The very sad part is that you may be right. 
Indonesian military sources have said most of the larger towns on the western shore of northwestern Sumatra have been completely wiped out from this disaster, based on aerial surveillance.
The part that still bothers me is that both Bangladesh and Myanmar (Burma) have reported very little casualties from this disaster. Burma has a pretty substantial coastline exposed to that tsunami, and most of Bangladesh is the Ganges River Delta, a low-lying area that is EXTREMELY vulnerable to any strong wave action from the Bay of Bengal.
And to still think that we're lucky the earthquake happened relatively early in the morning. If the earthquake had occurred just two hours later there would have been MANY more people at the shorelines of the countries affected, and the death toll just from the earthquake and tsunami waves could have reached 1,000,000. 