Tsunami Disasters

Such significant historical examples include the tsunamis which occurred in the 18th and 19th century in Portugal, China, Indonesia and Japan. Tens of thousands of Portuguese people were killed by a tsunami in 1755, which followed the Lisbon earthquake. Following this event, the tsunami of 1782 in the South China Sea resulted in over 40,000 deaths.

Over a century later, The Great Krakatau Volcanic eruption in 1883 generated giant waves reaching heights of 40m above sea-level and are reported to have ravaged coastlines along the Sundra Straits, wiping out numerous coastal villages and killing 36500 people. Following another earthquake in 1869, waves as high as 100 feet (30 meters), swept the east coast of Japan killing around 27,000 people.

Significant tsunamis
Although destructive tsunamis have occurred in all of the world's oceans and seas, in the last half of the 20th Century a number of destructive pacific-wide tsunamis occurred in 1946, 1957, 1960 and 1964.

1946: On the 1 April 1946, a destructive pacific-wide tsunami was generated by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake near Unimak Island in Alaska's Alentian Island Chain. The destructive tsunami waves (measuring up to 35 meters) caused considerable damage and loss of life to the Hawaiian Islands.

1952: A strong earthquake off the coast of Kamchatka Peninsula on the 4 November 1952 caused another huge Pacific-wide tsunami. Its waves hit the Kamchatka Peninsula, areas of Russia's Far East and the Kuril Islands and caused significant damage in the Hawaiian Islands and in Peru and Chile.

1957: An 8.3 magnitude earthquake in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska on the 9 March, 1957 generated another Pacific-wide Tsunami. Although no lives were lost, extensive damage was caused by the 16 metre-high waves.

1960: In 1960, a tsunami which occurred off the coast of Chile followed the world's biggest recorded earthquake of the 20th century (measuring 9.5 on the Richter Scale). A series of waves created havoc around the Pacific Rim and resulted in 56 deaths in Hawaii, 32 deaths in the Philippines, and 138 deaths in Japan - 10,000 miles away.

1964: The largest earthquake in the northern hemisphere in the 20th Century, with a magnitude of 8.4, occurred in Alaska on 2 March 1964 and caused destruction in areas such as southeastern Alaska, California and Hawaii. The earthquake generated many local tsunamis as well as a pacific-wide tsunami.

Tsunamis in more recent times
In the last decade alone, destructive tsunamis have occurred in:

• Nicaragua (1992)
• Indonesia (1992, 1994, 1996)
• Japan (1993)
• Philippines (1994)
• Peru (1996, 2001)
• Papua-New Guinea (1998)
• Turkey and Vanuatu (1999)

However, one of the most devastating tsunamis to take place in history occurred recently when the biggest earthquake for over 40 years occurred between the Australian and Eurasian plates in the Indian Ocean on 26 December 2004. This triggered a tsunami that spread across 4,500 km-wide Indian Ocean over a period of seven hours and could rank as the most destructive tsunamis on record.

In deep water the tsunami moved at up to 500mph but then slowed and increased in height when it reached shallow water near coastal areas. In Kalutara the water reached at least one kilometer inland causing widespread destruction and resulting in huge loss of life.

According to the NGDC (National Geophysical Data Centre) over 280,000 people were killed in this natural disaster. In terms of loss of life, there has never been such a destructive tsunami in recoded history. The second greatest loss of life from a tsunami was recorded in 1410 BC. when 100,000 people were killed by the tsunami in Crete-Santorini, Ancient Greece.