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.
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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