Greg Kowald was driving through the centre of Toowoomba when a terrifying, tsunami-like wall of water roared through the streets of the northeast Australian city.

Office windows exploded, cars careened into trees and bobbed in the churning brown water like corks. The deluge washed away bridges and sidewalks; people desperately clung to power poles to survive.

A powerful 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck off the western Pacific nation of Vanuatu on Sunday, triggering a small tsunami exactly six years after giant waves killed 2,20,000 people around the Indian Ocean.

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the shallow quake generated a tsunami, but it cancelled a regional warning after the wave measured only 15 cm higher than normal in Vanua

R Venkatramani | ENS Nagapattinam, December 26

ON December 26, 2004, the coastal Nagapattinam district witnessed the worst disaster in its history.

Scores of villagers on a remote Japanese island chain in the Pacific scrambled for higher ground early on Wednesday after a major 7.4-magnitude offshore quake sparked a tsunami alert.

The sea bed tremor struck at 2.19 am, jolting people out of bed as loudspeakers blared across the Ogasawara islands and authorities warned of the risk of a two-metre high local tsunami.