Man Made Disasters

On December 26, 2004 an earthquake on the sea floor 160 km northwest of the coast of Sumatra spawned a tsunami that swept over beaches and seaside towns throughout Asia and eastern Africa, killing more than 225,000 people. One of the single largest losses of life was in the town of Paraliya, Sri Lanka, where the Queen of The Sea train was thrown off the tracks, killing an estimated 2000 people.

 

The Queen Of The Sea was a popular eight-carriage tourist train, running from the capital, Colombo, to Galle along the Sri Lankan coast.  On December 26, 2004, the Christmas holidays and a popular Buddhist full moon holiday meant that the train was packed with an estimated 1500 passengers. It travelled slowly along the coast. At Paraliya, at 9:30 am, it was 200 metres from the ocean when the first wave of the Indian Ocean tsunami hit the shoreline.

The Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami are the fourth-strongest earthquake and the most devastating tidal wave ever recorded. The earthquake measured 9.1 to 9.3 on the Richter scale. The tsunami rolled from the site of the quake, across the Indian Ocean, as far as the coast of Africa. The earthquake shook the entire planet by 1 cm. The tsunami took about 90 minutes to travel to the shores of Sri Lanka, directly in the path of its strongest impact.