriptions will draw readers into Acehnese lifeworlds and politics. Its narratives attest to Acehnese ways of living with loss, within and across a history of colonial and postcolonial violence and suffering and a present of political uncertainty and hope.

Learn about the tsunami that tore through southern Asia on December 26, 2004 and killed more than 200,000 people.

The tragedy of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami has led to a rapid expansion in science directed at understanding tsunami and mitigating their hazard. A remarkable cross-section of this research was presented in the session: Tsunami Generation and Hazard, at the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics XXIV General Assembly in Perugia, held in July of 2007. Over one hundred presentations were made at this session, spanning topics ranging from paleotsunami research, to nonlinear shallow-water theory, to tsunami hazard and risk assessment. A selection of this work, along with other contributions from leading tsunami scientists, is published in detail in the 28 papers of this special issue of Pure and Applied Geophysics: Tsunami Science Four Years After the Indian Ocean Tsunami. Part I of this issue includes 14 papers covering the state-of-the-art in tsunami modelling and hazard assessment. Another 14 papers are published in Part II focusing on observations and data analysis.