news Tsunami: Lessons for the future Daily News (via HT Media Ltd.) Sixteen years ago on this day, massive tidal waves battered the coast of Sri Lanka and 13 other countries in the Indian Ocean and Africa, killing over 240,000 people and rendering 1.7 million homeless. For a population that did not even know the word ‘tsunami’ before 2004, we are now very much aware of the dangers posed by these massive waves. The tsunami arose from a displacement between the India and Burma plates, 70 Km off the west coast of northern Sumatra. The earthquake’s initial magnitude was estimated at 8.0 on the Richter scale. Almost 40 hours after the quake, they learned that its true force stayed hidden as it travelled along 1000 Km of a fault line. The final reading, published in May 2005, indicated that the Indian Ocean quake had one of the highest magnitudes ever recorded at 9.1. It even managed to shake the Earth a bit off its regular orbit.