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Death and rebirth: Aceh marches on, slowly, after 2004 tsunami

Two decades have passed since the deadliest earthquake and tsunami in modern history hit Indonesia’s westernmost province. Many wounds linger and are hard to heal, but Aceh has moved on, slowly but surely rising up from the disaster.

Radhiyya Indra (The Jakarta Post)
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Banda Aceh
Thu, December 26, 2024

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Death and rebirth: Aceh marches on, slowly, after 2004 tsunami A famous fishing boat in Lampulo village, Banda Aceh, Aceh, is preserved and become the village's main tourism attraction as pictured in this photo taken on Dec. 11, 2024. The boat was swept by the waves onto the roof of a house during the 2004 earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 170,000 people across Aceh. (JP/Mardili)

I

t has been 20 years, but Nurlina can still remember every second following the 10-minute earthquake that rocked Gampong Lampuuk in Aceh Besar regency.

She remembers frantically gasping for air while being swept away by waves of black water. She remembers screaming for help among floating debris. She remembers thinking, “This is it, this is the end of the world.”

Nurlina may have been lucky to see another day, but Dec. 26, 2004, marked the end of a significant part of her world, as she lost her 1-year-old son, her father and nearly every neighbor and friend in Lampuuk, where only 500 out of 6,000 village residents were left after the disaster.

“It feels like yesterday,” Nurlina, now 40, told The Jakarta Post. “I lost my family and son. The hole I felt after losing them is still there.”

Nurlina is one of the thousands of people across Aceh who experienced, and survived, the magnitude 9.2 earthquake in the Indian Ocean west of the province and the tsunami that ensued, ravaging most of the region.

The wave was recorded as reaching up to 10 meters, equivalent to a three-story building, and that it traveled at speeds up to 500 kilometers per hour.

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A map showing the epicenter of the magnitude 9.3 earthquake that triggered the tsunami that hit countries facing Indian Ocean on Dec. 26, 2004, and which left more than 220,000 people killed globally.
A map showing the epicenter of the magnitude 9.3 earthquake that triggered the tsunami that hit countries facing Indian Ocean on Dec. 26, 2004, and which left more than 220,000 people killed globally. (AFP/Gal Roma)

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