There
was once a bitumen road leading to the shoreline but
now it is a dirt path for heavy duty lorries bringing
tsunami debris to be dumped. I met a man one afternoon
on the road bridge. He was fishing and had already gotten
himself quite a good catch (6-8) fishes within the last
4 hours. All he had was just a retractable fishing rod
and some prawn baits, seated on the brook of the water
inlet. We got to talk and I couldn’t help but
asked if he was a victim of the Tsunami.
This
is his story :
The water came from the north tip of Banda Aceh (BA is
at the very tip of the Sumatra and facing the Indian Ocean).
He was just 500 meters from the shoreline, it was so tall
that the whole sky became one with the water and the whole
place was very dark. He didn’t know what it was.
No one had ever experienced this phenomenon. Then it became
clear to him that it was a wall of water coming towards
him. He started to run southwards away from the Tsunami
but was overcame by it. Then came another two walls of
wave from the east and the west. He was caught in the
crashing of waves. The current brought him down into the
water and twisted and grinded him into the ground. It
brought him to the surface and spun him around together
with all the debris. He even re-enacted on how a motor
bike from the debris slammed onto his back. He lost his
wife and two of his sons. He witnessed his two sons tossing
and turning in the current and the dreadful injuries they
sustained upon hitting one of the rooftops. He was able
to recover the bodies of his loved ones - which was something
many others were unable to do. There was a long list of
missing people reported to the authorities. Many lives
were lost because two more succession of the dreadful
waves came again after the initial one.
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