2004 — The 2004 Tsunami Strikes East Africa

On Boxing Day 2004, a magnitude 9.2 earthquake off Sumatra sent a tsunami racing across the Indian Ocean. Hours later it slammed into East Africa, devastating Somalia's Hafun peninsula — nearly 300 people killed, and more than 50,000 left homeless by water that had traveled an ocean to arrive on African shores without warning.

Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa suffered losses too. The disaster led to the creation of the Indian Ocean tsunami warning system — an acknowledgment, built from grief, that coasts so far from a quake's center could still stand in its path. The lesson bought at Hafun was distance is no protection; the warning system is the answer the world built afterward.