In the early hours of December 26, 2004, a massive magnitude 9.2 earthquake struck in the Indian Ocean, triggering an equally large tsunami that caused unprecedented destruction in 14 countries and killed more than 230,000 people. Twenty years later, National Geographic has revisited one of history's deadliest natural disasters with a new documentary: Tsunami: race against the clock. The four-part series provides an in-depth account of the tsunami's destructive path, told from the perspectives of those who survived, as well as the scientists, journalists, doctors, nurses and everyday heroes who worked to save as many people as possible.
Geophysicist Barry Hirshorn – now at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego – was on duty that day (3 p.m. Christmas Day local time) at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii. His beeper went off, indicating that seismic waves had set off a seismometer in Australia, and Hirshorn rushed to the control room to locate the earthquake epicenter with his colleague Stuart Weinstein.
They initially estimated the earthquake at a magnitude of 8.5. (It was later upgraded to a magnitude of 8.9 and then to a magnitude of as much as 9.2 to 9.3.) But despite its strength, they initially didn't think the earthquake would cause a tsunami, at least not in the Pacific. And such events were incredibly rare in the Indian Ocean.
Hirshorn and Weinstein also did not have real-time sea level data that would have told them that a huge amount of water had been displaced by the movement of two major tectonic plates (the Indian and Burma plates). Four hours later, the first tsunami waves hit Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, leaving a path of destruction and death.
Geophysicist Barry Hirshorn on the lack of an early warning system for the Indian Ocean tsunami. Credit: National Geographic
What sets this new documentary apart is its emphasis on the moving stories of the survivors. For example, experienced surfer David Lines lived with his wife Nurma in Banda Aceh at the time. They managed to avoid the tsunami by car, but Nurma lost 30 family members. Journalist and videographer Denny Montgomery faced a similar situation, racing against time to save his mother. Zenny Suryawan saw his family swept away by the tsunami and survived by clinging to the rubble. A young mother in Khao Lan was separated from her son and had almost given up hope when she finally found him alive in a nearby hospital.
