Dec. 26th, 2004 begins like any Sunday in Southeast Asia.
Fishermen work on their boats, tourists awaken in Thailand beach hotels, Indonesian families sleep in.
Six miles beneath the ocean’s floor, tension that has built for centuries between two tectonic plates finally snaps at 7:58 a.m. The earthquake is 9.0 on the Richter scale, the largest in 41 years , the fifth largest in a century. More than 620 miles of Earth’s underwater crust jolts upward 33 feet, creating a massive push of water that races at 500 miles an hour toward land. It will smash coastlines of 11 countries, kill tens of thousands of people and leave more than a million homeless.
The following are eight stories uncovered by Denver Post Reporter Jeremy Meyer and Post Photographer Helen Richardson as they traveled throughout the tsunami-damaged areas in January, 2005. These stories are exclusive to DenverPost.com.
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| Post / Helen H. Richardson |
| Amid rows of lanterns, Buddhist monks offer prayers for the thousands of people who died in the tsunami at a memorial service in Phuket, Thailand.
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