Getty ImagesBoxing Day, 2004.When the earthquake struck at 06:30 (01:00 GMT), I was on a ferry, headed towards Havelock – an island in the Indian archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar.Known for its silver sand and clear blue waters, the Radhanagar beach there had recently been crowned “Asia’s Best Beach” 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, where I had arrived on Christmas Eve.We had planned to spend three days in Havelock and in the morning we packed snacks and sandwiches, gathered excited children and headed out to catch the ferry from Phoenix Bay jetty in Port Blair.Not wanting to miss out on anything, I was standing on the front deck, looking around, when disaster struck.Just as we pulled out from the harbour, the boat lurched and suddenly the jetty next to where we had boarded crumpled and fell into the sea. It was followed by the watchtower and an electricity pole.It was an extraordinary sight. Dozens of people standing alongside me watched open-mouthed.Thankfully, the jetty was deserted at the time so there were no casualties. A boat was due to leave from there in half an hour but the travellers were yet to arrive.Getty ImagesA member of the boat’s crew told me it was an earthquake. At the time I didn’t know, but the 9.1 magnitude quake was the third most powerful ever recorded in the world – and remains the biggest and most destructive in Asia. Occurring off the coast of northwest Sumatra under the Indian Ocean, it unleashed a devastating tsunami that killed an estimated 228,000 people across more than a dozen countries and caused massive damage in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Maldives and Thailand.The Andaman and Nicobar islands, located just about 100km north of the epicentre, suffered extensive damage when a wall of water, as high as 15 metres (49 ft) in places, hit land just about 15 minutes later. The official death toll was put at 1,310 – but with more than 5,600 people missing and presumed dead, it’s believed that more than 7,000 islanders perished.While on the boat, however, we were oblivious to the scale of destruction around us. Our mobile phones didn’t work on the water and we only got snippets of information from the crew. We heard about damage in Sri Lanka, Bali, Thailand and Maldives – and the southern Indian coastal town of Nagapattinam.But there was no information about Andaman and Nicobar – a collection of hundreds of islands scattered around in the Bay of Bengal, located about 1,500km (915 miles) east of India’s mainland.Only 38 of them were inhabited. They were home to 400,000 people, including six hunter-gatherer gr …
