With all due respect to Hurricane Sandy, the Asian tsunami of 2004 remains the closest thing most of us will ever see to a real-life disaster movie.
At the 10th anniversary, this documentary looks back through two lenses. Each is sobering.
First, it gathers home video and cellphone footage from people who were about to be slammed by the massive waves.
The ocean crushes buildings like we’d swat a fly, and it takes little imagination to realize what was simultaneously happening to the people in and around them.
A lot of us, let’s admit it, think extreme weather and things like giant wave surges are kind of cool. This footage reminds us that’s a luxury reserved for people who aren’t in their path.
This being Smithsonian and all, “Asian Tsunami” then takes us off the beach and into the laboratory, where we learn how tsunamis form and why the impact of this one was so extraordinarily lethal.
It was triggered by the third most powerful earthquake ever measured, a massive tremor that unleashed power equivalent to thousands of nuclear bombs.
It fired off waves traveling 300 miles an hour, which helped account for the fact most victims had almost no warning of what was headed their way.
The producers also look at other tsunamis, including the one off the coast of Japan, to explain how something as simple as ocean water movement can turn deadly.
The good news is that we learn from disasters. Our warning systems now are faster and more accurate.
But the Asian tsunami lessons came at a cost of at least 230,000 lives, which in the end reminds us that we need to live with nature, not the other way around.
