Collection 3: "Mammoth Shakes and Monster Waves, Destruction in 12 Countries" by Brenda Z. Guiberson

Some islands rose up, and others sank, leaving “fish now swimming around in once idyllic, palm-fringed villages,” wrote Madhusree Mukerjee.

Someone yelled, “Air laut naik”—“The sea is coming”—but tourists stayed on the beach, and locals collected flopping fish stranded by the receding water.

People near the epicenter of the earthquake were swallowed up in less than 30 minutes.

The tsunami didn’t reach others for an hour, two hours, even six hours or more. Without a warning system, hundreds of thousands of people were caught unawares, many so far away from the source of the wave that they never even knew there had been an earthquake.

When the sea floor ruptured, trillions of tons of water were instantly pushed up 40 feet by the rising land.

The ancient tribes on the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands have lived close to nature for centuries. They are said to detect changes by the smell of the wind and gauge the depth of the sea with the sounds of their oars.

Some members of aboriginal groups survived the tsunami because they read the signs of nature; heeded ancient stories; packed up their children, baskets, nets, arrows, and embers; and headed for the hills.

On the first day, those nearest the earthquake were traumatized by 37 more tremors.

The tsunami left a huge problem of contaminated water. In Sri Lanka, for instance, 40,000 wells were destroyed and the freshwater aquifer became toxic.

In the Maldives, 16 coral reef atolls lost their freshwater and may be uninhabitable until decades of monsoons can refresh the supply.

In the Maldives, 16 coral reef atolls lost their freshwater and may be uninhabitable until decades of monsoons can refresh the supply.

Relief workers from around the world eventually arrived with vaccines, antibiotics, food, blankets, tents, field hospitals, building supplies, and mosquito nets.

In some areas, unscrupulous people saw a chance to increase their wealth during the chaos.

“Just like the degradation of wetlands in Louisiana almost certainly increased Hurricane Katrina’s destructive powers,” they concluded, “the degradation of mangroves in India magnified the tsunami’s destruction.”

The 2004 tsunami revealed that the Indian Ocean was in desperate need of a tsunami warning system, and 25 seismic stations relaying information to 26 information centers were installed.

Another Alaska quake in 1964 was a 9.2 magnitude, the biggest ever recorded in North America.

In 1798, John Goldingham, a British astronomer and traveler to India, wrote down the details of a myth about the “Seven Pagodas,” a group of temples from the seventh century that was swallowed up by the sea.

Myths from the South Pacific also tell of deities that “fish up” islands from the water and sometimes throw them back.