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Asia remembered the 2004 tsunami yesterday, with lowered flags in Indonesia and memorials in Thailand and India, among the worst hit by the disaster nine years ago. |
About 170,000 people died in Aceh, a devoutly Muslim province on the northern tip of Indonesia’s Sumatra island, which bore the brunt of the tsunami, and where flags were at half-mast for the next three days.
Victims’ loved ones offered prayers and recited verses from the Qur’an.
“It’s been nine years but it feels like it was yesterday,” said 50-year-old Makmun Adam, who lost two children and his wife.
“I pray to God that they be given a place in heaven,” he said at a mass grave in Ulee Lheue, a fishing area in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, where more than 14,000 victims were buried.
In Thailand, where around 8,000 died in the southern provinces, more than 40 people attended a memorial ceremony on the resort island of Phuket, led by Buddhist monks, Christian chaplains and local Muslim leaders.
“We were supposed to be on the beach at that time, but my 13-year-old daughter insisted we get some swimming goggles,” said US expat Brad Kenny, 57. “Thankfully she delayed us, and we got lucky.”
But the couple they were to meet at the beach that morning lost their 13-month-old daughter to the giant waves.
More than 500 Swedish tourists died in the disaster. Leif Persson, 67, remembers calling from Sweden for days before hearing that the bodies of his son and daughter-in-law had been found “It was a tough time,” he said. His grandson is still missing.
“He may still be in Phuket, or may be out to sea. I just don’t know.”
In southern India’s Tamil Nadu, thousands participated in memorials for the state’s nearly 8,000 victims, of 9,395 killed in the country across five states, All India Radio reported.
People lit candles and offered floral tributes, while fishermen stayed on shore for the day to show their respects, the online edition of the Deccan Herald newspaper reported.
“I am always thinking of my husband,” said Kamakshi, tears rolling down her cheeks nine years after his death.
In the coastal town of Cuddalore, a tsunami memory pillar was decorated with flowers, the report said, while artists made sand sculptures of the event along the beach.
The disaster has triggered some positive social changes, the IANS news agency reported.
Widows’ remarriages, previously frowned upon, have become more accepted, and ruined fishermen are sending their children to school so they can take up alternative professions and not rely on the fickle ocean, it said.
The tsunami, triggered by a magnitude-9.3 earthquake off Sumatra killed an estimated 230,000 people in 13 countries around the Indian Ocean.
Nearly 168,000 died in Indonesia, where student Hera Fazra, now 20, was only 11 when the tsunami killed three of her relatives, whose bodies were never found.
“We went to the mountains to escape the tsunami,” she said. “Now when there’s an earthquake, I always run to higher ground as fast as I can because I’m still traumatised.”
Nine years on, Banda Aceh is thriving, with new buildings including the city hall, hotels and shopping centres, and the four-storey Aceh Tsunami Museum, built in 2009, its roof resembling a high wave.
The response to the disaster has been touted as an example of successful international co-operation.
Since the tsunami, more than 130,000 houses, 250km of roads, 18 new hospitals and other infrastructure have been built, according to the government.
More than 80,000 hectares of agricultural land has been rehabilitated or cleared for use and 15,000 hectares of fish ponds have been created.
“The tsunami was a warning from God, so we must never forget it,” said Tabrani, leader of the traditional fishing community in Aceh.
