Reply #6: Now they're finding out just how much change the quake made: [View All]

[Pallas180]

And here's quite an article on the damage under the sea...the sea bed rose 60 FEET...and the rift
(tear) where the two plates met is 6 MILES WIDE !!!

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Sonar Shows Ruptures at Tsunami Epicenter
Thursday, February 10, 2005 5:00 PM EST
The Associated Press
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN

The first images Thursday of the seabed battered by the earthquake that triggered Asia's catastrophic tsunami revealed huge ruptures spanning several miles.

A British naval ship collecting data off the coast of Indonesia's Sumatra Island produced the digital images using sonar, and they could be used to help develop a tsunami early-warning system for the Indian Ocean region.

The vibrantly colored seabed maps show the 9.0-magnitude quake caused the tectonic plates to clash "like the rumpling up of a carpet," according to Steve Malcolm, the commanding officer of the HMS Scott.

The images show "scars" more than six miles wide resulting from the Dec. 26 quake. They depict the line where the Indian tectonic plate suddenly collided with, and was pushed underneath, the Burma plate.

The maps, created with multi-beam sonar, show ridges as tall as 4,950 feet that were created over thousands of years by the slow collision of the deep, flat Indian plate and the ragged edge of the Burma plate.

That collision has resulted in the Indian plate being gradually shoved under the edge of the Burma plate in a process known as subduction, said Russell Wynn, a marine geologist at the Southampton Oceanography Centre, which took part in the survey.

The Dec. 26 quake was caused by a sudden movement of the two plates, which in turn caused the ridge of the Burma plate to spring up about 30 to 60 feet, Wynn said. That sent water surging up and out, creating the devastating waves that menaced the region. The main collision zone was some 12,000 feet below the ocean surface.