Prayers, tears and solemn visits to mass graves marked the start of commemorations yesterday across tsunami-hit nations for the 220,000 people who perished when giant waves hit coastal areas of the Indian Ocean a decade ago.
On Dec. 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.3 earthquake struck off Indonesia’s western tip, generating a series of massive waves that pummeled the coastline of 14 countries as far apart as Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Somalia.
Among the victims were thousands of foreign tourists spending 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 8.1 hectare park in Indonesia’s Banda Aceh — the main city of the province closest to the epicenter of the massive quake, which bore the brunt of waves towering up to 35m 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 added, hailing the outpouring of aid from local and foreign donors.
Mosques also held prayers across the province early yesterday while people visited mass graves — the resting place of many of the 170,000 Indonesians killed in the tsunami.
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 realized something was wrong when he saw a white line on the horizon rushing towards 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 told reporters, 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 were to attend a memorial service in Uppsala Cathedral yesterday afternoon.
Disaster-stricken nations struggled to mobilize a relief effort, leaving bloated bodies to pile up under the tropical sun or in makeshift morgues.
The world poured money and expertise into the relief and reconstruction, with more than US$13.5 billion collected in the months after the disaster.
Almost US$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.
However, 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.
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