Earthquake!

[MrPaul]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...55E401,00.html

I'll quote the first bit of the story, but there's much more in the article:

uge earthquake wreaks havoc
By Arjuna Wickramasinghe in Colombo
December 26, 2004

AT LEAST 1000 people were killed and many more were missing in Sri Lanka as tsunami waves smashed into the island, Prime Minister's top aide, Lalith Weeratunga, said.

The earthquake hit southern Asia today, setting off a tsunami that drowned hundreds in Sri Lanka and India, sent Indonesians rushing to high ground and washed away bathers on the Thai tourist island of Phuket.

The earthquake of magnitude 8.5 as measured by the US Geological Survey first struck at 7.59am (11.59am AEDT) off the coast of the northern Indonesian island of Sumatra and swung north with multiple tremors into the Andaman islands in the Indian Ocean.

A wall of water up to 10 metres high set off by the tremor swept into Indonesia, over the coast of Sri Lanka and India and along the southern Thai tourist island of Phuket, leaving at least 650 people feared dead, officials said.

"Nothing like this has ever happened in our country before," said Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

The earthquake was the world's biggest since 1965, said Julie Martinez, geophysicist for the US Geological Survey. "It is multiple earthquakes along the same faultline," she said.

More than 100 tourists on diving holidays were missing on islands off southern Thailand following today's tsunamis, about 70 of them in the famed Emeral Cave, a tourist official said.

"We don't know whether they are dead or alive," the official told Reuters from the southern city of Trang.

The Emeral Cave, which contains a tiny white sand beach and water turned emerald by sunshine through a hole in the top, is a major attraction for divers who have to swim underwater to get into it.