My boat was a few meters from shore when the waves came

Boxing Day, 2004.

When the earthquake struck at 06:30 (01:00 GMT), I was on a ferry heading towards Havelock, an island in India’s Andaman and Nicobar archipelago.

Known for its silver sand and clear blue water, Radhanagar Beach was recently named the “Best Beach in Asia” by Time magazine.

My best friend from college and her family had lived in Port Blair, the capital of the archipelago, for a decade and a half, but this was my first visit to the islands, arriving on Christmas Eve.

We planned to spend three days in Havelock, and in the morning we packed snacks and sandwiches, gathered up the excited children and headed off to catch the ferry from Phoenix Bay Marina to Port Blair.

Not wanting to miss anything, I was standing on the foredeck looking around when trouble struck.

As we sailed out of the harbor the boat tipped and the wharf next to where we sat crumpled and fell into the sea. It was followed by a watchtower and an electricity pole.

It was an unusual sight. Dozens of people standing next to me stared open-mouthed.

Fortunately, the pier was empty at the time, so there were no casualties. The boat was supposed to leave there in half an hour, but the travelers had not yet arrived.

A member of the boat crew told me it was an earthquake. I didn’t know at the time, but it was a 9.1 magnitude earthquake third in power ever recorded in the world – and remains the largest and most destructive in Asia.

Occurring off the coast of northwestern Sumatra in the Indian Ocean, it triggered a devastating tsunami that killed an estimated 228,000 people in more than a dozen countries and caused massive damage in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, the Maldives, and Thailand.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, located about 100 km north of the epicenter, suffered severe damage when a wall of water up to 15 meters (49 ft) high crashed onto land about 15 minutes later.

The official death toll was put at 1,310, but more than 5,600 people are missing and presumed dead, more than 7,000 islanders are believed to have died.

However, being on the boat, we were oblivious to the extent of the destruction around us. Our cell phones didn’t work on the water and we only got snippets of information from the crew. We have heard of damage in Sri Lanka, Bali, Thailand and the Maldives, as well as Nagapattinam in southern India.

But there was no information about Andaman and Nicobar – a collection of hundreds of islands scattered in the Bay of Bengal, located about 1,500 km (915 miles) east of mainland India.

Only 38 of them were inhabited. They were home to 400,000 people, including six groups of hunters and gatherers who lived isolated from the outside world for thousands of years.

The only way to reach the islands was by ferry, but as we later learned, approximately 94% of the jetties in the region were damaged.

This was also the reason why we never made it to Havelock on 26th December 2004. We were told that the pier there was damaged and under water.

So the boat turned around and headed back. There had been speculation for some time that we might not be allowed to dock at Port Blair for security reasons and might have to spend the night at anchor.

This alarmed the passengers – most of them tourists looking forward to the sun and sand.

After a few hours of riding in rough seas, we returned to Port Blair. As Phoenix Bay was closed after the morning’s damage, we were put into Chatham, another harbor in Port Blair. There were huge holes in places on the pier where we were disembarked.

Signs of devastation were all around us as we headed home – buildings reduced to rubble, small overturned boats sitting in the middle of the streets, and large gashes on the roads. Thousands of people were left homeless when the tidal wave flooded their homes in low-lying areas.

I met a traumatized nine-year-old girl whose house was filled with water, and she told me she almost drowned. One woman told me that she lost her whole life in the blink of an eye.

Over the next three weeks, I reported extensively on the disaster and its effects on the public.

It was the first time that a tsunami had caused such havoc in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the scale of the tragedy was extraordinary.

Salt water has polluted many fresh water sources and destroyed large areas of arable land. Getting vital supplies to the islands was difficult as the wharves were not maintained.

Authorities launched a massive relief and rescue effort. The army, navy and air force were deployed, but it took days before they could reach all the islands.

Every day, Navy and Coast Guard ships brought boats of people displaced by the tsunami from other islands to Port Blair, where schools and government buildings were turned into temporary shelters.

They brought back stories of devastation back home. Many told me they escaped with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

A woman from Car Nicobar told me that when the earthquake happened, the ground started spewing foamy water at the same time as the waves came in from the sea.

She and hundreds of other residents of her village waited for rescuers without food or water for 48 hours. She said it was a “miracle” that she and her 20-day-old baby survived.

Port Blair was rocked almost daily by aftershocks, some strong enough to spark rumors of another tsunami, sending terrified people fleeing to higher ground.

A few days later, the Indian military took journalists to Car Nicobar, a flat, fertile island known for its enchanting beaches and home to a large Indian Air Force base.

The killer tsunami completely leveled the base. The water rose here by 12 meters, and when most of the people were sleeping, the ground disappeared from under their feet. A hundred people died here. More than half were Air Force officers and their families.

We visited the villages of Malacca and Kaakan on the island, which were also affected by the fury of nature, forcing the inhabitants to hide in tents along the road. Among them were families broken by the tidal wave.

Out of grief, the young couple told me that they managed to save their five-month-old baby, but their other children, aged seven and twelve, were washed away.

Surrounded by coconut trees on all sides, every house was reduced to rubble. Among the scattered personal belongings were clothes, textbooks, children’s shoes and a musical keyboard.

The only thing standing – surprisingly intact – was a bust of the father of the Indian nation, Mahatma Gandhi, at the roundabout.

A senior army officer told us that his team recovered seven bodies that day and we watched their mass cremation from a distance.

At the air force base, we watched rescuers pull a woman’s body from the wreckage.

The official said that of every body found in Car Nicobar, several were washed away by the waves without leaving any trace.

After all these years, I still sometimes think about the day I boarded the ferry to go to Havelock.

I wonder what would have happened if the tremors had occurred a few minutes earlier.

And what if a wall of water crashed ashore while I was waiting at the pier to board our ferry?

I had a close call on Boxing Day 2004. Thousands of those who died were not so lucky.

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