Northern Sumatra Earthquake

The Northern Sumatra earthquake of the year 2005 occured off the western coast of Sumatra when the Australian plate collided with the Burma sub plate. This catastrophic event actually changed some of the land in that area. It caused extensive damage all over that area, and tremors were felt from it hundreds of miles away.
This massive earthquake registered as an 8.7 on the Richter scale and killed at least 1,000 people. The island of Nias and Banyak were hit the hardest. There were over 300 buildings totally destroyed on Nias and another small island of Simeulue had around 100 deaths. In the city of Gunung Sitoli in Nias 200 buildings were destroyed and landslides blocked the main road to the airport! Around 140,000 people were left homeless, at least 1,000 died in this shear force of Mother Nature. If you were to rate it on the Mercalli scale its intensity would be a X out of XII.
As I mentioned earlier, land in that area was actually changed. Crustal deformation occured on the northwest side of Nias. The northern edge actually increased in size because the earthquake caused uplift in that area. Along with the Nias uplift, the island of Bangkaru was also uplifted, but another island adjacent to it (Tuangku) shifted downwards. Some surrounding islets were uplifted as well. These two major effects in coastal positioning occurred due to the earthquake.
Another amazing feature of this earthquake is that it actually caused a minor tsunami. On the island of Simeulue, a 3-meter tsunami damaged part of the port there, and it damaged the airport ont the island. There were tremors felt from this earthquake in Indonesia, Bangkok, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. The first aftershock of the earthquake was clocked at 6.7 on the Richter, and the following day at least thirteen more were recorded between 5.0-6.1.
This amazing natural disaster occured exactly ata 2.3 degrees North and 97.1 degrees East. Sadly, this area of the world has been dealing with many earthquakes recently and just can't seem to fully recover from the previous one without getting destroyed by another. Hopefully, there aren't any more 8.7 earthquakes there. GG4