: Thursday, December 25, 2025 9:21 PM
New Delhi. 26th December reminds us of that horrific incident of nature’s wrath, which caused massive devastation. 26 December is a day when earthquakes in different years showed such a scene of devastation, which the world can never forget. On December 26, 2003, a devastating earthquake struck the city of Bam in Iran. After this, again on 26 December 2004, earthquake and tsunami waves destroyed everything in about 14 countries and lakhs of people lost their lives. On December 26, 2003, an earthquake struck Bam in south-eastern Iran at 5.26 am local time. The epicenter of the earthquake was Bam city in south-eastern Kerman province, where the earth shook with a magnitude of 6.3. According to information shared by Iranian officials, more than 20 thousand people were killed in this earthquake. In addition, about 50 thousand people were injured.
The city of Bam was completely devastated and many buildings were completely demolished. According to media reports, the entire city of Bam was destroyed. 70 percent of the houses in Bam city were destroyed. This earthquake was considered the largest earthquake in 2,000 years.
On this day in the year 2004, a horrific natural incident occurred. On December 26, 2004, the deadliest tsunami in history occurred in the Indian Ocean. An undersea earthquake of 9.1 magnitude occurred off the Sumatra coast of Indonesia, followed by a catastrophic tsunami. Tsunami hit 14 countries in a series of high waves.
This earthquake affected an area of 1,300 km from Sumatra in the south to the Coco Islands in the north. Earthquake tremors were felt in Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand. The Indian Air Force base in Car Nicobar was destroyed in this incident. More than 2,27,000 people lost their lives in this disaster.
Apart from this, more than 17 lakh people were displaced. The height of these waves of destruction that rose from the sea was 30 meters, i.e. 100 feet. In Indonesia alone, 1.28 lakh people were killed. Within a few hours of this tsunami, information about the death of hundreds of people came from India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Hundreds of fishermen went missing off the southern coast of India, whose bodies were later found washed up in the sea.
According to information shared by World Vision, the first major waves of the tsunami reached Banda Aceh, a city of about 300,000 people in Indonesia, within 15 or 20 minutes of the earthquake.
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Web Title-December 26: When Nature Unleashed Its Fury in 2003 and 2004, Millions Lost Their Lives in Earthquakes and Tsunamis
