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

After twenty years: “When the tsunami struck, my boat was just meters from the coast.”.

seven hours prior.

Geeta Pandey.

Delhi’s BBC News •@geetapandeybbc.

Boxing Day in 2004.

I was traveling by ferry to Havelock, an island in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago of India, when the earthquake occurred at 06:30 (01:00 GMT).

Time magazine had just named the Radhanagar beach there “Asia’s Best Beach,” and it was well-known for its silver sand and crystal-clear blue waters.

It was my first time visiting the islands, and I had arrived on Christmas Eve. My college best friend and her family had been residents of Port Blair, the archipelago’s capital, for ten and a half years.

After packing sandwiches and snacks, gathering the eager kids, and leaving early to catch the ferry from Phoenix Bay jetty in Port Blair, we made plans to spend three days in Havelock.

When the catastrophe occurred, I was standing on the front deck, taking in the surroundings, not wanting to miss anything.

The boat lurched as we were leaving the harbor, and the jetty next to where we had come on board abruptly collapsed and plunged into the ocean. An electrical pole and the watchtower came next.

What a remarkable sight. The dozens of people standing next to me gaped in disbelief.

Fortunately, no one was killed because the jetty was empty at the time. In thirty minutes, a boat was scheduled to depart from that location, but the passengers had not yet arrived.

The crew of the boat informed me that it was an earthquake. Even though I was unaware of it at the time, the 9point 1 magnitude earthquake was the third most powerful in history and is still the largest and most destructive in Asia.

A catastrophic tsunami that struck off the coast of northwest Sumatra under the Indian Ocean killed an estimated 228,000 people in over a dozen countries and severely damaged Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, the Maldives, and Thailand.

About 15 minutes later, a wall of water up to 15 meters (49 feet) high struck land, causing significant damage to the Andaman and Nicobar islands, which are only 100 kilometers north of the epicentre.

The official death toll was 1,310, but it’s thought that over 7,000 islanders died, with over 5,600 people reported missing and presumed dead.

But we didn’t realize how much damage was all around us while we were on the boat. On the water, our cell phones didn’t function, so we only received fragments of information from the crew. We learned of damage in Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Maldives, and the coastal town of Nagapattinam in southern India.

Regarding the Andaman and Nicobar, a group of hundreds of islands strewn throughout the Bay of Bengal, roughly 1,500 kilometers (915 miles) east of the Indian mainland, there was no information available.

There were only 38 inhabited. Among the 400,000 people who called them home were six hunter-gatherer communities that had spent thousands of years living apart from the outside.

Ferries were the sole means of transportation to the islands, but as we subsequently discovered, an estimated 94% of the jetties in the area were damaged.

Additionally, it was the reason we failed to reach Havelock on December 26, 2004. We were told that the jetty there was underwater and damaged.

As a result, the boat reversed course and began its journey back. For a while, there was conjecture that we might have to spend the night at anchor if we were not granted permission to dock at Port Blair for safety reasons.

The passengers, who were mostly tourists anticipating sun and sand, became nervous as a result.

We returned to Port Blair after several hours of bobbling in choppy waters. Phoenix Bay was closed after the damage in the morning, so we were driven to Chatham, another Port Blair harbor. We were dropped off at a jetty that had enormous, gaping holes in some places.

As we made our way home, the signs of destruction were everywhere we looked: roads had large gashes in them, buildings had been reduced to rubble, and tiny overturned boats were sitting in the middle of the streets. As a result of the tidal wave flooding their homes in low-lying areas, thousands of people were left homeless.

I met a nine-year-old girl who told me she had almost drowned and that her house was full of water. One woman told me that everything she had ever owned had vanished in an instant.

I spent the next three weeks covering the disaster and its impact on the populace in great detail.

The magnitude of the tragedy was overwhelming, and it was the first time a tsunami had caused such devastation in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Numerous freshwater sources were tainted by salt water, and vast areas of fertile land were destroyed. Jetties were unusable, making it difficult to get essential supplies into the islands.

A massive relief and rescue operation was launched by the authorities. It took days for the army, navy, and air force to reach every island despite their deployment.

Boatloads of tsunami-displaced people were transported daily from other islands to Port Blair by coast guard and navy vessels, where government buildings and schools were converted into makeshift shelters.

They carried tales of destruction in their native countries. Many told me that they had only the clothes on their backs when they fled.

I was informed by a woman from Car Nicobar that when the earthquake occurred, the ground began to spew foamy water simultaneously with the sea waves.

For 48 hours, she and hundreds of other villagers had been waiting for rescuers without food or water. Her survival along with that of her 20-day-old child was described as a “miracle” by her.

Nearly every day, aftershocks rocked Port Blair, with some being so powerful that they sparked rumors of new tsunamis, sending terrified residents fleeing for higher ground.

Journalists were transported by the Indian military to Car Nicobar, a fertile, flat island with beautiful beaches and a sizable Indian air force colony, a few days later.

The base had been totally leveled by the deadly tsunami. The ground was pulled away from beneath most people’s feet while they slept, and the water level rose by 12 meters. Here, one hundred people perished. Officers in the air force and their families made up over half.

On the island, we went to the villages of Malacca and Kaakan, which also took the brunt of nature’s wrath and had to shelter in tents along the road. Among them were families that the tidal wave had split apart.

A distraught young couple informed me that while they had successfully saved their five-month-old child, their seven and twelve-year-old children had been washed away.

With coconut palms encircling each house, all of them had collapsed. Clothes, textbooks, a child’s shoe, and a music keyboard were among the personal items scattered throughout.

At a traffic roundabout, the only object that remained, surprisingly undamaged, was a bust of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the Indian nation.

We witnessed their mass cremation from a distance after a senior army officer informed us that his team had recovered seven bodies that day.

We observed rescuers removing a woman’s body from the wreckage at the air force base.

Several of the bodies discovered in Car Nicobar, according to an official, had been carried away by the waves and left no trace.

Even after all these years, I still occasionally remember the day I boarded the ferry to Havelock.

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

What would have happened if I had been waiting on the jetty to board our ferry when the wall of water struck the shore?

On Boxing Day in 2004, I nearly died. The thousands who died were not as fortunate.

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