It was a picture-perfect morning along the Bay of Bengal: azure skies, blistering sun and scarcely more than a ripple on the gorgeous green-blue waters.
Hundreds of thousands of people — tourists and locals alike — went about their business on what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary day: Dec. 26, 2004.
Some were in beach-side villages, others in tourist hot spots. Some were sleeping off the holidays in their undiscovered fishing towns, while others navigated sidewalks in dense and crowded cities.
It was the day after Christmas, a peaceful, quiet Sunday — until a 650-mile crust of earth at the bottom of the Indian Ocean abruptly heaved upward in a deadly spasm. The thrust was so violent, it released the energy equivalent of 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs.
An entire world way, in New York City — where it was still 7:58 p.m. on Christmas Day — Central Park’s seismic sensors went crazy. Something had caused shock waves big enough to rock the entire globe.
That something was a 9.0-magnitude earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra — the most powerful one in the world since a 9.2 quake hit Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1964.
The quake struck deep beneath the sea along the so-called “Ring of Fire” around the Pacific Ocean. It formed fearsome waves that zoomed to the edges of three continents.
One massive wall took a path toward the Andaman and Nicobar Islands off the Indian coast, close to the state of Tamil Nadu. Also threatened were Indonesia and its northern province of Aceh.
In Sri Lanka, where the Queen of the Sea holiday train was preparing its traditional ride up the coast, the south and east shorelines were fully exposed.
And in Thailand — full of Western tourists, especially in popular Phuket — six southern provinces facing the Andaman Sea lay wide open and unprotected as the huge tsunami raced their way.
Only some indigenous people on the tiny islands around the Bay of Bengal in India could read the warnings sent by Mother Nature. On the Andaman and Nicobar islands, many fled to safety when they heard changes in the seabird calls.
Others on the island of Simeulue off Aceh, Indonesia — 25 miles from the tsunami epicenter — fled inland when they saw their trees quivering. There was no way for them to warn any of their neighboring countries. The nations around the Indian Ocean — unlike those in the Pacific Ocean — didn’t have a tsunami warning system. Until that day, they never thought they needed one.
In Sri Lanka, parts of India, and Thailand, curious tourists and even locals stood on the beaches and watched as the water was eerily sucked out to sea. In Thailand’s Bang Tao Bay, witnesses said the peeled back to reveal hundreds of yards of sandy sea floor.
Then all hell broke loose as the massive tsunami — topping 50 feet — pounded back to shore.
Families sunbathing on pristine white beaches were swept away without a trace.
Roiling torrents of water raged through the lobbies of luxury hotels and surged up to the second and third floors.
Crushing, pounding currents smashed into houses, cars and boats. The water gobbled up whatever lay in its path, and in some places stampeded inland for up to four miles. People swept into the swirling mix fought to get away from deadly, choking debris.
Fighting for her life among them was jet-setting supermodel Petra Nemcova, who survived the terrifying tsunami by clinging to the top of a palm tree for eight hours — haunted by the sight of her boyfriend getting sucked out to sea.
“People were screaming and kids were screaming all over the place, screaming, ‘Help, help.’ And after a few minutes, you didn’t hear the kids anymore,” Nemcova, now 35, told the Daily News in 2004.
Her fashion photographer boyfriend Simon Atlee, then 33, was killed in the disaster. Nemcova, with a broken pelvis, watched bodies float past her out to sea for eight hours as the water slowly receded and rescuers came to her aid.
French tourist Philippe Gilbert grabbed a tree branch and held on for dear life when the wave swamped his cabin in Sri Lanka. He watched helplessly as his 4-year-old granddaughter disappeared.
“An absolutely monstrous wave towered over the bungalow,” he told a TV station.
Along the coast, the Sri Lankan train Queen of the Sea was partially swept into the sea.
Not far away, at Arugam Bay, Chicago interior designer and Oprah Winfrey favorite Nate Berkus screamed helplessly for his partner, photographer Fernando Bengoechea. The two had been waking up inside their beachside resort when the killer wave arrived, pulling Bengoechea away.
By the time the destruction was done, the giant wave had traveled across five time zones and affected 14 countries. Those hit hardest were Sri Lanka, Indonesia and southern India.
The last fatalities out of more than 230,000 were two people were swept out to sea in South Africa, more than 12 hours after the earthquake.
