ABSTRACT
A huge tsunami occurred in the Indian Ocean in December 2004 and impacted directly upon 12 countries, some as far away as the Eastern coast of Africa. As the enormity of its consequences began to dawn on people, it came to be considered the world's largest disaster of modern times. Millions of people in local communities around the Third World experience catastrophic events all the time. Tsunamis have taken place in the Philippines in 1976; Flores 1992; Japan 1993; and Papa-Guinea 1998 (Gjevik, Pedersen Harbitz, 2005). What was different on this occasion, has been its geographical spread (Store, 2005) and the number of people affected by it. The estimated numbers of people deemed to have died or remained missing about a month after the tsunami had risen to almost 300,000 people, including 11,000 tourists. 1
