From what I've read, the earthquake itself caused no damage - it was 250km out to sea. However, as said, it was felt around the world, even at a Canadian geological monitoring station in Nunavut. Apparently the first wave of a tsunami is rarely the largest, it's the ones that follow it that are the most damaging. Many of the deaths resulted from people moving toward the water to sight-see, and could have been avoided if people had actually moved inland a few kilometres.
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The devastation was felt as far away as Somalia, where dozens of fishermen may have died about 5,000 kilometres away from the epicentre.
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http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/nation...ngs041227.html
I don't think a lot of people realize how powerful water is. I had never been in the ocean until this summer and I was pretty amazed - I know if I had never been in swells before and saw a tsunami, I'd think I could somehow swim in it or hold onto a tree or something... but I guess that's a bit like thinking you can hold onto a tree in the middle of a tornado.
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-Quinn
Man, n. ...His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth, and Canada. - A. Bierce, Devil's Dictionary, 1906
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