Tsunami: NGO Response: Now and the Future

Article by Milton Cerny and Michael W. Durham

This article originally appeared in the Exempt Organization Tax Review, a publication of Tax Analysts.

December 26, 2004, 8:00 a.m.: Deep below the Indian Ocean, the Burmese and Indian tectonic plates shifted off the northwest coast of Sumatra, causing an earthquake of 9.0 on the Richter scale and generating huge surges of water speeding at 400 miles an hour across the Indian Ocean to India. In its wake of 50-foot-high waves, the tsunami devastated property in 11 countries, caused destruction costing billions of dollars, and killed at least 160,000 helpless people in such distant places as Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka; Thailand; and Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Its effect seven hours later was felt 4,000 miles away in Africa. The World Health Organization estimates that 500,000 people were injured in the Indian Ocean tidal waves, many of whom were poor and lived in ramshackle villages along the coasts of the affected nations.