Aceh: North West of Sumatra, Indonesia - After the Wave Date: Sunday, December 20, 2014 Michael Bachelard** First, the earthquake struck. Ro...
Aceh: North West of Sumatra, Indonesia - After the Wave
Date: Sunday, December 20, 2014
Michael Bachelard**
First, the earthquake struck. Roads buckled and houses cracked. Two explosions rent the air and thousands of voices cried out in fear. Then the waves swelled up from the sea and scoured Aceh's west coast with water, bringing debris and death.
But it's not the memory of noise that keeps fisherman Andi Yusuf awake at night when he thinks of the tsunami 10 yearsago -
it's the SILENCE that followed.
Yusuf was asleep when the earth started shaking at 7.59am on Sunday, December 26, 2004. Informed by half-remembered family lore about earthquakes and killer waves, this fisherman from Aceh's coastal village of Calang fled to higher ground with his wife, baby and young child.
Clinging with grim determination to a hillside durian tree, his wife fainting from shock, Yusuf watched as some of his neighbours ran away from the beach while others ran towards it, looking for open ground.
The tsunami's towering, 30-metre second wave consumed them all, coming or going.
A hilltop settlement of recently built houses in Lhok Kruet is mostly abandoned, as they have no running water.
A hilltop settlement of recently built houses in Lhok Kruet is mostly abandoned, as they have no running water. Photo: Ulet Ifansasti
"Before the water came, I heard people panicking, shouting, screaming. They looked like chickens," Yusuf recalls, his fisherman's eyes, which are habituated to the horizon, turning inwards and to the past.
"I saw the roof of the school flying into the air, big timber floating. But after the second wave, the big one, I heard nothing.
Not a single voice. Silence."
Into this silence, an estimated 167,000 voices fell in Aceh alone. Hearing Yusuf speak, it's amazing not that so many died, but that any survived. He saved his wife and children, but lost perhaps 50 members of his extended family.
In Sri Lanka, 35,000 were killed; in India, 18,000. Thailand lost more than 8000 died.
Globally, 230,000 people lost their lives and perhaps 1.7 million were displaced.
This was a freak geological event: a "mega thrust" earthquake measuring up to 9.3 on the Richter scale that pushed a 1600-kilometre stretch of the Indian Ocean 15 metres higher.
The resultant wave - the biggest tsunami in history - reshaped 800 kilometres of the Indonesian province's western coastline, penetrating three to six kilometres inland.
More than 120,000 houses were flattened, 500,000 left homeless, the road system obliterated. Administrative data - birth and death records, property ownership details - were destroyed and public servants killed or incapacitated by grief.
The rebuilding of western Aceh started from scratch.
More:
http://www.theage.com.au/good-weekend/aceh-after-the-wave-20141219-11w71n.html
Date: Sunday, December 20, 2014
Michael Bachelard**
First, the earthquake struck. Roads buckled and houses cracked. Two explosions rent the air and thousands of voices cried out in fear. Then the waves swelled up from the sea and scoured Aceh's west coast with water, bringing debris and death.
But it's not the memory of noise that keeps fisherman Andi Yusuf awake at night when he thinks of the tsunami 10 yearsago -
it's the SILENCE that followed.
Yusuf was asleep when the earth started shaking at 7.59am on Sunday, December 26, 2004. Informed by half-remembered family lore about earthquakes and killer waves, this fisherman from Aceh's coastal village of Calang fled to higher ground with his wife, baby and young child.
Clinging with grim determination to a hillside durian tree, his wife fainting from shock, Yusuf watched as some of his neighbours ran away from the beach while others ran towards it, looking for open ground.
The tsunami's towering, 30-metre second wave consumed them all, coming or going.
A hilltop settlement of recently built houses in Lhok Kruet is mostly abandoned, as they have no running water.
A hilltop settlement of recently built houses in Lhok Kruet is mostly abandoned, as they have no running water. Photo: Ulet Ifansasti
"Before the water came, I heard people panicking, shouting, screaming. They looked like chickens," Yusuf recalls, his fisherman's eyes, which are habituated to the horizon, turning inwards and to the past.
"I saw the roof of the school flying into the air, big timber floating. But after the second wave, the big one, I heard nothing.
Not a single voice. Silence."
Into this silence, an estimated 167,000 voices fell in Aceh alone. Hearing Yusuf speak, it's amazing not that so many died, but that any survived. He saved his wife and children, but lost perhaps 50 members of his extended family.
In Sri Lanka, 35,000 were killed; in India, 18,000. Thailand lost more than 8000 died.
Globally, 230,000 people lost their lives and perhaps 1.7 million were displaced.
This was a freak geological event: a "mega thrust" earthquake measuring up to 9.3 on the Richter scale that pushed a 1600-kilometre stretch of the Indian Ocean 15 metres higher.
The resultant wave - the biggest tsunami in history - reshaped 800 kilometres of the Indonesian province's western coastline, penetrating three to six kilometres inland.
More than 120,000 houses were flattened, 500,000 left homeless, the road system obliterated. Administrative data - birth and death records, property ownership details - were destroyed and public servants killed or incapacitated by grief.
The rebuilding of western Aceh started from scratch.
More:
http://www.theage.com.au/good-weekend/aceh-after-the-wave-20141219-11w71n.html
