Man films on beach as the first waves from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami hit. In Indonesia’s Aceh province in Northern Sumatra, waves reached 167 feet (51 meters) and caused flooding up to three miles (five kilometers) inland. Over 220,000 people perished.

The day after Christmas in 2004, a devastating earthquake erupted underneath the Indian Ocean.

The quake took place just off of the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

But because the movement happened under the water, it caused a tsunami of ocean waves that devastated many nearby countries.

The earthquake was on 9.1 magnitude, making it the third largest in the world since 1900, and it occurred 18 miles underneath the ocean’s surface, as two tectonic plates collided.

The rupture created between the Indian and Burma plates was 800 miles long.

The movement of the earth quake wasn’t just felt in Indonesia, but Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the Maldives, Myanmar, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, too.