Tsunami-hit nations mark 10th year of catastrophe

By: 10 years ago

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia— Prayers, tears and solemn visits to mass graves marked the start of commemorations on Friday across tsunami-hit nations for the 230,000 people who perished when giant waves decimated coastal areas of the Indian Ocean a decade ago.

On Dec. 26, 2004, a 9.3-magnitude earthquake off Indonesia’s western tip generated a series of massive waves that pummeled the coastline of 14 countries as far apart as Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Somalia.

“I cannot forget the smell of the air, the water at that time … even after 10 years,” said Teuku Ahmad Salman, a 51-year-old resident who joined thousands in a prayer service in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

“I cannot forget how I lost hold of my wife, my kids, my house,” he said sobbing, recounting that he refused to believe for years that they had died but finally gave up looking for them.

Among the victims were thousands of foreign tourists enjoying Christmas in the region, carrying the tragedy of an unprecedented natural disaster into homes around the world.

A chorus of voices singing the Indonesian national anthem opened the official memorial at an 8-hectare park in Banda Aceh—the main city of the Indonesian province closest to the epicenter of the massive quake and which bore the brunt of waves towering up to 35 meters high.

“Thousands of corpses were sprawled in this field,” Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla told the crowd of several thousand—many among them weeping.

“Tears that fell at that time … there were feelings of confusion, shock, sorrow, fear and suffering. We prayed.

“And then we rose and received help in an extraordinary way. Help came from Indonesia and everyone else, our spirits were revived,” he said, hailing the outpouring of aid from local and foreign donors.

Mass graves

Mosques also held prayers across the province early Friday while people visited mass graves—the resting place of many of Indonesia’s 170,000 tsunami dead.

Pictures of the 135-year-old mosque left isolated in a plain of desolation after almost everything around it was wiped away were among the most memorable from the disaster.

“Allah kept his house unscathed, that’s what we Muslims believe,” said Azman Ismail, great imam of Baiturrahman Grand Mosque. About 5,000 men, women and children crowded inside for its largest mass prayer since the tsunami.

Syahirizal Abbas, a local government official, said he was attending “to pray that the dead will be welcome to Allah’s side.”

Although the tsunami brought devastation, Ismail said it had also led to peace in the province, which had suffered years of conflict between rebels and the military, as well as much needed development.

“The tsunami should be seen as a blessing instead of punishment by Allah,” Syeikh Ali Jabar, an imam from Saudi Arabia, told worshippers.

Shared memories

In Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and elsewhere, moments of silence were held in several spots to mark the exact time the tsunami struck, a moment that united the world in grief.

More than 100 survivors of the tsunami along with the bereaved relatives from Germany, Austria and Switzerland held a memorial service on a beach in Khao Lak, Thailand. They walked into the waves and lay flowers in the warm Andaman Sea, while diplomats placed wreaths on the sand.

“I didn’t expect it would again touch me so much after 10 years because I’ve come back every now and then in recent years,” said tsunami survivor Claudia Geist of Germany, who was so badly injured during the tsunami she almost lost her leg. “But this has been a completely different experience now connecting with all the other people.”

Later in the day, Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha was to lead a ceremony at a beached police boat that was out at sea when the tsunami struck and was carried 2 kilometers inland by the massive waves. It has become a permanent memorial to the power of the waves that day.

In southern Thailand, where half of the 5,300 dead were foreign tourists, a smattering of holidaymakers gathered at a memorial park in the small fishing village of Ban Nam Khem, which was obliterated by the waves.

As the ceremony began, survivors recounted stories of horror and miraculous survival as the churning waters, laden with the debris of eviscerated bungalows, cars and boats, swept in without warning, killing half of the village’s inhabitants.

Swiss national Raymond Moor said he noticed something was amiss when he saw a white line on the horizon rushing toward the beach where he and his wife were having breakfast.

“I told my wife to run for her life … it wasn’t a wave but a black wall,” he said, describing being caught up in the water moments later like “being in a washing machine.”

“A Thai woman from the hotel saved my life by pulling me up to a balcony. She died later,” he said, breaking into tears.

Nearby, Thai Somjai Somboon, 40, said she was yet to get over the loss of her two sons, who were ripped from their house when the waves cut into Thailand.

“I remember them every day,” she said, also with tears in her eyes.

Among the international commemorations, in Sweden, which lost 543 to the waves, the royal family and relatives of those who died will attend a memorial service in Uppsala Cathedral on Friday afternoon.

FOR TSUNAMI DEAD A white rose released by relatives of German victims of the Asian tsunami, one of the deadliest natural disasters in world history, is swept on the sand as a couple looks toward the sea during a commemoration and religious ceremony on Friday in Khao Lak, Thailand. The tsunami, triggered by a massive earthquake off Indonesia, left more than 230,000 people dead in 14 countries. AP

Global response

Disaster-stricken nations struggled to mobilize a relief effort after the tsunami struck. The world poured money and expertise into the relief and reconstruction, with more than $13.5 billion collected in the months after the disaster.

Almost $7 billion in aid went into rebuilding more than 140,000 houses across Aceh, thousands of kilometers of roads, and new schools and hospitals.

Tens of thousands of children were among the dead.

But the disaster also ended a decades-long separatist conflict in Aceh, with a peace deal between rebels and Jakarta struck less than a year later.

In Sri Lanka, where 31,000 people perished, preparations were under way to hold a memorial at a railway site where waves crashed into a passenger train, killing 1,500 people.

Ahead of the ceremony, a train guard who survived said a lack of knowledge of tsunamis —in a region that had not experienced one in living memory— led to more deaths than necessary.

“We had about 15 minutes to move the passengers to safety. I could have done it. We had the time, but not the knowledge,” said 58-year-old Wanigaratne Karunatilleke.

To plug that gap a pan-ocean tsunami warning system was established in 2011, made up of sea gauges and buoys, while individual countries have invested heavily in disaster preparedness.

But experts have cautioned against the perils of “disaster amnesia” creeping into communities vulnerable to natural disasters.