At his website, “A Writer’s Almanac,” Garrison Keillor writes:
On this date in 2004, a tsunami devastated coastlines along the Indian Ocean. It was triggered by an earthquake in the middle of the ocean, 160 miles west of Sumatra. With a magnitude of between 9.1 and 9.3, the quake was the third strongest ever recorded on a seismograph, and it lasted for up to 10 minutes. It occurred when pressure built up along a 600-mile fault line between two tectonic plates to such a degree that one plate slipped underneath the other. The quake occurred in relatively shallow water, which meant that the energy was not dispersed as much as it would have been in deeper seas. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the quake released energy equivalent to 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs. The quake was so powerful that it vibrated the whole planet and actually changed the Earth’s rotation very slightly.
The shifting of the plates raised the sea floor by about 10 yards, and this displaced massive amounts of water. The tsunami chain that this generated reached the Sumatra coast within 15 minutes. The waves — which started small but grew as high as 50 feet — wiped out whole villages in seconds. The tsunami even claimed lives in South Africa, up to 3,000 miles away from the epicenter of the quake. An estimated 230,000 people from 14 different countries died; half a million more were injured. Five million people required humanitarian aid. A ship weighing almost 3,000 tons was thrown almost a mile inland, where it remains a tourist attraction in Indonesia. But there were very few animal casualties; many people reported seeing animals fleeing for higher ground just minutes before the tsunami struck.
Two years after the quake and tsunami, the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System went into operation, and it was successfully put to the test in 2012, when more quakes hit the Indian Ocean.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Never Forget. If you don’t know about “it” (whatever the “never forget” refers to), everyone who does not know does not even have the opportunity to remember or forget.
That is why education and learning are so very important.
Think about all the events that even WE here do not know about. We can’t forget or remember what we don’t know about.
Thank you Diane, for reminding us to stay as awake as we are able.
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The tsunami chain that this generated reached the Sumatra coast within 15 minutes.
This happened over the Christmas holiday and I was then teaching at the International School of Kuala Lumpur in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. My aide was home with her aunt and uncle who lived on the northwestern coast of the mainland of Malaysia. That part of Malaysia was not shielded from the tsunami by the island of Sumatra.
She saw the tsunami coming and ran inward. She and her aunt and uncle were spared but the ocean destroyed all of the fishing boats for this small village.
I managed to set up a fund that brought money and used clothing for the people in this village. The school donated their bus and my aide, her children, her husband [the driver] and sister and I went to the village. My aide’s uncle had decided who in the village needed money and checks had been made out in their names.
We delivered the checks and the clothing. Her aunt cooked a delicious meal in her round
on-the-ground cooking area outside their home.
I feel that this was one of the best things that I could have done while I worked overseas. Their local school building had also been destroyed.
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carolmalaysia
Thank you for this first person account and your good thinking on how to be of help. There are thousands of these stories, and more “natural” disasters of this kind than we are likely to remember, as stiegem notes, unless they are brought into the foreground of out attention.
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Dearest Dr. Ravitch:
Thank you for this article. This is giving me a vivid memory where tsunami had taken placed. I could not ever imagine if I could survive.
Yes, I am very sure and agree one thousand percentage with “stiegem” that “We can’t forget or remember what we don’t know about.”
And yes to “stiegem” “That is why education and learning are so very important”.
Please note that all truthfully conscious historians are very important sources to education and learning for all aspects in any societies.
I can understand carolmalaysia’s action from her heart and her natural kindness. Unlike her, I needed lots of training from my parents, from my own hardship and most of all from my own experiences accumulated in many reincarnated lives.
Honestly, I cannot offer a pure compassion. IMHO, a blind faith and gullibility are the real source for all con artists to abuse a pure compassion. I just wish a very simple wish to God that if KARMA is truly a punishment or an enlightenment, then God will bless all sentient human beings a very basic conscience of appreciation of mutual joy NOT individual greed, anger and lust.
I miss you and all of conscientious veteran gurus in education very much.
Respectfully yours,
May, your faithful reader
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“I can understand carolmalaysia’s action from her heart and her natural kindness. Unlike her, I needed lots of training from my parents, from my own hardship and most of all from my own experiences accumulated in many reincarnated lives.”
………………..
Dear May, you are too kind in your words. It has taken me a whole lifetime to become who I am today. As you say, I also learned from years of hardship from my experiences and know that I have lived many lifetimes. I believe I learn very slowly. I probably learned something from my many past lives but I started all over again in this one.
May, you are a very sweet lady and have a beautiful perspective. I enjoy reading everything that you write on this blog.
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