Inquest opens into British tsunami dead

An inquest into the deaths of Britons killed by last year's Indian Ocean tsunami began yesterday at a special court in London, attended by families of victims, police and expert witnesses.

In total, 141 British nationals are thought to have died on Boxing Day, 2004, but the inquests will only be into the deaths of 93, the number of those repatriated.

West London coroner Alison Thompson said the four-day hearing could not address other issues of concern to victims' relatives.

"The scope of the inquiry is limited to determining and recording essential facts concerning each death - the identity of each victim, when, where and how they died," Miss Thompson said.

Under British law, an inquest must take place when a body is sent home after a death abroad if the coroner believes the deceased suffered a sudden, violent or unnatural death. The Foreign Office acknowledged last month that mistakes were made in the British response to the disaster.

In the aftermath, emergency hotlines were overwhelmed, there was a shortage of medical staff and a rapid response team was sent to the wrong location.

Expert witnesses gave evidence at the inquest to help the court determine how the victims died in the disaster, which resulted in at least 232,000 killed or missing. Timothy Henstock, a geophysicst at Southampton University who was on board one of the first vessels to survey the area, gave a detailed explanation of how the tsunami developed. "This was a very serious event on a global scale," Dr Henstock said. "These things do not happen very often but when they do they are very destructive and very widely felt."

Dr Henstock showed the court a video of a simulation of the waves as they spread out from the epicentre of the quake, which measured 9.15 on the Richter scale.

"This area has been very poorly studied so compared to other parts of the world where earthquakes occur we really did not know much about it until the earthquake happened," he said.

The waves' speed slowed in shallower water but they became taller, reaching between 10 and 30 metres as they hit Banda Aceh in Indonesia, which was within half an hour of the quake, Dr Henstock said.

On the Thai islands of Phuket and Phi Phi, where many Britons died in the disaster, the waves reached six metres. Charity Oxfam said yesterday its fundraising after the tsunami had been its biggest campaign ever, reaching £160 million.