Would you like to know what happened here? |
|||
 |
|||
« Previous |
Next » |
February 15th, 2005 - 07:03AM |
|
|
|||
 |
|
Photo: Kate Moxham for the IRC “Would you like to know what happened here? I’ve been here for weeks and I’m just now starting to get my mind around it.” George Friou, one of five team leaders for Indonesia's Banda Aceh area, was taking a brief break in an 18-hour workday when I arrived at the IRC’s offices. It’s my job to file a weekly situation report to Jakarta and New York and George has a team of environmental health specialists, doctors and health workers all of whom work in the Banda Aceh area. He was the first person I spoke with. “If you want to know what the IRC is doing here, first you have to know what happened,” he told me. And then he described it to me: The earthquake hit around 8 a.m. well after the muezzin’s call. The earth shook, the ground became liquid and everyone in this deeply religious community feared that the apocalypse was coming. It is said among people here that when the end of the world arrives, the sun will rise to the west and because it was a cloudy day the people left their homes and looked to see if the sun was rising over the mountains instead of over the ocean. As they searched for the sun, the shoreline receded and then, almost as quickly the tide rose some 10 feet or so and many were washed away. And then the first wave came, a rolling wall of water, dark with mud and jetsam that inundated houses and destroyed homes large and small on the beach front. It swept up the pieces of debris and used them like bullets. Wood and concrete and brick, trucks and boats shot forth like a flying junkyard. The people didn’t know what hit them. That was the first wave. And then the second wave came and hit the beach from a different direction. Because the first wave had left its residue of water, the second wave climbed on top of the first. I later spoke to a survivor who swears that the water from this wave was cold. It spat out wood and other debris and it overtook all those who thought they could outrun it with their cars and their motorbikes. It took a huge boat and deposited it on top of a house. Other boats collected atop bridges and roads. Machines were no match for the second wave and they were simply crushed. And then the third wave came, three waves in all. When the third wave came, it rolled forward and destroyed the local hospital. The nurses and doctors, most of them were killed instantly. The children in the nursery ward, they died in their little cribs. Forty-five dead children found in the nursery. It washed the bodies up in mangled piles of legs and arms. These were the waves that leveled Banda Aceh. At dusk, logistics manager Suleiman Abdul and I go out into areas that have been leveled. The area was the old port and is still being used by the IRC and other aid groups to ferry needed supplies to other parts of the country. Our teams in Calang need equipment for cleaning well water and hygiene kits and Suleiman is making sure the needed supplies will arrive. He is haggling with the boat captain and I am like a child staring out onto the deserted landscape. Little fires dot the horizon where people are squatting on the remains of their destroyed homes. I see the boat atop a building. There are mangled shards of steel and splinters of wood and concrete everywhere. Small flags mark the spots where the dead are buried. I hear the buzzing of insects. The sun is receding over distant mountains giving the appearance that the horizon is glowing. There are storm clouds over the ocean. Posted By: Greg Beals | Asia, Diaries & Journals, Tsunami Relief Permalink |
