2004 Indonesia Earthquake and Tsunami Remembered on 9th Anniversary

Thursday, people in Indonesia and around the world paused for remembrance of the Dec. 26, 2004 earthquake and tsunami that struck Aceh Province. Like all of the largest earthquakes, the magnitude 9.2 trembler occurred along a subduction zone between two tectonic plates which slipped beneath the ocean off the coast just west of the northern tip of Sumatra island. The energy released was monumental - the ground shook for as long as 10 minutes in some places, and the earthquake was one of the largest ever recorded.

The tsunami generated by the earthquake spread across the Indian Ocean, causing damage in more than a dozen countries and the death of about 250,000 people, about three-quarters of whom were in Indonesia.

Flags were flown at half-mast Thursday at provincial government offices, and thousands of government officials, locals and students gathered at a commemoration event in Banda Aceh's Ratu Safiatuddin park, the Jakarta Globe reported.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono recognized the disaster anniversary on his official Twitter account, reminding people that they should always be ready for a disaster.

"We have to be always prepared for natural disasters," he wrote, adding in a separate post, "Thank God, we have rebuilt Aceh and Nias. With our togetherness, we will overcome any disasters."

Nias, an island off the coast of Sumatra, was another hard-hit region by the 2004 event, as well as by the March 2005 Sumatra earthquake. The events moved the coastline in parts of Nias inland by as much as 50 feet.

"The tsunami is something that I can never forget because it was so extraordinary," Nanda Suhada, 29, a contract worker who lost several family members in the disaster, told the Jakarta Globe. "I always recall the disaster. If there are big quakes, every villager runs to the mountains to save themselves because they are worried about another tsunami occurring."

A recently discovered cave near the source of the 2004 earthquake reportedly contains a geological record of the region's major tsunamis of the past. The limestone cave is located within a couple hundred meters of the coastline, and about a meter and a half off the ground, which prevents all but huge tsunami-generated waves from getting inside, according to a report by The Associated Press. The cave contains the footprints of tsunamis that hit the region as many as 7,500 years ago.

"The findings are very significant," Katrin Monecke, a geosciences professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, told the AP. "The sand sheets in the cave cover a very long time span and give an excellent idea about earthquake frequency."