Neil Butler's photo of a fisherman surveying the wreck of his village in the aftermath of the tsunami. IT WAS Boxing Day morning, 2004, and on the beaches of Sri Lanka and Thailand, tourists and locals were making the most of the sunny holiday season. Deep beneath the Indian Ocean, a massive 9.1 earthquake triggered a tsunami, with waves as high as 17.4 metres (57 feet). It devastated some communities in seconds and killed more than 230,000 people, destroying villages, towns and livelihoods of more than half a million more. The areas worst hit included Indonesia’s Northern Aceh province, where around 128,000 people died and Sri Lanka, where the death toll hit 40,000.