what to know 20 years on

2004 Indian Ocean tsunami: what to know 20 years on

by AFP Staff Writers

Banda Aceh, Indonesia (AFP) Dec 18, 2024

Survivors and victims’ relatives will next week mark the 20th anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, which killed more than 220,000 people across more than a dozen countries.

A 9.1-magnitude earthquake off the western coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island triggered huge waves that swept into coastal areas of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and nine other nations around the Indian Ocean basin.

Here is a look back at the impact of the deadliest tsunami in history.

– Faultline rupture –

The tsunami was triggered by the longest faultline rupture from an earthquake ever observed, seconds before 7:59 am on December 26, 2004.

The ocean floor opened at least 1,200 kilometres (750 miles) in length between the India plate and Burma microplate.

It created waves more than 30 metres (100 feet) high, releasing energy equivalent to 23,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs and causing widespread destruction.

The magnitude was initially recorded at 8.8, before the United States Geological Survey gave its official magnitude of 9.1 and depth as 30 kilometres (18.6 miles).

The epicentre was located 150 miles from Sumatra’s coast.

Indonesia is a vast archipelago nation on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

– Huge death toll –

A total of 226,408 people died as a result of the tsunami, according to EM-DAT, a recognised global disaster database.

The worst affected area was northern Sumatra, where more than 120,000 people were killed out of a total of 165,708 dead in Indonesia.

The huge waves travelled around the Indian Ocean, hitting Sri Lanka, India and Thailand hours later.

At their fastest the waves travelled at over 800 kilometres an hour (500 mph), more than twice the speed of a bullet train.

More than 35,000 were killed in Sri Lanka, with 16,389 killed in India and 8,345 in Thailand, according to EM-DAT.

Nearly 300 were killed in Somalia, more than 100 in the Maldives, as well as dozens in Malaysia and Myanmar.

– Displaced, reconstruction –

The tsunami displaced more than 1.5 million people and sparked disaster relief of around $14 billion pledged from the international community, according to the United Nations.

Hundreds of thousands of buildings were destroyed, leaving in some cases entire communities homeless.

A splurge in reconstruction has transformed the worst-hit city Banda Aceh.

More than 100,000 houses were rebuilt in the westernmost Indonesian province of Aceh alone, according to the Indonesian government.

– Warning systems –

The tsunami also forced a reckoning about the preparedness of coastal communities around the Indian Ocean basin.

At the time of the earthquake, there was no warning system in place in the Indian Ocean.

But now, 1,400 stations globally cut warning times to just minutes after a tsunami wave forms.

Experts said the lack of a properly coordinated warning system in 2004 had made the disaster’s impact worse.

Ocean scientists say we are more prepared than ever thanks to millions of dollars being invested into tsunami warning systems, but warn that the impact of a catastrophic tsunami can never be completely prevented.

Life from loss: the Frenchwoman who saved a Thai school
Krabi, Thailand (AFP) Dec 18, 2024 -
After the deadliest tsunami in history claimed her only daughter, Elisabeth Zana considered taking her own life — until a nearby Thai school reignited her sense of purpose.

Against the backdrop of a picture-perfect beach on Phi Phi island, the 79-year-old Frenchwoman thinks back to the “unforgettable chaos” she saw at the same spot in February 2005.

“There were mountains of rubble. We walked around thinking there might be dead bodies down there. And maybe my daughter,” she tells AFP.

On December 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake under the Indian Ocean triggered a huge tsunami that killed more than 225,000 people in a dozen countries worldwide.

In Thailand, more than 5,000 people were killed by the Boxing Day disaster according to the official toll — around half of them foreign tourists vacationing on its southern beaches — and another 3,000 left missing.

Zana’s daughter Natacha, then 35, was on Koh Phi Phi when the 10-metre (33-foot) high wall of water struck the island.

The search for her body took nine months, during which Zana and her husband felt their lives had gone into “total disarray”.

“For us, who have no other children… Our lives were over. The temptation to commit suicide was very strong.”

– Run-down memorial –

A run-down memorial is all that remains today on the island, itself a symbol of mass tourism, where new concrete resorts conceal the tsunami’s urban scars.

Locals do not want to talk about the trauma the disaster inflicted, Zana says, and some families of missing foreigners avoid the place altogether.

To overcome her grief, Zana decided to stay and face it head on.

In 2005, she set up NAT Association to help children affected by the tsunami, donating equipment and financing infrastructure to help save Bankuankojan public school on Krabi province’s mainland, which was threatened with closure.

The former dance teacher, who speaks no Thai, also set up a sponsorship programme for the most disadvantaged of its 180 students, aged between three and 11.

Her beloved daughter’s legacy lives on through Bankuankojan’s alternative name, “Natacha School”, and the French flags and petanque courts in the playground.

– Music and dance –

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the tsunami, the students perform Thai music and “nora”, a traditional dance from the kingdom’s south.

Music classes are rare in Thailand’s public education system, where rural schools suffer most from inequality and a lack of resources.

“Many schools are jealous,” says Chanita Jitruk, 56, a teacher who has been involved with Zana’s work from the beginning.

When Chanita arrived in 2005, the school had only a quarter of the pupils it has now.

Today, half the school’s children benefit from a monthly grant of 1,000 baht ($30), which mainly covers compulsory uniforms, often a major expense for families.

“The scholarships are important to improve our education,” one of the beneficiaries, 10-year-old Korawi Kaesuk, tells AFP.

The little girl, nicknamed Pam, dreams of becoming a nurse to be able to “help people”.

As for Zana, the school has given her new lease of life.

“Little by little, a certain peace has settled in,” she says. “But it took a long time.”

‘End of the world’: tsunami body collector’s torment 20 years on
Banda Aceh, Indonesia (AFP) Dec 18, 2024 -
Djafaruddin says he has recovered from the trauma of collecting bodies when the world’s deadliest tsunami devastated Indonesia’s western coast two decades ago, but he still breaks down when thinking about the orphaned children.

The resident of worst-hit city Banda Aceh jumped in his black pickup truck to shift dozens of the dead, some missing limbs and others crushed, to a nearby hospital, leaving him covered in blood and mud.

“When I saw the condition in the river with bodies strewn about… I screamed and cried,” he said.

“I said ‘what is this? Doomsday?'”

A 9.1-magnitude quake near Sumatra island on December 26, 2004 caused the biggest faultline fracture ever recorded, pushing giant waves into the sky and killing more than 220,000 people in 14 countries.

The sight overwhelmed Djafaruddin, a 69-year-old who like many Indonesians goes by one name, as he embarked on a voluntary mission to retrieve fellow locals.

“It is just unimaginable that this could happen. It was as though this was the end of the world,” he said.

He returned to where he pulled dead bodies out of the debris after the giant waves indiscriminately swept away the old and the young.

“This is where corpses laid, mixed with woods carried by the currents,” he said at a corner near Banda Aceh’s Baiturrahman Grand Mosque, where he collected the bodies of at least 40 victims.

“I saw children, picking them up as if they were still alive, just to find them limp and lifeless.”

– ‘Fathers, mothers cried’ –

Indonesia was the worst-hit country with more than 160,000 killed, although the true death toll was thought to be higher as many bodies were never recovered or identified.

Aceh’s provincial capital today is abuzz with scooters and tourists, but Djafaruddin described a completely different scene when the giant wave tore through its streets.

“Here, we saw fathers and mothers who cried, looking for their wives, looking for their husbands, looking for their children,” he said.

Then a transportation agency official, Djafaruddin was at home when waves more than 30 metres (98 feet) high struck his city.

As his road filled with people escaping, he instead went towards the disaster.

His son returned from the city centre screaming, “the water is rising!” but the father-of-five told his family to stay put, knowing the water wouldn’t reach his home five kilometres (three miles) from shore.

Elsewhere entire communities by the shore were wiped out by a disaster many had not heard of before or expected.

He jumped in his car which was usually reserved for carrying traffic lights and road signs.

It would soon fill up with human bodies.

“It was just a spontaneity. It occurred to me that we should help,” he said.

He became one of the first people to arrive at a military hospital in the city with tsunami victims.

As recovery efforts intensified, he was later joined in the day by the army and Indonesian Red Cross, making journeys back and forth to the hospital.

When he made a final, exhausted stop at the hospital around dusk after a day of retrieving bodies, health workers offered him bread and water because of his haggard appearance.

“Because our bodies were covered in blood and mud, they fed us,” he said.

– ‘Screaming at night’ –

He suffered trauma for years after the tragedy yet feels he has recovered two decades on because “it has been a long time”.

But he broke down remembering children who called out for their missing parents.

The volunteer and his family took in dozens of children after they ran away from the rising waters, many traumatised by the disaster.

“It was really sad. We saw them screaming at night, calling for their parents,” Djafaruddin said, sobbing.

They later transferred the children to evacuation shelters across the city.

He said he and the Acehnese people have had to come to terms with the huge loss.

“We don’t need to be sad. We let them go. I think all Aceh people think like that,” he said.

He now serves as head of a village in Banda Aceh, calling the position a “service for the people”.

And he believes the disaster was a “warning” from God after a decades-long separatist conflict with the Indonesian government that was resolved after the tragedy.

Whenever he passes the spot where he collected those lifeless bodies decades ago, he says it reminds him of his efforts that day.

Staring at the ground, he prayed for the victims of the waves.

“O Allah, my God,” he said. “Give them heaven.”