In BILLIONS, Barry Bearak narrates the effects of the abrupt shift in the tectonic plates as waves race towards land. BILLIONS is part of TWINGE, inspired by survival stories from the Indonesian Tsunami, as told to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Barry Bearak and published in “The Day The Sea Came” by The New York Times Magazine on Sunday, November 24, 2004. “For the earth, it was just a twinge. Last Dec. 26, at 7:59 a.m., one part of the planet’s undersea crust made an abrupt shift beneath another along a 750-mile seam near the island of Sumatra. The tectonic plates had been grating against each other for millenniums, and now the higher of the two was lifted perhaps 60 feet. For a planet where landmasses are in constant motion across geological time, the event was of no great moment. But for people — who mark the calendar in days and months rather than eons — a monumental catastrophe had begun, not only the largest earthquake in 40 years but also the displacement of billions of tons of water, unleashing a series of mammoth waves: a tsunami…” – Barry Bearak, in “The Day the Sea Came”, The New York Times, November 27, 2005 © 2005 The New York Times. All rights reserved.