COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Legions of rescuers spread across Asia today after an earthquake of epic power struck deep beneath the Indian Ocean, unleashing 20-foot tsunami waves that ravaged coasts across thousands of miles, killed more than 13,340 people and left millions homeless in the fourth-largest temblor in a century.
The death toll is expected to increase by thousands.
At least three Americans were among the dead: two in Sri Lanka and one in Thailand, according to State Department spokesman Noel Clay. He said a number of other Americans were injured, but he had no details.
The death toll along the southern coast of Asia – and as far west as Somalia, on the African coast, where nine people were reported lost – steadily increased as authorities sorted out a far-flung disaster caused by Sunday’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake, the strongest in 40 years.
Signs of the carnage were everywhere: Dozens of bodies still clad in swimming trunks lined beaches in Thailand. Villagers in Indonesia picked through the debris of destroyed houses amid the smell of rotting corpses. Hundreds of prisoners escaped a coastal jail in Sri Lanka.
More than one million people were driven from their homes in Indonesia alone, and rescuers there today combed seaside villages for survivors. The Indian air force used helicopters to rush food and medicine to stricken seashore areas.
Another million were driven from their homes in Sri Lanka where about 25,000 soldiers and 10 air force helicopters were deployed in relief and rescue efforts, authorities said.
At Thailand’s beach resorts, packed with Europeans fleeing the winter cold at the peak of the holiday season, families and friends had tearful reunions today after a day of fear that their loved ones had been swept away.
Fifty-eight half-naked and swimming-suit-clad corpses lay in rows outside the Patong Hospital emergency room. Three babies under the age of 1 were among the victims. A photo of one baby was posted on the wall of victims, the little corpse in a nearby refrigerator.
The earthquake hit at 6:58 a.m.; the tsunami came as much as 21/2 hours later on a morning of crystal blue skies. Sunbathers and snorkelers, cars and cottages, fishing boats and even a lighthouse were swept away.
Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India each reported thousands dead. Deaths were also reported in Malaysia, Maldives and Bangladesh.
The quake was centered 155 miles south-southeast of Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia’s Aceh province on Sumatra, and six miles under the Indian Ocean’s seabed. The temblor leveled dozens of buildings on Sumatra – and was followed Sunday by at least a half-dozen powerful aftershocks, ranging in magnitude from almost 6 to 7.3, and one aftershock today that hit India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
The waves that followed the first massive jolt were far more lethal.
A reporter in Aceh province saw bodies wedged in trees as the waters receded. More bodies littered the beaches. Authorities said at least 4,448 were dead in Indonesia; the full effect of the disaster was not known, as communications were cut to the towns most affected.
In India’s Andhra Pradesh state, at least 32 Hindu devotees were drowned when they went into the sea for a religious ceremony to mark the full moon. Among them were 15 children. Today, bodies of women and children lay strewn on the sand.
The international airport was closed in the Maldives after a wave that left 51 people missing in addition to the 32 dead.
The earthquake that caused the tsunami was the largest since a 9.2 temblor hit Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1964, according to geophysicist Julie Martinez of the U.S. Geological Survey.
“All the planet is vibrating” from the quake, said Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy’s National Geophysics Institute. Speaking on SKY TG24 TV, Boschi said the quake even disturbed the Earth’s rotation.
The quake occurred at a place where several huge geological plates push against each other with massive force. The survey said a 620-mile section along the boundary of the plates shifted, motion that triggered the sudden displacement of a huge volume of water.
Indonesia, a country of 17,000 islands, is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on the margins of tectonic plates that make up the so-called Ring of Fire around the Pacific Ocean basin.
The Indonesian quake struck just three days after an 8.1 quake along the ocean floor between Australia and Antarctica caused buildings to shake hundreds of miles away. The earlier temblor caused no serious damage or injury.
Quakes reaching a magnitude 8 are very rare. A quake registering magnitude 8 rocked Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido on Sept. 25, 2003, injuring nearly 600 people. An 8.4 magnitude tremor that struck off Peru on June 23, 2001, killed 74.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
