2004 Andamans tsunami: My boat was metres from the shore when the waves hit

Boxing Day, 2004.

When the earthquake struck at 06: 30 ( 01: 00 GMT ), I was on a ferry, headed towards Havelock – an island in the Indian archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar.

Known for its gold sand and clear blue waters, the Radhanagar shore there had just been crowned” Asia’s Best Shore” by Time magazine.

My best friend from college and her family had lived in Port Blair, the archipelago’s cash for a decade and a half, but this was my second trip there, and I arrived on Christmas Eve.

We had planned to spend three nights in Havelock, so we set out early to get the boat to Phoenix Bay jetty in Port Blair and pack our lunch and burgers.

Not wanting to miss out on everything, I was standing on the front deck, looking round, when disaster struck.

The boat swayed as we pulled out of the harbor, and immediately the pier directly opposite where we had boarded wrinkled and fell into the sea. The castle and an electrical pole followed it.

It was an amazing view. Dozens of people standing alongside me watched open-mouthed.

Fortunately, the wharf was deserted at the time so there were no deaths. In 30 minutes, a vessel was scheduled to depart from that location, but the passengers had not yet arrived.

A member of the boat’s crew told me it was an earthquake. At the time I didn’t know, but the 9.1 magnitude quake was the third most powerful ever recorded in the world – and remains the biggest and most destructive in Asia.

An estimated 228, 000 people were killed in a storm that occurred off the west of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean.

The Andaman and Nicobar islands, located just about 100km north of the epicentre, suffered extensive damage when a wall of water, as high as 15 metres ( 49 ft ) in places, hit land just about 15 minutes later.

The official death toll was put at 1, 310– but with more than 5, 600 individuals missing and presumed dying, it’s believed that more than 7, 000 islands perished.

While on the ship, however, we were indifferent to the size of death around us. We just received fragments of data from the team because our mobile phones didn’t work on the water. We heard about destruction in Sri Lanka, Bali, Thailand and Maldives – and the southwestern Indian seaside town of Nagapattinam.

But there was no information about Andaman and Nicobar- a collection of thousands of islands scattered around in the Bay of Bengal, located about 1, 500km (915 yards ) east of India’s island.

Just 38 of them were inhabited. They were household to 400, 000 people, including six hunter-gatherer teams who had lived isolated from the outside world for thousands of years.

Boats were the only means of transportation to the islands, but according to information we afterwards learned, 94 % of the piers in the area had damage.

That was also the cause why, on 26 December 2004, we always made it to Havelock. The jetty that was damaged and under waters, we were told.

The ship then turned about and began its return journey. There was a that was a lot of rumors that we might not be given permission to port at Port Blair for health reasons and that we might have to spend the night at anchor.

This caused the travelers, the majority of them travelers who were looking forward to the sun and sand, to be stressed.

We returned to Port Blair after numerous hours of bobbing along in hard seas. Because Phoenix Bay had been closed following the week’s injury, we were taken to Chatham, another port in Port Blair. The wharf where we were dropped had numerous, protruding pits in some places.

As we headed home, we noticed signs of destruction all around us: roads were strewn all over, little raised ships sat in the middle of the streets, and bridges were rife with enormous scars. When the coastal flood flooded their houses in low-lying areas, thousands of people were now poor.

A nine-year-old woman who had been flooded with ocean told me she had almost drowned when I met her. A woman claimed to have lost her life’s riches in a matter of seconds.

I wrote a lot about the crisis and its results on the people over the course of three weeks.

The magnitude of the horror was astounding, and this was the first time a wave had caused such a disaster in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Salty water contaminated numerous new water sources and caused significant agricultural land losses. Piers were difficult to get into the islands, and getting essential supplies there was difficult.

The government launched a massive relief and rescue operation. The army, navy and air force were deployed, but it took weeks before they could find to all the islands.

Truckloads of people from various islands who had been left homeless by the storm were transported by military and coast guard ships daily to Port Blair, where temporary housing was provided for government buildings and schools.

They brought tales of destruction to their ancestral homelands. Some people claimed that they had escaped with nothing but the clothing on their backs.

One Car Andaman resident told me that the ground started spewing creamy water as waves from the ocean started to enter at the same time as the earthquake struck.

For 48 hours, she and thousands of others from her town waited patiently for firefighters without food or water. She said it was a “miracle” that she and her 20-day-old girl had survived.

Aftershocks, some of which were strong enough to sputter rumors of new floods, almost everyday jolt Port Blair, making frightened residents flee to higher ground.

A big Indian air force settlement and even rich area known for its beautiful beaches were flown in by the American army to Car Nicobar a few days later.

The bottom had entirely flattened by the predator tsunami. As the majority of the people slept, the earth was pulled apart from their feet as the waters rose by 12 meters. These, 100 individuals died. More than half of them were members of the air pressure and their families.

We visited Kaakan and Malacca villages on the island, which were also affected by nature’s indignation, making locals find shelter in tents along the way. Among them were homes torn apart by the coastal storm.

A grief-stricken youthful pair told me they had managed to keep their five-month-old girl, but their other kids, aged seven and 12, were washed away.

Every property had been turned into dust despite being surrounded by coconut hands on all sides. Among the specific things strewn around were clothes, books, a child’s foot and a music keyboard.

The only thing that stood- surprisingly intact- was a bust of the father of the Indian nation, Mahatma Gandhi, at a traffic roundabout.

A senior army officer informed us that his team had recovered seven bodies that day, and that we had watched their mass mass cremation from a distance.

At the air force base, we watched as rescuers pulled a woman’s body from the debris.

According to a representative, every body discovered in Car Nicobar left a trail, while several had been swept away by the waves without a trace.

I still occasionally reflect on the day I boarded the ferry to Havelock after all these years.

If the tremors had occurred a few minutes earlier, I wonder what might have happened.

What if the shore’s wall of water had sunk while I waited at the jetty for our ferry?

On Boxing Day, 2004, I had a close call. Not so fortunate were the countless people who perished.

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