2004 INDIAN OCEAN TSUNAMI IN INDONESIA: DAMAGE, VICTIMS, EXPLANATIONS, REUNIONS

DECEMBER 2004 TSUNAMI IN INDONESIA

Tsunami Damage, Gleebruk, Indonesia

Aceh province, Indonesia’s northernmost province in northern Sumatra, bore the brunt of December 26, 2004 tsunami. Nearly 170,000 people were killed and coastal areas were devastated. Banda Aceh and other cities on the west coast of Aceh resembled Hiroshima after the atomic bomb. When the waters receded, dead bodies were left in people’s yards. Rice cookers were deposited on the roofs of houses. Cars were left in trees. As many as 1,000 villages and towns were either damaged or wiped off the map. Land that once housed 120,000 people was permanently submerged under water.

The tsunami waves that inundated Banda Aceh were a mixture of saltwater, dirt, sewage, garbage and debris. In some places, in 10 minutes a three-meter-high wall of mud, water and debris swept almost 10 kilometers inland. Densely-backed, inhabited water front areas were swept clean, leaving nothing but a few foundations among puddles and ponds. Many of dead that did not drown were thrown against buildings or cut by flowing pieces of tree, wood and metal.

The Los Angeles Times reported: “What had seemed to be a moderate earthquake shook residents of Banda Aceh, a city of about 150,000 at the northern tip of Sumatra, around 8 a.m. local time. About half an hour later, many of them were outside inspecting their houses for damage when, on what had been a clear, sunny day, the sky filled with water. Survivors remembered a sound like the drumbeat of a driving rain. "Water! Water! Big water!" some screamed, unable to articulate the nature of the phenomenon. This was water like nobody had seen -- snarling, tall as a four-story building. [Source: Paul Watson, Barbara Demick and Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times, January 2, 2005]

"It was like Armageddon," remembered Zukarnaen Buyung, a strapping 30-year-old construction worker. "We didn't know it was a wave. We thought it was some kind of rain. Everything behind us was black. The sky, the water." Buyung ran. Little high ground exists in Banda Aceh, which is built along a palm-studded coastal plain, but Buyung managed to scramble up a bridge, dragging his wife and their 2-year-old daughter. They watched, horrified, as the strangely voracious water swallowed up relatives and neighbors. A brother and a nephew disappeared as Buyung looked down, helpless. "I watched. I couldn't do anything," he recalled, his voice choked with grief.

“The tsunami obliterated a swath of the city stretching three miles from the sea. It lifted 75-foot fishing boats and dumped them in the middle of the city, deposited hundreds of bodies in front of what had been brightly lighted shops on Panglima Polem Street. Single-story wooden houses were dismantled as if they were made of sticks, and trees were pulled out like blades of grass. South along Sumatra's long Indian Ocean coastline, entire villages disappeared without a trace.

Death and Damage from the 2004 Tsunami in Indonesia

Trash and debris line the streets of downtown Banda Aceh on January 1, 2005, six days after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami; locals ride their motorbike through a lane cleared through the debris

Around 170,000 people were killed (130,000 confirmed dead, 37,000 missing) in Indonesia, most of them in Aceh province. For a while it was thought around 230,000 people were killed there but in April 2005, the government reduced the number of missing from 95,000 to 37,000. Still, a lot of people died. About 14,800 people were buried at the mass grave in Ulee Lheue and 46,000 were buried in Siron in Aceh Besar.The tsunami left more than 500,000 people homeless and caused an estimated $4.5 billion in losses and damage.

In Indonesia
Dead: 128,858; Missing; 37,087; Total: 165,945
Displaced: 572,926
Damaged or Destroyed Buildings: 179,312
Estimated Cost: US$4.5 billion
Estimated Recovery Cost: US$5.5 billion [Source: Reuters, December 16, 2009]

Keuchik Baharuddin was one of only 75 people from the Lam Tutui, a fishing village in Aceh with 545 people, to survive. He recalled how he heard the monkeys in the trees screaming wildly before the tsunami hit, killing his wife and all five of his children. “I saw our village leveled to the ground.” he said. [Source: AFP, December 26, 2008]

Reporting from Malaysian army helicopter flying over Aceh, Edward Girardet wrote in National Geographic: I clung to the half-open portal, mesmerized by the devastation that unfolded below me. The few trees that had survived the watery onslaught of just a couple weeks ago stood like solitary sentinels along newly created shorelines and inlets. It was as if the wooden homesteads and rice fields in these Indian Ocean communities had been carefully — and diabolically — plucked up from the Earth. [Source: Edward Girardet, National Geographic, December 2005] I struggled to identify anything recognizable on the ground. Two years earlier I'd traveled to Aceh to report on the region's ongoing civil war. Now its familiar landmarks were gone. For close to two miles inland the muddy land was shorn of any trace of human existence. Then, just on the other side of the "front line," where the tsunami's surge had run out of impetus, I could see the tiny figures of farmers tending rice fields and children playing in the mango trees.”

Places in Aceh and Indonesia Hard Hit by the 2004 Tsunami

Tsunami waves reaching heights of up to 10 meters (33 feet) struck the smaller offshore islands of Sumatra as well as the northern and western coasts of the island — areas located roughly 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the earthquake's epicenter. The province of Aceh in northern Sumatra experienced the most severe devastation, accounting for the vast majority of casualties and physical destruction. Heavy damage extended southward along the coast as far as Tapaktuan. The tsunami also wrapped around the northern tip of Sumatra into the Strait of Malacca, affecting settlements along the northeastern coastline as far east as Lhokseumawe. Across the region, 110 bridges were destroyed, five seaports and two airports sustained major damage, and approximately 82 percent of roads were severely affected. The following locations were among the hardest hit. [Source: Dr. George Pararas-Carayannis, 2007]

Surveys in Aceh led by Jose Borrero of the University of Southern California found that tsunami waters reached depths of up to 30 meters (100 feet) in some areas, pushed the coastline more than 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) inland, and surged over hills as high as 24 meters (80 feet) above sea level. [Source: Reuters, June 9, 2005]

Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh, suffered some of the most extensive destruction caused by the tsunami. Large sections of the city's infrastructure were destroyed, including homes, government buildings, roads, and public utilities. Entire neighborhoods were swept away by the waves, and tens of thousands of residents lost their lives. As the administrative center of Aceh Province, the city's devastation became one of the defining images of the disaster.

Meulaboh, a coastal city with a pre-tsunami population of approximately 120,000, was one of the hardest-hit communities outside Banda Aceh. It was struck by a series of seven tsunami waves. The disaster killed an estimated 40,000 people and destroyed much of the city's infrastructure, including port facilities. Meulaboh was Aceh’ second largest city. It was almost sliced in half by a series of seven waves, that affected 80 percent of the city. Large sections of Meulaboh were flattened, and about 50,000 residents were left homeless.

Calang, the capital of Aceh Jaya Regency, was almost entirely destroyed. Before the tsunami, the town's population was estimated at between 9,000 and 12,000 people. Only about 30 percent of residents survived the disaster. Most buildings, roads, and public facilities were swept away, making Calang one of the most devastated urban areas on Sumatra's west coast.

Peter Struijf of Oxfam wrote: It was the closest town to the epicentre of the earthquake and had been really wiped off the map. There was nothing left standing. The waves there had been as high as the top of the palm trees. The coastal roads in all directions were destroyed or partly submerged. Huge bridges had been torn off their pillars and dumped up the river, and the town was only reachable by helicopter. I don't think there was a family in Calang that didn't lose loved ones. In our part of town, before the tsunami, I believe about 850 people had lived there and only around 250 survived. Two-thirds of this entire suburb died in the space of 15 minutes.It's hard to describe the impact of a tsunami if you haven't seen it. When you see the ruins and debris you realise that people have lost everything, even the pictures of your grandmother, all your clothes, every piece of furniture and everything that you were used to. Farms had been completely inundated with salt water, and it took more than a year for people to have a rice harvest again. From one day to another people had literally nothing left." [Source: Peter Struijf, Oxfam, December 24, 2014]

Leupung, located in Aceh Besar Regency southwest of Banda Aceh, was almost completely destroyed. The tsunami obliterated most buildings and infrastructure in the town. Of its estimated population of about 10,000, only a few hundred people survived. The community suffered one of the highest mortality rates recorded during the disaster.

Tsunami height and run-up measurements

Gleebruk, , a village also situated in Aceh Besar Regency, was completely devastated by the tsunami. Located southwest of Banda Aceh, the settlement was directly exposed to the incoming waves. Most structures were destroyed, and the village suffered extensive loss of life.

Teunom, a town in West Aceh Regency with a population of approximately 18,000 before the disaster, was heavily affected by the tsunami. Official estimates indicated that around 8,000 residents were killed. The waves destroyed much of the town's housing, infrastructure, and economic activity, leaving survivors with enormous recovery challenges.

Simeulue Island was located very close to the earthquake epicenter and experienced tsunami waves of about five meters in height. Despite the island's proximity to the source of the earthquake, remarkably few people were killed by the tsunami. Only five deaths were attributed to the earthquake itself, even though approximately 90 percent of coastal buildings were damaged or destroyed. Scientists believe that uplift of the island reduced tsunami wave heights, while local knowledge played a crucial role in saving lives. Residents were familiar with tsunami dangers because of oral traditions that preserved memories of a destructive 1907 tsunami that had killed thousands of people.

Nias Island suffered severe damage from both the earthquake and tsunami. Infrastructure across much of the island was heavily affected, and many communities experienced extensive destruction. Initial official reports listed 122 deaths, but later estimates suggested the true toll was considerably higher. Some sources estimated that as many as 600 people were killed, while final casualty figures may have exceeded 1,000. The island faced a lengthy recovery process as transportation, communications, and public services were rebuilt.

Coastal Areas Permanently Submerged by the 2004 Tsunami and Later Earthquakes

Reporting from Lhok Bubon, a coastal town in Aceh, Alan Sipress wrote in the Washington Post: The massive tsunami that crashed into Sumatra island in December ripped Ibu Yusniar's home from its concrete foundation. But while the stout woman survived, wrapping her arms around a column in a nearby mosque to ride out the surging waters, nature was not through.Three months later, the sea gobbled up part of her land when another huge earthquake struck. Then, the full-moon tides in July completed the job, reducing the balance of her property in Lhok Bubon village to salty swamp. "The tide came in and it didn't go out," recounted her cousin, Suharman. [Source: Alan Sipress, Washington Post, August 13, 2005]

More than half a year after the tsunami devastated Aceh province, dramatic shifts in topography are continuing to reshape Sumatra, hampering efforts to conduct the gargantuan task of reconstruction. The December 26, 2004 tsunami submerged swaths of seafront and inundated thousands of acres of rice paddies. An earthquake on March 28, 2005, measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale, then lowered the elevation of the island's western coast, dipping much of Aceh's rim into the Indian Ocean. Rain, high tides, westerly winds and erosion have further recast the shoreline and rerouted rivers. "Things that usually happen over hundreds of years are happening here over three to six months," said Kevin Austin, who completed his tour this month as the U.N. Development Program's chief officer in western Aceh. "This is really a unique situation."

Lhok Bubon, a remote fishing hamlet about 16 kilometers (10 miles) from the main west coast town of Meulaboh was among the areas hardest hit by the tsunami. More than a third of the villagers were killed and about 95 homes destroyed. Half of those were in a neighborhood that has since become uninhabitable marsh. Most of the survivors have settled in worn, sun-bleached tents pitched, whenever possible, on the razed foundations of their old homes or in shanties cobbled together from scavenged bits of wood, tarp and corrugated metal.

Victims of the Great Tsunami of 2004 in Indonesia

Tsunami 2004 damage map at Banda Aceh and the surrounding areas

The city of Banda Aceh lost around a quarter if its 223,000 people. The main hospital for Aceh, located there, lost 40 percent of its medical staff. Many patients were killed too. The tsunami occurred while the hospital was treating victims from the earthquake. Two islands off the northwestern coast of Aceh broke into four and in the process lost 7,000 of its 11,000 people. The island of Malinggei was completely swept clean of people. After the disaster none of the 500 people that lived there were left. The only large animals were dogs feeding on corpses. Aceh Province as a whole lost about 5 percent of its population of 4 million people. Almost all the deaths were along the coast. A few people living inland were killed by the earthquake.

In some towns and neighborhoods in Aceh the death rate reached 90 percent. The village of Lampuuk had 6,500 residents before the disaster and only 700 afterwards. Fewer than 20 of the survivors were women. Calang had 7,300 people before the tsunami and 750 afterwards. The only building left standing was a large, white mosque. There wasn’t even much debris. Everything was swept away. In the next village to the south, Kreung Sabe, half the 4,000 people that lived there were killed and all but 500 were left homeless. Further south still in Panga not a single house was left standing and around 800 of the 1,100 people that lived there were killed.

The most powerful waves from the tsunami struck Meulaboh, a city of 70,000 on the west coast of Aceh, 170 kilometers southeast of Banda Aceh. It was the closest city to the epicenter of the earthquake and was devastated by both the earthquakes and the tsunami. The waves reached three kilometers inland. Tens of thousands died. But the nearness to the earthquake is believed to have saved many people who were driven out of their homes by the quake and heeded warning to run to high ground when people saw the wave approaching. Many of the dead were children, who couldn’t swim or weren’t strong enough to escape when water engulfed them.

Bodies were strewn in the streets, rotting in the tropical sun and producing a horrible stench. Many were dumped in mass graves, sometimes 60 at a time with bulldozers, without a ceremony or funeral rites. This added insult to injury of the disaster to the largely devout Acehese who were distressed to see their relatives denied a proper Muslim burial. At first many bodies were left unburied because local people wanted them to have a proper Muslim burial. They were then buried en mass after a Muslim cleric in Jakarta issued a fatwa, declaring in a time of crisis it was okay to bury people without proper rites.

A year after the disaster an iman at a mosque in Ulee Lheue in Aceh told wprshippers that the tsunami was a religious warning. “Please forgive the people who have left us for their wrongdoing,” he said.

Death and Destruction in Aceh a Week After the 2004 Tsunami

Reuters reported: A week after giant waves swamped parts of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra island, the water is only just beginning to drain away to reveal the full extent of the horrific destruction and yet more bodies to count. "I've never seen anything like this. We've seen bodies 20 miles out to sea. You just cannot describe it," said Captain Larry Burt, commander of a helicopter wing on the U.S. aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln after a mission down the west coast of Aceh, which bore the brunt of the December 26 quake and tsunami. [Source: Reuters, January 3, 2005]

Walking the streets of Banda Aceh local clean-up crews and exhausted soldiers find it hard to know where to start, their efforts hampered by a steady drizzle. Fires burn around the clock to clear areas around Banda Aceh's main parade ground of wooden debris. The soggy ground, about the size of five football fields, is stacked with rubbish, smashed vehicles and badly decomposed bodies.

As water drains from many districts of this city of more than 300,000 people, a nightmarish landscape of sludge, flattened homes and tangled corpses is exposed. The stench is overpowering. "We need so much help," said Hayaddin, 51, a street vendor. "People say more waves will come." Again during the long night, aftershocks from the massive quake that triggered the killer wall of water could be felt, sending panicked residents fleeing into the streets.

Zurhan, 23, a bulldozer driver, wearing a woolen jumper over his head to filter out some of the smell of death, stood in the middle of the parade ground shaking his head. "It is so difficult to clean the ground. Everything is mixed together. I can't count how many bodies I have seen here. Look at the garbage. I'm sure there are many more there," he said. Indonesia's Chief Social Welfare Minister Alwi Shihab visited Calang, 94 miles south of Banda Aceh, on Sunday and said the town would be abandoned after 70 percent of its population of 10,000 were killed by the tsunami.

Tsunami Body Collectors in Aceh

In Aceh, the Red Cross paid local men around $3.25 a day to collect bodies. Outfit with gloves, surgical, masks , body bags and shovels, they worked from 7:00am to 5:00pm, poking around ruined houses and found bodies among bushes and fetid pools of water and mud. Bodies were uncovered at a rate of more than a thousand a day through January and couple hundred a day through February until around mid March when the search became more of a hunt.

One worker told the New York Times, “In the first week, the smell was not so bad. With a simple mask and simple gloves we could handle it.” As the weeks wore on the stench grew worse and workers needed industrial-grade masks. They also found that after some time the bodies were either badly bloated or the came apart easily and wrapping them in plastic was easier than placing them in a body bags.

Describing one of these men at work, Bruce Wallace wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “Fauzi Husaini is lying on his belly under the collapsed house, clawing at the dirt with his fingers to get the dead man’s skull free...The body under this house was not picked up in earlier sweeps, probably because it is pinned under concrete and mangled iron. It won’t be free easily...Husaini and his team of seven body hunters go to work...First they need to prop up what remains of the house to get better access to the body...The dead man’s left arm comes apart at the elbow and a worker drops it in a body bag.”

“The men have pulled and strained at the debris for an hour and, finally, more body parts are pulled from the wreckage. The skull is handed from one man to another and carefully placed at the top of the body bag...They are amazed when they find the dead man’s watch, caked in mud, still ticking....A quiet arguments break out between men over who will keep it...Ten minutes later, the torso is pulled free if its tomb. In the pants they find ID cards, a cell phone and a phone book. The man’s name is Hanaflah Ilyas. He was 31 and married.” Some friends of the family are called and told if no one claims the body in a few hours it will buried in a mass grave.

In Aceh there is one mass grave that holds 47,000 bodies, where bodies were hastily dumped three-deep in pits that were dug in the days following the disaster.

Wickedness and Other Explanations for the 2004 Tsunami in Indonesia

When the Muslim Acehese were asked why they thought they tsunami happened or how they felt ,many simply said “it was god’s will” and that god had some ultimate purpose behind all of it. Some saw it was a personal test of their faith. Some viewed the tsunami as a religious event intended to punish sinners. Associated Press reported: Many residents of Aceh, the most dominantly Muslim province in all of Indonesia, viewed the disaster as punishment for their lack of devotion to God. The tsunami made many more devout, said Faisal Ali, a prominent cleric. "It encouraged Acehnese to renew their dedication to their faith," Ali said. With the renewed religious fervor among many in Aceh, also has become the only region of Indonesia governed by Islamic Sharia law — part of a peace agreement with the government to end a decades-long separatist war that granted the region some autonomy. [Source: Associated Press, December 23, 2014]

A surprising number believed a story that the tsunami was created to punish a group of Christian Indonesian government soldiers who were partying at the grave of a revered 17th century religious leader and were rude to a mullah who told them to leave. Many in Aceh had no access to television or radio and didn’t know what to believe. One imam told group of 700 people gathered at his mosque: “This was caused by our sins. Some Muslim people celebrated Christmas, they drank alcohol and they danced on the seashore in violation of the Muslim way. This was a big mistake.”

Nick Meo wrote in The Times: Marluddin Jalil, a Sharia judge who has ordered the punishment of women for not wearing headscarves, was uncompromising: "The tsunami was because of the sins of the people of Aceh." Thundering into a microphone at a gathering of wives, he made clear where he felt the fault lay: "The Holy Koran says that if women are good, then a country is good." [Source: Nick Meo, The Times, December 22, 2005]

Many see the tsunami as a divine punishment and emboldened Islamic hardliners are doing their best to eradicate sin — and women are their prime targets. With reconstruction slow, irrational fears of a second tsunami high, and nearly 500,000 still homeless along 500 miles of coastline, the stern message falls on fertile ground. A Sharia police force modelled on Saudi moral enforcers enthusiastically seeks out female wrong doers for public humiliation.

Islamic law introduced without popular enthusiasm in 2002 has been implemented rigorously since the tsunami, especially in towns such as Lhokseumawe, where Fatimah Syam, of Indonesian Women for Legal Justice, knows of 20 women who have fallen foul of it. She said: "They seek out women without headscarves or unmarried girls meeting boys in private and parade them through the streets in an open car. I've seen the police laughing and boasting, and the girls in tears. The Sharia police say the tsunami happened because women ignored religion. We never heard of this parading before the tsunami."

Dr Jalil, a small, neat man with a trimmed moustache, is particularly concerns with headscarves, gambling, alcohol, and girls meeting boys. "Sin starts small and gets bigger," he said. His next target is a displaced persons' camp outside Lhokseumawe where he has heard of young men and women freely mixing. "Another tsunami is possible," he said. "The Holy Koran says that if humans don't listen to Allah they will be punished."

He was not sure whether there was more or less sin since the disaster although he believes that the Acehnese are more God-fearing now. In the tent camps and temporary wooden barracks where desperate survivors endure grim conditions, Dr Jalil's views are often well received.There are 67,000 survivors still living in tents and a further 75,000 are in the slum barracks, which are taking on a semipermanent air. Only half of those who lost their jobs in the disaster are back at work and drug abuse among the young is growing.

In such conditions wild theories about the tsunami thrive. In a version of Pop Idol organised by the American and Indonesian Red Cross in Barak Lampaseh camp in Banda Aceh, the winner was 12-year-old Sheila Mentari, whose song told how God sent the wave as punishment for sin. She said her father, who died in the wave, would have approved. A fellow villager Marzuki Lidan, 46, who lost his wife and children, was among the enthusiastic audience. He said: "The Sharia police are good Muslims doing an excellent job. We must listen to them and follow God's rules. Otherwise the tsunami will happen again."

150,000 Children Orphaned by the 2004Tsunami in Indonesia

Indonesia Vice President Jusuf Kalla said that as many as 150,000 children in Aceh and North Sumatra lost one or both parents as a result of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, and at least 20,000 lost not only their parents but also all close relatives. To protect vulnerable children, the Indonesian government imposed a temporary ban on adoptions in Aceh and North Sumatra. The decision followed reports that child traffickers were abducting orphans and attempting to sell them abroad. Authorities stated that government agencies and Acehnese community organizations would provide care for the children while efforts were made to identify surviving relatives. The adoption ban also reflected concerns about maintaining legal and religious requirements. Under Indonesian law, adoptive parents must share the same religion as the child. Because Aceh's population is overwhelmingly Muslim and the province is known for its strong Islamic traditions, adoption of tsunami orphans by non-Muslim groups was expected to face significant restrictions. The government and religious authorities anticipated strong demand for adoption once the temporary ban was lifted. [Source: Laksamana.net, International Foundation to Open Orphanages, different 5, 2005]

On the situation in Banda Aceh, 11 days after the tsunami struck, the New York Times reported: “In a refugee tent, Andrian, 14, sat on the ground for lunch among the members of his new family: four uncles, now widowers, and his 80-year-old grandfather. That is all who remain. The tsunami that shattered the boy's home swept away his mother, father and two brothers. In all he lost 26 members of his extended family. High school and childhood friends are gone, too. So those few relations who are still left will now be his primary caretakers."We will push him through school and make sure he makes it," Augus, one of his uncles, said as he gestured at Andrian, who wants to study medicine. [Source: Jane Perlez and Evelyn Ruslijan. New York Times, January 6, 2005]

Almost every family here has been fractured into the slimmest shards by the tsunami, placing added strains on Indonesia's ordinarily strong tradition of social support, even among extended families. Orphan, in fact, is an uncommon word here, and Unicef is describing children without parents and no place to go as "unaccompanied children." The number of children who have absolutely no care from anybody is very small, Ms. Melville said. But the burden on those who may be able to care for them is great.

In one of the biggest camps in the city, with a population of 2,734, there were 30 children who did not have either parent. Only one or two had absolutely no one to look after them, she said. The others had been taken in — given shelter in tents of relatives or even strangers. The numbers of orphans are low because the number of children who died was high; rarely was a child able to survive where adults could not. In Andrian's case, he was away from home and visiting his grandfather in a neighboring village when the waves hit.

But the risk now to those children left alone and others was underscored this week when the government issued a warning that human traffickers were preying on child refugees in Aceh, looking to sell them to couples or brothels elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Medan, a city to the south of here, is known as a center for human trafficking networks. Two people were arrested there on Monday on suspicion of having illegal possession of two Acehnese children, the Department of Social Services said. Birgithe Lund-Henriksen, chief of the child protection unit for Unicef in Southeast Asia, said Unicef had received a copy of a message that said: "300 orphans, age 3 to 10 years, from Aceh for adoption. All paperwork will be taken care of. No fee. Please state age and sex of child required." In response, the government has gone out of its way to encourage the reunification of children with family members, even distant ones, and has joined forces with nongovernment groups to begin an ambitious child protection campaign.

Children Reunited with Their Families

One woman in Banda Aceh was reunited with her 10-year-old son after seven weeks. The boy, Iwan Nafis, was staying at his grandparent’s house at the time of disaster. In the chaos that followed the tsunami unknown people took him to a refugee camp. Iwan was so traumatized he was unable to describe his mother of father or give his address. In an effort to cheer the boy up social workers took him on a drive through Banda Aceh and ended up by chance in his neighborhood. The car stopped. Neighbors told the social workers the location of the refugee camp, where his mother was staying.

Save the Children led efforts in the Aceh to reunite children with loved ones following the of December tsunami. The group reported family cases with at least semi happy endings: “For truck driver Mustafa Kamal and members of the Save the Children tracing team it was an incredible day when the first reunion took place. When Mustafa held his five-year-old Rina Augustina in his arms again he was overwhelmed with emotion, falling to his knees he cried out his daughter's name over and over. "By the grace of God! I knew you were alive! I knew it!" Mustafa screamed at the reunification. "My precious little one, I did not give up. I kept looking." [Source: Save the Children, February 3, 2005]

Mustafa was on his way to Medan miles away from Banda Aceh when the devastating tsunami hit. When he returned home he discovered his wife and daughter were missing. Unfortunately, Rina's mother is still missing. Since being separated from her parents, two older sisters and extended family, Rina was registered with Save the Children and was being cared for by a woman named Mutya in Banda Aceh. The day before Rina was reunited with her father, Save the Children released the names of 72 children whom they had registered as separated or unaccompanied at 20 camps. Rina's name was on the list posted at camps and read on the radio and posted at Save the Children 's office. As the father and daughter departed, Rina waved at Mutya and kissed her hand. Mustafa cradled Rina Augustina and kissed her cheek. He then led her out into the sunshine. "Let's go look for Mama," he said.

For another father, a happy reunion took place several days later after searching more than a month. Muhammad Jamil toured refugee camps and morgues in this tsunami-ravaged city looking for three of his children missing since the waves struck. After the tsunami, a family living close to his friend's house took in Muhammad's eleven-year-old son Habibi. Save the Children learned of his whereabouts from people living in a nearby refugee camp. Jamil discovered his son's name on a list at the Save the Children office in Banda Aceh. Hopeful this would lead him to his little boy, Jamil immediately alerted the staff. The Save the Children tracing team moved quickly to meet with Habibi and showed him five different pictures of men. "I pointed straight to my father's picture," Habibi said. Save the Children reunited Muhammed Jamil with his son Habibi- but there was still no news of his two daughters. "I still long for my daughters, but at least I have Habibi now," said Jamil, whose wife died several years ago. He now lives at a refugee camp.

As nine-year-old Fitri Andriani fled from the devastating wave on foot with her mother and father, sister and three brothers, a neighbor on a motorcycle saved her life by scooping little Fitri up in his arms and carried her to higher ground. Unfortunately, the rest of her family is still missing. For the past month Fitri has stayed with a caregiver who knew the family before the tsunami. Fitri's aunt and uncle showed up at the Save the Children offices and checked the names on the family-tracing list on the bulletin board outside the Save the Children office. Before the day ended Fitri was reunited with her aunt and uncle.

In 2011, an Indonesian girl separated from her family during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was reunited with her relatives after seven years living as a street child, AFP reported: Mary Yuranda, who is now 14, showed up at a cafe in the city of Meulaboh, in the tsunami-battered Aceh province, looking for her parents. She was reunited with them after a local taxi driver identified her family from details she had provided, ending a seven-year ordeal in which she lived with a widow who forced to beg on the streets.

“When she saw her mother she yelled ‘mama’ and ran toward her,” her father, Tarmius, told AFP. “Both of them hugged each other and cried,” he said. Mary’s mother, Yusnidar, said her daughter had grown so much that she had not immediately recognized the girl. “The birth marks on her belly, plus a mole and a scar on her face proved that the little girl was mine,” said Yusnidar, 35. “I cannot tell you how grateful I am,” she added. The parent said the girl was recovering from frequent beatings by the widow. Mary separated from them after the family was swept away during the tsunami. The widow found the lost girl and took her to the provincial capital Banda Aceh, renamed her ‘Herawati’ and made her work as a beggar, handing out frequent beatings to keep the girl obedient. Mary refused to beg any longer, enraging the widow who put here on a bus to Meulaboh. [Source: Nurdin Hasan Agence France-Presse, December 23, 2011]

Doubts About Miracle Return of Tsunami Children

Richard Lloyd Perry wrote in The Times: When the wave came, Septi Rangkuti could do nothing as he watched his son and daughter being sucked into the tsunami.He was living in the town of Meulaboh in the Indonesian province of Aceh on Boxing day in 2004 and, like everyone, was taken by surprise as the wall of water arrived. His wife, Jamaliah, made it on to the roof with their oldest son as Mr Rangkuti struggled through the rising water with the two children. He grasped a wooden door and sat them on it like a raft but the current snatched it away. The last thing he heard was the voices of Arif, seven, and Raudhatul, four, calling for him to save them. [Source: Richard Lloyd Perry, The Times, December 22, 2014]

Mr Rangkuti and his wife never stopped searching for Arif and Raudhatul. They visited hospitals and refugee camps and picked their way through mortuaries. Mr Rangkuti sank into lethargy and depression. When his wife’s feelings of loss became too much for her, she would go out and give her son and daughter’s favourite foods to children their own age — bananas for Arif, and rice cakes for Raudhatul.

And then, last summer, when all hope seemed exhausted, came an extraordinary series of events. First, there appeared a 14-year-old girl, identified by the couple as their lost daughter. A few weeks later came the apparent discovery of Arif, now 17. The reunion has been reported across the globe as a miracle, a gleaming grain of consolation in the worst natural disaster of the century. But closer examination reveals something more mysterious — a murky story about the desperate need for happy endings in a world of irreparable loss.

“I always had hope,” said Mrs Rangkuti, in her new home in Sibuhuan, in the province of North Sumatra. “I kept on praying that I would see them, and one day, I heard a voice saying, ‘You shall’.” Soon after, her brother in Aceh telephoned with remarkable news. In a café in his home town of Blang Pidie, he had seen a girl who reminded him of his niece “Raudha”. “She looked so dirty, she had scabs on her legs, and I cried when I saw her,” she recalled. “I was crying too much to speak and she was crying too. But my husband said, ‘Do you remember? You remember I put you on the door?’ And she remembered.”

It emerged that Raudhatul had been found by a fisherman on the offshore Banyak islands and ended up living in Blang Pidie with his mother. The family, who were even poorer than Jamaliah and Septi, at first raised no objection to the Rangkutis’ certainty that this was their daughter, and the girl who had been known for the past ten years as Weniati moved home with them. The reunion was covered on Indonesian television, including Mrs Rangkuti’s appeal for information about her missing son. In Payakumbuh, another city on the island of Sumatra, a woman observed a resemblance between the photograph shown on screen and a homeless street child who slept in front of her shop.

Within a few days, Mrs Rangkuti was on the scene to claim the boy, known as Ucok, as her son, Arif. The children’s own memory of their ordeal is imperfect. But the family, in their simple wooden house, appeared delighted to be together; and there is a distinct resemblance between the girl and Jamaliah. “I remember I was floating, screaming, crying for help, and a man helped me out of the sea along with my brother,” Raudhatul said. “I’m so happy to be united with my family.”

With Arif, the family likeness is less obvious. After eight years of living rough without friends or teachers, his powers of self-expression were limited, and the course of his odyssey from tsunami to the streets is obscure. Most disturbing are the scars on his forehead and ankle, inflicted, he says, by a mysterious “mother” whose name he cannot recall.

Whatever the truth about their biological relationship, everyone benefits from the new arrangement. Jamaliah and Septi are reprieved from the agony of the loss of their youngest children. The children have a loving and devoted family and no reason to question the story being told about their origins. The rest of Indonesia, and the world, has a happy ending to a story about the deaths of a multitude.

Yet, questions remain. The Banyak islands, where the two were first said to have washed up, are 150 miles from the point where Arif and Raudhatul were swept away: it is inconceivable that two helpless children could have safely sailed there on a door. More seriously, the family who brought up Raudhatul/Weniati have, for mysterious reasons, changed their account. Far from being an orphan of the tsunami, they are now claiming that the girl is the child of their own extended family. Four months after the allegations were made, Jamaliah and Septi have still not taken the step that would settle the matter beyond doubt — a DNA test. Mrs Rangkuti explained that this is because of the cost. To pay for the test, she would need the equivalent of more than £600, which is money that her family does not have. “I am prepared to do the test,” she said. “Because I have no doubt. My conviction is stronger than anything.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Encyclopedia.com, Library of Congress, Indonesia Tourism website (indonesia.travel), Indonesia government websites, Live Science, The Conversation, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Google AI, Wikipedia, The Guardian and various websites, books and other publications.

Last updated June 2026