The Power of the Sea by Bruce Parker

Author:Bruce Parker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2012-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 8.1 Picture showing the destruction caused by the December 26, 2004, tsunami along the northern Aceh coast of Sumatra, leaving a lone surviving mosque. (U.S. Geological Survey)

Lamjabat, another suburb of Banda Aceh, was a little farther from the seashore than Lambada, about a half mile. Being a Sunday morning, the rocking ground jolted many of its residents out of bed. Dazed, but with enough presence of mind to know their houses might collapse, they ran outside. But in a few minutes they began hearing the cry that was all over Aceh. “Air laut naik!” People were running up Pendidikan Road and other streets, with something dark and high and ominous following them. The dark wall of water obliterated all the houses, even those on six-foot stilts, in which a few residents stayed, thinking stilts would save their houses and them from the sea. Mothers and fathers held on to their children, some in their arms, some by their hands, but when the water caught them, they were all ripped apart. Those still alive were swept along in the violent current and battered by rubble. They stared in stunned confusion as they were carried by the water past tall city buildings or even through stands of bamboo in the open areas. Sometimes people being pushed toward a violent collision with a house were saved when something big hit the house first, destroying it. Logjams of rubble were everywhere, some of them growing into piles high above water, becoming moving islands onto which those with still enough energy climbed for safety, often half dressed or even naked, bleeding from scrapes and wounds.

Those who managed to climb onto floating rooftops or mattresses rode the water inland. But when the flow reversed as the sea retreated between successive tsunami wave crests, these temporary survivors were carried out to sea, most never to be seen again. Later there was the occasional story of someone miraculously rescued at sea on a floating mattress.33 Too exhausted and too fearful even to watch where they were being taken, most were spared looking at the bodies staring up at them from the dark water or at the almost-dead people staring down at them from the trees where they hung, some still chanting prayers. But those in trees or on rubble mounds or floating on mattresses were a very small percentage. Slowly, most of the people who had begun running joined those unable to run, and they were now floating among the debris, being swept along with refrigerators, bicycles, mattresses, and rubble piles. Farther inland videos would be taken of the floating islands of junk, some with people still on them, but by then there were no longer any violent waves, just strong currents moving down the streets between the buildings. Within twenty minutes Lamjabat had been destroyed. Of 3,600 original residents, only 210 survived, of which only 15 were children and only 40 were women.34

Blang Padang field was a twenty-acre park near the center of downtown Banda Aceh,

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