Moving ceremonies began Thursday in several Asian countries to mark the 20th anniversary of the deadliest tsunami in history, which killed more than 220,000 people the day after Christmas.
On December 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra caused huge waves that swept across Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and nine other countries in the Indian Ocean, with victims as far away as Somalia.
At their maximum speed, the surges traveled at nearly 800 km/h and were up to 30 meters high.
In Indonesia's Aceh province, where around 100,000 people were killed, the Baiturrahman Grand Mosque kicked off a series of commemorations across Asia, with a three-minute-long siren at the exact time of the disaster, followed by prayers.
In Aceh's capital, Banda Aceh, survivors and relatives of the victims are to participate in a ceremony around a mass grave and a night prayer at the grand mosque. Other religious ceremonies and beach vigils are to be held in Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand.
“I thought it was the end of the world,” said Hasnawati, a 54-year-old teacher at the mosque which was also damaged by the tsunami.
“One Sunday morning, while our family was all laughing together, a disaster struck and everything disappeared. I don't have the words.”
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In total, the tsunami caused 226,408 deaths according to EM-DAT, a recognized global disaster database.
The most affected area was the north of the island of Sumatra, where more than 120,000 people died out of a total of 165,708 deaths in Indonesia.
“I hope we never experience something like this again,” says Nilawati, a 60-year-old Indonesian who lost her son and mother in the tsunami.
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“I learned how devastated one can be by the loss of a child, a suffering that cannot be explained with words,” she breathes. “It’s like it happened yesterday.”
“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.
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The earthquake released energy equivalent to 23,000 times the power of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
In Thailand, more than 5,000 people died, half of them foreign tourists, and another 3,000 were 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.
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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.
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“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 being able to protect my child. This feeling of guilt haunted me for months.
