Wave

In early 2005, I was lucky enough to travel to Indonesia and Malaysia with work. Whilst I was there, I went to the island of Penang. At one point we were driving along a road which had essentially been made into a dual carriageway by having huge concrete blocks being placed along the middle of the road.

This was only three or four months after the Boxing Day earthquake just off the coast of Sumatra. One of the people I was travelling with, who lived on Penang, explained to me that the concrete blocks, which must have weighed well over a tonne each, had been swept away by the force of the tsunami that followed the earthquake.

I looked at the concrete, and struggled to understand how a wave could do this.

Watching the television news today, things become a little easier to understand, but no less shocking.

The wave in Japan was filmed, presumably by a helicopter news crew.

Unstoppable. Relentless. Devastating.