Quickbird Images of Tsunami Sites
-- CBC News Online
It started out as a morning like so many others in Southeast Asia - bright, beautiful and warm. But Dec. 26, 2004, would soon go down as the day one of the world's worst natural disasters struck.
At 7:59 a.m. local time, about 150 kilometres off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, two tectonic plates heaved under the sea along a 1,000 kilometre-long fault line. The result: a magnitude 9 earthquake - the most powerful the world had seen in 40 years.
Parts of the sea floor rose by about 10 metres, displacing hundreds of cubic kilometres of seawater. That generated a tsunami - a series of huge waves that quickly fanned out across the Indian Ocean.
The waves moved so quickly, there was no time to sound the alarm. Walls of water slammed into coastal areas of Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India and - thousands of kilometres away - Somalia in East Africa.
The waves destroyed whatever lay in their path: from the built-up tourist resorts of Thailand to isolated fishing villages in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Thousands of people were killed. The number of dead rose by the hour as the extent of the devastation became apparent.
On Dec. 29, 2004, military teams finally reached the west coast of the island's northern province - Aceh - about 150 kilometres from the quake's epicentre. They found thousands of bodies. Three-quarters of the coast had been obliterated.
Tens of thousands of people were missing.
The disaster is believed to have killed more than 150,000 people in Asia and Africa, more than half of them on Sumatra.
Ways to Help Tsunami Victims
Below is a set of QuickBird image files selected from the DigitalGlobe ImageLibrary. The imagery has been resampled from 11-bit to 8-bit, and compressed into JPEG format for on-screen viewing. These images should not be stretched beyond their current size. They have been rescaled in most cases to show an area of interest, and thus do not represent the full resolution of the original QuickBird image.
Indonesia |
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Banda Aceh ShoreImagery collected December 28, 2004 Description:Shore detail |
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Banda Aceh Shore (Before Tsunami)Imagery collected June 23, 2004 Description:Shore detail before tsunami |
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Banda Aceh Northern ShoreImagery collected December 28, 2004 Description:Shore detail |
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Banda Aceh Northern Shore (Before Tsunami)Imagery collected June 23, 2004 Description:Shore detail before tsunami |
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Banda Aceh FloodingImagery collected December 28, 2004 Description:Area detailing flooding from tsunami |
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Banda Aceh Before FloodingImagery collected June 23, 2004 Description:Area before flooding |
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Banda Aceh City OverviewImagery collected December 28, 2004 Description:Area overview |
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Banda Aceh City Overview (Before Tsunami)Imagery collected June 23, 2004 Description:Area overview before tsunami |
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Banda Aceh City DetailImagery collected December 28, 2004 Description:City detail after tsunami (image rotated) |
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Banda Aceh City Detail (Before Tsunami)Imagery collected June 23, 2004 Description:City detail before tsunami (image rotated) |
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Banda Aceh Grand MosqueImagery collected December 28, 2004 Description:Mosque area detail |
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Banda Aceh Grand Mosque (Before Tsunami)Imagery collected June 23, 2004 Description:Mosque area detail before tsunami |
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Banda Aceh Debris DetailImagery collected December 28, 2004 Description:Area debris detail |
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Banda Aceh Detail Before DebrisImagery collected June 23, 2004 Description:Area detail before debris |
Sri Lanka |
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Kalutara Water DetailImagery collected December 26, 2004 Description:Receding waters from tsunami |
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Kalutara Water Detail (Before Tsunami)Imagery collected January 1, 2004 Description:Area detail before tsunami |
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Kalutara Flooding DetailImagery collected December 26, 2004 Description:Close up detailing flooding from tsunami |
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Kalutara Beach DetailImagery collected December 26, 2004 Description:Receding waters and beach damage from tsunami |
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Kalutara Beach Detail (Before Tsunami)Imagery collected January 1, 2004 Description:Area showing beach before tsunami |
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Kalutara Beach Detail 2Imagery collected December 26, 2004 Description:Receding waters and beach damage from tsunami |
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Kalutara Beach Detail 2 (Before Tsunami)Imagery collected January 1, 2004 Description:Area showing beach before tsunami |
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Kalutara OverviewImagery collected December 26, 2004 Description:Area overview after tsunami |
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Kalutara Overview (Before Tsunami)Imagery collected January 1, 2004 Description:Area overview before tsunami |