Survivors remember victims of deadly tsunami

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia－On one Sunday morning, Mawardi was watching cartoons with his two brothers at his house on Meulaboh Bay in Indonesia's westernmost province of Aceh when a 9.3-magnitude earthquake literally shook them from their seats.

His mother and grandmother, who were also inside the house, panicked and rushed him and his brothers out of the house.

"I heard a really loud noise, like a waterfall," said Mawardi, who was 13 years old at the time in 2004.

Together, they rushed to escape, but after dashing for about one kilometer, they were slammed to the ground by the huge black wave, and separated from each other.

Mawardi has never seen his mother, grandmother or brother since then.

More than 120,000 people were killed in Aceh Province by a nearly 30-meter-high sea wave triggered by a megathrust earthquake that struck undersea off the coast of Sumatra Island on Dec. 26, 2004.

That earthquake is one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. The catastrophe also caused major disruption to living conditions and economies in countries along the surrounding coasts of the Indian Ocean, including Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.

In Aceh, mass graves can still be found. In December 2018 about 45 body bags were pulled out from the ground by construction workers on a public-housing project in Kajhu Village in Aceh Besar Regency as they were doing excavating work to build a septic tank.

Kajhu was one of the areas worst hit by the tsunami. Around 85 percent of the villagers were killed and those who survived the calamity decided to abandon their villages.

The authorities have said coming across unknown graves of tsunami victims is common.

"Since 2004, we have found some mass graves made by volunteers in some villages where those who survived had left the areas. When people returned and started to develop the abandoned land, they found mass graves," former head of the Aceh Disaster Management Agency Teuku Ahmad Dadek said.

Dadek, who now serves as an assistant to the Aceh governor, is also one of the tsunami survivors.

"I headed a district in Meulaboh Regency at the time. At least 10 percent of the population went missing," he noted.

Every year, the Aceh administration holds a function commemorating the 2004 earthquake and tsunami. Not only does the event commemorate the people killed in the disaster, but also passes on the lessons to future generations.

XINHUA/AFP