Twenty years after the most devastating tsunami in history, survivors and relatives of the victims will gather this Thursday in the countries bordering the Indian Ocean, in tribute to the more than 220,000 people swept away by the gigantic waves which hit the ribs.
Twenty years after the deadliest tsunami in history, survivors and relatives of victims must pay their respects on Thursday in the countries of the Indian Ocean where more than 220,000 people died under the effect of the immense waves which fell on the ribs.
On December 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra caused huge waves to sweep across Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and nine other countries. the Indian Ocean, with victims as far away as Somalia.
At their maximum speed, the surges traveled at nearly 800 km/h and reached heights of up to 30 meters. “I hope we never experience something like this again.”testifies Nilawati, a 60-year-old Indonesian who lost her son and her mother in the tsunami.
“I learned how devastated one can be by the loss of a child, a pain that cannot be explained with words”she whispers. “It feels like it happened yesterday.” In total, the tsunami caused 226,408 deaths according to EM-DAT, a recognized global disaster database.
Religious ceremonies are to be held across the region as well as vigils on the beaches, where many tourists who came to celebrate Christmas in the sun have lost their lives.
In Thailand, more than 5,000 people died, half of whom were foreign tourists, and another 3,000 were reported missing.
At a hotel in Phang Nga province, an exhibition on the tsunami has been set up and a documentary is to be shown, while government and UN officials are to speak on disaster preparedness.
“Tragedy”
According to experts, the absence of a properly coordinated warning system in 2004 worsened the consequences of the disaster. Since then, some 1,400 stations around the world have reduced warning times after the formation of a tsunami to just a few minutes.
The earthquake generated waves more than 30 meters high, releasing energy equivalent to 23,000 times the power of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
The worst-hit area was the northern island of Sumatra, where more than 120,000 people were killed out of a total of 165,708 deaths in Indonesia.
In the province of Aceh, a minute of silence must be observed on Thursday before a visit to a mass grave where nearly 50,000 bodies lie and a prayer at the grand mosque in the capital, Banda Aceh.
In Sri Lanka, where more than 35,000 people have lost their lives, relatives of victims and survivors must board the Ocean Queen Express train towards Peraliya (90 km south of Colombo), where wagons had been taken away , causing around 1,000 deaths.
Religious ceremonies, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Muslim, must also be organized across the island. The waves also reached Africa, killing 300 people in Somalia, but also more than a hundred in the Maldives.
“I couldn’t stop crying.”recalls Marziani, an Indonesian teacher, who goes by one name and lost a child in the tsunami. “I felt guilty for not having been able to protect my child. This feeling of guilt haunted me for months”.
