Asia mourns 220,000 victims a decade after tsunami disaster
Print Edition
TEARFUL memorials were held across tsunami-hit nations yesterday for the 220,000 people who died 10 years ago when giant waves decimated coastal areas along the Indian Ocean in one of the world’s worst natural disasters on record.
On December 26, 2004 a 9.3-magnitude earthquake off Indonesia’s western tip generated a series of massive waves that pummelled the coastline of 14 countries as far apart as India, Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Somalia.
Among the victims were thousands of tourists enjoying Christmas on the region’s sun-kissed beaches, carrying the tragedy of an unprecedented natural disaster into homes around the globe.
In southern Thailand, where half of the 5,300 dead were holidaymakers, people 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, obliterating resorts and villages. The official ceremony was due to be held at police patrol boat 813, which was swept around 2 kilometers inland and has since stood as a memorial to the calamity.
In Sweden, which lost 543 to the waves, the royal family and relatives of those who died will attend a service in Uppsala Cathedral.
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 Indonesia’s Aceh province, where most of the nation’s 170,000 victims were claimed.
The main city, Banda Aceh, held the nation’s official remembrance at a 20-acre park. It was near the epicenter of the massive undersea quake and bore the brunt of waves towering up to 35-meters high. 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, survivors and relatives of the around 1,000 who died when waves derailed a passenger train, boarded the restored Ocean Queen Express and headed to Peraliya — the exact spot where it was ripped from the tracks.
The head train said a lack of knowledge of tsunamis led to needless deaths.
“We had about 15 minutes to move the passengers to safety. I could have done it. We had the time, but not the knowledge,” 58-year-old Wanigaratne Karunatilleke said.
A pan-ocean tsunami warning system was established in 2011. But experts have cautioned against the perils of “disaster amnesia” creeping into communities vulnerable to natural disasters.
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