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span class="caption">Immense grief: A woman weeps as she remembers loved ones on the eighth anniversary of the devastating tsunami in Banda Aceh. Thousands of Acehnese families lost loved ones on Dec. 26, 2004, as the tsunami hit coastal areas. JP/Hotli Simanjuntak For the Acehnese, dark memories of the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami will always linger given that the disaster took the lives of many of their relatives, friends and loved ones and wrecked havoc on their communities.

On Wednesday, the Acehnese spent time marking the Indian Ocean Boxing Day tsunami in different ways, mostly with mass prayers.

Fishermen in Lam Pulo even decided not to go out to sea, having agreed to take a day off to commemorate the eighth anniversary of the disaster to show respect to those who died.

“Eight years ago seems just like yesterday for us, but whatever the challenge, I have to move on and support my family,” said Bahtiar, a fisherman, who lost two children in the tsunami.

The tsunami, which struck Indonesia and other countries bordering the Indian Ocean, was triggered by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, leaving more than 130,000 people dead in Aceh, 37,000 missing and 500,000 others displaced.

Indonesia was the hardest-hit country in the disaster, followed by Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. The death toll, including those killed in other countries, topped 230,000.

Bahtiar was one among thousands of Acehnese who flocked to mosques to join mass prayers for loved ones who lost their lives in the tsunami.

The provincial administration focused commemoration events at Krueng Raya Aceh Port, some 32 kilometers to the east of Banda Aceh, the provincial capital.

“This is not to evoke bad memories from the past but to act more as a reflection that will help us to remain prepared for disasters,” Aceh Governor Zaini Abdulah said.

Also attending the ceremony were eight Japanese teachers who joined the event as a show of solidarity.

Jun Ogasawara, a teacher at a senior high school in Miyako, Iwate prefecture, Japan, expressed hope in his short remarks that the Acehnese would be willing to share their spirit of remembrance toward tsunami victims in Japan.

“We’re still going through our own reconstruction process. Both Indonesia and Japan lost many valuable things because of large-scale earthquakes and tsunamis. The sadness and misery probably will never be completely cured, even though time passes by,” Ogasawara said.

In Gampong Lambung, Banda Aceh, locals commemorated the day by fixing tsunami warning signs installed in the village. They did so because many of the signs indicating evacuation routes were no longer clear.

“Many are not even pointing in the right direction, so they can confuse people,” said Misbahudin, chairman of a youth team called Pelopor Siaga Bencana (Disaster Preparedness Pioneers).

The team was established in response to the failure of the government’s early warning system and disaster standard operating procedures (SOPs) when a 8.3-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Aceh on April 11.

“The [government’s] system did not work. Many people were injured because of traffic jams at every crossroad, as people were panicking,” Misbahudin said.

Learning from past experience, the people of Lambung, located not far from the beach, have prepared a disaster mitigation map if earthquakes or tsunamis hit the area in the future.

Misbahudin also expressed hope that the government would increase the reliability of its procedures and fix the early warning system so that the system would run as it was supposed to.