Tidal wave kills 13,000 in Asia

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- An earthquake of epic power struck deep beneath the Indian Ocean on Sunday, unleashing 20-foot tidal waves that ravaged coasts across thousands of miles and killed nearly 13,340 people. Legions of rescuers spread across Asia, searching for survivors and rushing aid to the hundreds of thousands injured or left homeless.

The death toll along the southern coast of Asia -- and as far west as Somalia, on Africa's east coast, where nine people were reported lost -- steadily increased as authorities sorted out a far-flung disaster caused by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake, the strongest in 40 years and fourth-largest in a century.

More than one million people were driven from their homes in Indonesia alone, and rescuers there combed seaside villages for survivors. The Indian air force used helicopters to rush food and medicine to stricken seashore areas. And in Sri Lanka, 20,000 soldiers were deployed as rescuers.

The earthquake hit at 6:58 a.m. local time; the tsunami came as much as 2 1/2 hours later, without warning, on a morning of crystal blue skies. Sunbathers and snorkelers, cars and cottages, fishing boats and even a lighthouse were swept away.

Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India each reported thousands dead, and Thailand, a Western tourist hotspot, said hundreds were dead and thousands missing. Deaths were also reported in Malaysia, Maldives and Bangladesh.

"It's an extraordinary calamity of such colossal proportions that the damage has been unprecedented," said Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa of India's Tamil Nadu, a southern state which reported 1,705 dead, many of them strewn along beaches, virtual open-air mortuaries.

"It all seems to have happened in the space of 20 minutes. A massive tidal wave of extreme ferocity ... smashed everything in sight to smithereens," she said.

The immediate reaction for Dr. Ragu Athinarayanan, professor of industrial technology at Southeast Missouri State University, was to call his parents, who live off the coast of southern Malaysia.

His second concern grew after watching footage of people before the waves struck, he said.

"It looks to me like people are standing there not knowing what's going to happen next," Athinarayanan said, which indicated to him that the countries affected did not have an effective early warning system.

Though the family of Dr. Mohan Tikoo, professor of mathematics at Southeast, lives in the northern parts of India, the high magnitude of the earthquake concerned him, he said, especially because Cape Girardeau is near the New Madrid Fault.

"We need to spend a lot of money on research in this area, because human lives are involved," he said. Otherwise the devastation of an earthquake greater than magnitude 8 on dry land could cost millions of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Six miles under seabed

The quake was centered 155 miles south-southeast of Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia's Aceh province on Sumatra, and six miles under the Indian Ocean's seabed. The temblor leveled dozens of buildings on Sumatra -- and was followed by at least a half-dozen powerful aftershocks, ranging in magnitude from almost 6 to 7.3. The waves that followed the first massive jolt were far more lethal.

An Associated Press reporter in Aceh province saw bodies wedged in trees as the waters receded. More bodies littered the beaches. Authorities said at least 4,448 were dead in Indonesia; the full impact of the disaster was not known, as communications were cut to the towns most affected.

The waves barreled across the Bay of Bengal, pummeling Sri Lanka, where more than 4,500 were reported killed -- at least 3,000 in areas controlled by the government and about 1,500 in regions controlled by rebels, who listed the death toll on their Web site. More than a million people were displaced from wrecked villages.

The carnage was incredibly widespread. About 2,300 were reported dead along the southern coasts of India, at least 431 in Thailand, 42 in Malaysia and 32 in the Maldives, a string of coral islands off the southwestern coast of India. At least two died in Bangladesh -- children who drowned as a boat with about 15 tourists capsized in high waves.

The huge waves struck around breakfast time on the beaches of Thailand's beach resorts -- probably Asia's most popular holiday destination at this time of year, particularly for Europeans fleeing the winter cold.

"People that were snorkeling were dragged along the coral and washed up on the beach, and people that were sunbathing got washed into the sea," said Simon Clark, 29, a photographer from London vacationing on Ngai island.

The earthquake that caused the tsunami was the largest since a 9.2 temblor hit Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1964, according to geophysicist Julie Martinez of the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake occurred at a place where several huge geological plates push against each other with massive force. The survey said a 620-mile section along the boundary of the plates shifted, motion that triggered the sudden displacement of a huge volume of water.

Quakes reaching a magnitude 8 are very rare. A quake registering magnitude 8 rocked Japan's northern island of Hokkaido on Sept. 25, 2003, injuring nearly 600 people. An 8.4-magnitude tremor that struck off Peru on June 23, 2001, killed 74.

Staff writer Julia Metelski conributed to this report.