The Boxing Day 2004 Sumatra tsunami is by no means the most destructive earthquake-related disaster in history – at least so far. For example, the 1976 earthquake that leveled Tangshan, China, took at least 244,000 lives, and the 1556 earthquake in China’s Shanxi province is reported to have claimed 830,000. For the investors, bankers, and insurers in the audience, the purely economic impact of the Sumatran tsunami is also expected to be relatively slight, since most of its victims were indigenous poor people in remote areas, and the region's tourist industry will quickly recover. Japan’s 1995 Kobe earthquake, in contrast, caused more than $100 billion of property damage.
However, as discussed below, this tsunami certainly has attracted a record level of foreign aid. This is partly because many of the countries affected are strategically important. But it is also because, at least in terms of lives affected and damage caused beyond the boundaries of the country where the earthquake originated, the Sumatra tsunami was a record-setter. At last count, in addition to 94,081 confirmed dead in Indonesia, there have been nearly 9000 dead or missing in Thailand, 15160 in India, (andup to 20,000 more in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands), 44,000 in Sri Lanka, and 396 in Tanzania, Somalia, the Seychelles, Madagascar, the Maldives, Burma, Malaysia, and Bangladesh. In addition, there are more than half a million injured, and millions more whose lives have been changed forever. All this is much more significant than the destruction of over-valued Japanese high-rises.
While other tsunamis have taken many lives outside their countries of origin, this one’s long-distance effects have already claimed more lives in more countries than all the other tsunamis around the world since 1800. In other words, this is one of the most profound transnational disasters ever. It is therefore not surprising that this tragedy should have commanded an overwhelming global response. At least for the moment, the developing world has finally succeeded in capturing our attention, if by nothing more than the sheer power of its own suffering. Perhaps we will finally now come to understand that both the relief and the prevention of such disasters are appropriate global responsibilities. 
