Was the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 26 December 2004 a ‘global disaster’?

By Reece Kirby, Third Year History Student

Few disasters have demanded such attention as the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami of 26th December 2004. A magnitude-9.2 earthquake fractured the seafloor off of Indonesia, propelling the most devastating tsunami in recorded history across the Indian Ocean. Few could do anything but watch on as the mountainous waves drowned South Asia, surging water and wreckage far inland. The disaster’s effects were as dreadful as expected; hundreds of thousands of people were left dead with many millions more homeless and injured. Entire communities were torn asunder and billions of dollars lost in damages. The Boxing Day tsunamis, as they would come to be known, were catastrophic. No one questions the validity of this statement. However, whether the natural disaster was truly a global one is up for debate.

First, we must take a deeper dive into the proceedings of the earthquake and tsunami itself. The megathrust earthquake broke undersea at 00:58 UTC, 26th December, due to a break between the Burmese and Indian tectonic plates. With an epicentre close to the island of Sumatra, the subsequent series of tsunamis struck the coasts of 14 countries, including Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Thailand and India. Official reports indicate 227,898 died. Damages totalled $2.9 billion with waves recorded as high as 30 metres. It comes as no surprise then that the disaster is easily the deadliest of the 21st century, with roughly 60,000 more lives lost than in the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Looking throughout history, the Indian Ocean disaster is the tenth deadliest natural disaster and the third largest earthquake. Indonesia and Sri Lanka were hit the hardest, with infrastructure destroyed and a lack of clean food, water and medicine. This, combined with the task of moving supplies through devastated and war-torn areas, led to further casualties and torment for survivors. However, when assessing the global impact of the disaster, it is important we look out further than South Asia. Damage was caused as far south as Africa’s eastern coast, primarily in the township of Rooi-Els. Two people were killed in South Africa (the furthest point from the epicentre where deaths were reported), with others from Yemen, Kenya, Seychelles and Tanzania also confirmed dead. On top of this, over a thousand people in Madagascar were displaced from their homes and 176 Somalians died due to flooding. The number of (largely European) tourists killed during the disaster was also widely reported. Sweden and Germany lost the most people, 543 and 539 respectively, and the tsunami also took 149 British lives. In total 2,154 tourists died as a result of the earthquake and tsunami, no small number.

By definition, a disaster is a “calamitous event that seriously disrupts a community or society and causes human and economic or environmental losses.” Our disaster, of course, fits within these parameters. More specifically, the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami was a natural disaster – it was caused by the Earth’s natural processes, in this case the movement of tectonic plates. However, for something to be a global disaster, it much reach another scale entirely. It is not enough to disrupt one community; hundreds of natural disasters each year disrupt societies on a local level. For example, the 2018 Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami saw 2,245 people die and many more injured. However, the casualties were limited to Indonesia and prompted little international assistance. South Korea announced that their government would donate $1 million in humanitarian aid, the EU €1.5 million, the UK £2 million and the US a further $100,000 – the international community hardly saw the disaster as a global one worth much investment or aid. Conversely, we can look at examples of disasters (both natural and anthropogenic) which either warranted a global response or had global consequences. The major eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 has the highest death toll of any volcanic eruption at over 71,000 and can be considered a global disaster. Between 10 and 120 megatons of sulphur was ejected into the stratosphere, enough to change the global climate. 1816 would come to be known as the Year Without a Summer due to the subsequent volcanic winter. Average temperatures across the world fell by 0.4 – 0.7 °C, enough to cause it to snow during the United States’ summer. The colder temperatures sprung an agricultural crisis, with many crops killed due to frost and ice. The eruption has also been claimed as the cause of the typhus epidemic experienced in Europe and the Mediterranean in the late 1810s. The Chernobyl disaster can also be recognised as having global consequences. According to Benjamin Sovacool, radiation unique to Chernobyl can be “found in nearly every country in the northern hemisphere.” The incident had great political consequences as well; the disaster was a chief influence in developing a new Eastern Europe and tightened Soviet-US relations on account of scientific collaboration. Both of these examples demonstrate that for a disaster to be truly global it has to have far reaching consequences, whether they be political, social or environmental in nature.

So then, how vast were they consequences of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami? As previously mentioned, countries as far as 8,500km away were damaged as a direct result of the tsunami. Vehicles were submerged in South Africa at the Port Elizabeth harbour, while an oil tanker ran aground in Tanzania. Looking further east, minor flooding and tremors were felt in Australia. Swimmers at Christmas Island were swept out to sea but luckily returned to shore with no severe injuries. The number of Western tourists killed also sparked international interest, with citizens of almost every major power having died. And putting aside the environmental and economic consequences, an earthquake or tsunami of this scale simply hadn’t been seen in decades. The sheer size of the devastation was more than enough to warrant international aid. The 2004 earthquake and tsunami is the deadliest natural disaster since 1976, when the Tangshan earthquake hit. But even then, despite a higher death toll, the Tangshan earthquake was limited to Hebei province of China and dealt with proficiently by the Chinese government. Furthermore, the Indian Ocean tsunami was so cataclysmic that the Earth’s rotation was shifted slightly (decreasing each day by 2.68 microseconds) and moved the North Pole by 2.5cm. However, we must of course remember that the region’s most affect were those directly hit in South East Asia, namely Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India. The immediate consequence of the disaster was the demonstrable loss of life. The death toll from all other natural disasters in Indonesia from 1996 – 2004 (excluding the tsunami) was 36,000. The Indian Ocean Tsunami saw 227,898 die, so already the disaster dwarfed its predecessors in terms of lives lost. Contrary to this though, the economic damage done was relatively small. Hurricane Katrina (not considered a global disaster) is said to have cost the US $125 billion in damages, yet only 1,836 people were killed. We would then expect the tsunami’s economic effect to have been astronomical, but it wasn’t. Damages totalled $2.9 billion, which while large, was ultimately lower than expected. Small scale, local economies were destroyed, but Indonesia and its neighbours didn’t face economic collapse. The most affected industries were unsurprisingly tourism and fishing, but as the two didn’t represent a large section of the country’s GDP the impact was again not catastrophic. In fact, the tsunami wasn’t even the greatest economic challenge faced by Indonesia in 2004. Earlier in the year rising international oil prices saw the country go through a ‘mini-crisis’ with greatly increased fuel prices and double-digit inflation. The economic consequences of the disaster didn’t then largely register on a national scale, let alone a global one. 

Finally, we can look at the international community’s response to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami to determine how much of a global disaster it really was. Prior to the disaster, no natural disaster early warning system was in place in the Indian Ocean – the technology existed but was only put into place in the Pacific. The Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS) was established following the disaster as a dual enterprise of the European Commission and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The system provides real-time disaster information and serves to improve the spread of said information worldwide. The relative lack of warning people had for the Indian Ocean tsunami was recognised as unacceptable, with world governments and activist demanding a monitoring organisation be put in place for the Indian Ocean, hence the systems creation. As far as humanitarian aid goes, $14 billion was donated from nations worldwide. Interestingly, individuals often donated more than their respective governments, with UK citizens giving approximately £300 million compared to the financial aid package of £75 million given by the government. This led to widespread criticism of Europe and the US, in particular from the UN, for not providing adequate funds. A surplus of financial aid coming directly from charities and the public isn’t surprising when you consider the media coverage of the disaster. Coverage is so extensive that, according to a BBC poll, the tsunami was tied with the Iraq war as the most significant events of 2005, bearing in mind that the tsunami actually hit Boxing Day 2004. Despite the underwhelming governmental aid though, the disaster still became an important moment in modern history, and has remained the natural disaster of the 21st and arguably 20th centuries.

So ultimately, it may be more accurate to describe the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami as a South Asian disaster with global consequences. The initial waves had a minimal affect outside of the eastern hemisphere and the official governmental pledges to help were unsatisfactory. However, the establishment of the GDACS has had undeniable global impacts. The disaster has too significantly raised the global awareness of both tsunamis and earthquakes and remains the example of why early warning systems are so important. The people of Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the countries directly hit were the only ones who truly felt the impact though. Minoli Salgado says it best – “the waves came and everything is gone.”

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Cover Image Credit: Kevin Paes on Unsplash