Lhoknga (pronunciation hoʔ-ŋa alternative names Lho'nga, Lho-nga, Lhok Nga), is a town within the district of the same name, in Aceh Besar Regency,

Aceh Aceh ( ), officially the Aceh Province ( ace, Nanggroë Acèh; id, Provinsi Aceh) is the westernmost province of Indonesia. It is located on the northernmost of Sumatra island, with Banda Aceh being its capital and largest city. Granted a s ...

Special Region,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

, located on the western side of the island of

Sumatra Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...

, 13 km southwest of

Banda Aceh Banda Aceh ( Acehnese: ''Banda Acèh'', Jawoë: كوتا بند اچيه) is the capital and largest city in the province of Aceh, Indonesia. It is located on the island of Sumatra and has an elevation of . The city covers an area of and had ...

. It was completely flattened and destroyed by the

2004 Boxing Day Tsunami An earthquake and a tsunami, known as the Boxing Day Tsunami and, by the scientific community, the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake, occurred at 07:58:53 local time (UTC+07:00, UTC+7) on 26 December 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of no ...

, where its population dwindled from 7,500 to 400.

Tsunami A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explo ...

runups following eyewitness accounts of waves were recorded being 35 m in height (waves landing at the height of 35 m), Such high and fast waves arising from the epicentre by

megathrust Megathrust earthquakes occur at convergent plate boundaries, where one tectonic plate is forced underneath another. The earthquakes are caused by slip along the thrust fault that forms the contact between the two plates. These interplate earthqu ...

s were later found to be due to splay faults, secondary faults arising due to cracking of the sea floor to jut upwards in seconds, causing waves' speed and height to increase.Sibuet, J-C., Rangin, C., Le Pichon, X., Singh, S., Cattaneo, A., Graindorge, D., Klingelhoefer, F., Lin, J-Y., Malod, J., Maury, T., Schneider, J-L., Sultan, N., Umber, M., Yamaguchi, H., and the “Sumatra aftershocks” team,
26th December 2004 great Sumatra–Andaman earthquake: Co-seismic and post-seismic motions in northern Sumatra
." ''Earth and Planetary Science Letters.'' Vol. 263, Issues. 1-2, 88-103. November 15, 2007.

Notes and references

{{Aceh-geo-stub Populated places in Aceh Aceh Besar Regency