Tsunami. pexels.com
Happy New Year! I hope you celebrated in a way that felt good for you, and that 2026 has plenty of joy ahead, whatever your circumstances.
Janine Krippner
We just passed the anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, or the Boxing Day tsunami. I will never forget being glued to the tv in horror as the footage rolled in, which, come to think of it, probably added to my desire to help people with hazards.
I frequent tsunami topics here, not because they are my specialty, but because this is a clear example of where having the right information and acting on it quickly can save lives. As many tourists across countries impacted by the 2004 tsunami experienced, we do not have to live by the ocean to be changed by it.
I repeat the messages here because I deeply care. I hope that none of you will ever need to remember what to do or when to evacuate, but if you do, I truly hope this helps you and the people around you.
When I give science communication talks, I always retell the story of Tilly Smith as an example of how powerful we all are and how much of a difference each one of us can make. She was a 10-year-old from the United Kingdom in 2004 on holiday with her family in Thailand, and her story always gives me chills.
Tsunami. Photo: George Desipris pexels.com
Just a couple of weeks before Boxing Day, she had learned about tsunamis in geography class. She noticed the water behaving in the ways she had just learned about.
“The water was really, really frothy. It wasn’t calm and it wasn’t going in and then out,” she told media. “It was just coming in and in and in.” She linked these signs to the impending disaster and she did not stay quiet about it. She got louder.
Because of her insistence, her father passed her message on, and an evacuation commenced. Because of the lesson from her geography teacher on the other side of the world, her noticing the signs and not keeping them to herself, and the adults listening and taking action, around 100 lives were saved from the catastrophic disaster.
A 10-year-old-level geography lesson. That’s what it took. This simple lesson rippled out to save lives and prevent untold grief for their family members and friends. Every single one of us has that power. You have that power.
The death toll from that day varies from around 220,000 to 300,000. It is hard to comprehend that loss. If even one of those precious lives was a loved one, we can understand how it would mean the whole world to us if their loss was prevented.
I hope we all enjoy our beautiful beaches not with fear, but with mindfulness of our surroundings. Not with stress, but with knowledge and a plan just in case. Take a moment to check out tsunami warning signs and actions online, find the tsunami zone maps at the beach, and please never doubt your ability to make an important, enormous difference.
Tsunami. Photo: Mikhail Nilov pexels.com
