My boat was meters from shore when the waves hit it

Boxing Day 2004

When the earthquake struck at 06:30 (01:00 GMT), I was on a ferry bound for Havelock, an island in India's Andaman and Nicobar archipelago.

Famous for its silvery sand and clear blue waters, the Radhanagar beach there was recently 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 to catch the ferry from Phoenix Bay Jetty in Port Blair.

Not wanting to miss anything, I was standing on the foredeck looking around when disaster struck.

Just as we left the harbor, the boat rocked and suddenly the pier next to where we had boarded collapsed and fell into the sea. It was followed by the observation tower and an electric pole.

It was an extraordinary sight. Dozens of people standing next to me stared open-mouthed.

Fortunately the wharf was deserted at the time so there were no casualties. A boat was supposed to leave there in half an hour, but the passengers had not yet arrived.

A crew member on the boat told me it was an earthquake. I didn't know it at the time, but the 9.1 magnitude earthquake was third in power ever recorded in the world – and remains the largest and most destructive in Asia.

Originating off the coast of northwestern Sumatra under the Indian Ocean, it unleashed a devastating tsunami that killed an estimated 228,000 people in more than a dozen countries and caused massive damage in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, the Maldives and Thailand.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, located only about 100 km north of the epicenter, suffered major damage when a wall of water, up to 15 meters (49 ft) high in places, hit land just about 15 minutes later.

The official death toll was 1,310 – but with over 5,600 missing and presumed dead, more than 7,000 islanders are believed to have died.

While we were on the boat, however, we didn't notice the extent of the destruction around us. Our cell phones didn't work on the water and we only got snippets of information from the crew. We heard of damage in Sri Lanka, Bali, Thailand and the Maldives – and the coastal city of Nagapattinam in southern India.

But there was no information about Andaman and Nicobar, a collection of hundreds of islands scattered around the Bay of Bengal, located about 1,500 km (915 miles) east of mainland India.

Only 38 of them are inhabited. They were home to 400,000 people, including six groups of hunters and gatherers who lived isolated from the outside world for thousands of years.

The only way to get to the islands was by ferry, but as we later learned, about 94% of the piers in the region were damaged.

This was also the reason why on December 26, 2004 we never got to Havelock. We were told the pier there was damaged and under water.

So the boat turned around and headed back. For some time there was speculation that we might not get permission to dock at Port Blair for safety reasons and might have to spend the night at anchor.

This alarmed the passengers – mostly tourists expecting sun and sand.

After a few hours of tossing around in the rough sea, we returned to Port Blair. As Phoenix Bay was closed after the morning's damage, we were taken to Chatham, another port in Port Blair. The wharf where we were dropped off had huge, gaping holes in places.

The signs of devastation were all around us as we drove home – buildings were reduced to rubble, small overturned boats sat in the middle of the streets, and the roads were heavily rutted. Thousands of people were made homeless when the tidal wave flooded their homes in low-lying areas.

I met a traumatized nine-year-old girl whose house was full of water and she told me she almost drowned. One woman told me she lost all her possessions in the blink of an eye.

Over the next three weeks I reported extensively on the disaster and its effects on the population.

It was the first time that a tsunami had caused such havoc in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the scale of the tragedy was immense.

Salt water has polluted many sources of fresh water and destroyed large areas of arable land. Getting vital supplies to the islands was difficult as the wharves were out of service.

Authorities launched a massive relief and rescue effort. The army, navy and air force were deployed, but it took days before they could reach all the islands.

Every day, navy and coast guard ships brought boatloads of people displaced by the tsunami from other islands to Port Blair, where schools and government buildings were turned into temporary shelters.

They brought stories of devastation to their homelands. Many told me they escaped with only the clothes on their backs.

A woman from Car Nicobar told me that when the earthquake hit, the ground started spewing foamy water at the same time as the waves came in from the sea.

She and hundreds of others from her village waited for rescuers without food or water for 48 hours. She said it was a “miracle” that she and her 20-day-old baby survived.

Port Blair was rocked almost daily by aftershocks, some of them strong enough to set off rumors of another tsunami, sending frightened people running for higher ground.

A few days later, the Indian military flew journalists to Car Nicobar, a flat, fertile island known for its enchanting beaches and home to a large Indian Air Force colony.

The killer tsunami had completely flattened the foundation. Here the water rose 12 meters and while most people were sleeping, the ground retreated from under their feet. A hundred people died here. More than half were Air Force officers and their families.

We visited the island's Malacca and Kaakan villages, which also bore the brunt of nature's fury, forcing residents to take shelter in roadside tents. Among them were families torn apart by the tidal wave.

A heartbroken young couple told me they had managed to save their five-month-old baby, but their other children, aged seven and 12, had been swept away.

Surrounded by coconut palms on all sides, every house was reduced to rubble. Among the scattered personal belongings were clothes, textbooks, a child's shoe and a musical keyboard.

The only thing standing – surprisingly intact – was a bust of the father of the Indian nation, Mahatma Gandhi, at a roundabout.

A senior army officer told us that his team retrieved seven bodies that day and we watched their mass cremation from a distance.

At the air force base, we watched rescuers pull a woman's body from the wreckage.

An official said that of every body found in Car Nicobar, several were washed away by the waves without leaving a trace.

After all these years, I still sometimes think about the day I got on the ferry to go to Havelock.

I wonder what would have happened if the tremors had come a few minutes earlier.

And what if the wall of water had hit the shore while I was waiting on the pier to board our ferry?

On Boxing Day, 2004, I had a close call. Thousands of dead were not so lucky.

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