There is this shout that still keeps ringing in my ears: "Run!! The water's coming!!"

Sunday morning began hotter than usual -- the sun was really bright at just 7:50 a.m. At home I was enjoying coffee and reading the local daily Serambi Indonesia. Sunday is when young people head for Ulee Lhee beach, only five kilometers from the town. After swimming they would usually have a picnic on the beach with food from home.

Ulee Lhee Beach before the tsunami

Suddenly my newspaper shook in my hands, and the shaking became increasingly stronger. I ran out of the house with my two younger siblings -- along with neighbors. We shouted His name -- La illaha illallah (There is no God but Allah). The quake got stronger and we clutched on to one another. Water in the gutters shook and spilled over.

The shouts grew louder amid the sound of a tree cracking, ready to crash. Neighbors hugged one another, some crying. This lasted for several minutes. It left cracked walls and pale faces. No one went into their homes. We live about six kilometers from the beach.

Desolated women after the quake

Half an hour later another quake occurred and everyone was hysterical, though it was of a lesser strength. I felt very worried. Quakes are common in Aceh, but not like the first.
I wanted to see the situation outside -- and shortly after passed thousands of people shrieking in panic.

"Run!! The water is coming!!"

People were moving in all sorts of vehicles heading out of town. Everyone was carrying a bundle of clothing or rice. Screams and crying infants filled the air.
I rushed home; there were other, lesser tremors and we remained outside.

I ventured out at 11 a.m.; God, the whole town, every corner, was a devastating ruin. I learnt later of the wave, the tsunami that must have hit the entire town of Banda Aceh, because there was no water left -- just black, knee-high, mud.
In the Lamteumen district near the beach, all homes had been crushed by the wall of water. There were several bodies lodged between planks of wood inside the houses.

Only then did I realize this was really serious. There were more and more bodies, likely killed in the wave, not the earthquake. Further away in the nearby area of Peuniti, hundreds of corpses were lined up along the road near the Krueng Aceh river.

It was all chaos. Everyone was in a state of panic. Aceh's capital had been entirely destroyed, with dozens of bodies lying around the front of Baitur Rahman mosque, the town's landmark and the pride of its townspeople. Fishing boats had suddenly emerged, stranded in the middle of the town brought in by the wave -- while dozens of vehicles were wrecked.

Baitur Rahman Mosque before and after the tsunami

In just a few minutes thousands had lost their families. This must be what Judgment Day looks like, with hysterical screams and thousands of people looking for their loved ones, everywhere.

I was absolutely sure that these bodies included the youth who would have been playing by the beach, fishermen, residents living up to at least two kilometers away from the coast, passengers of speedboats heading for the tourist destination of Weh island -- and I shivered at the thought.

One survivor said the wall of water coming out of the sea toward him reached up to 25 meters. He said he hugged a pillar of his house. The rest of it was gobbled up by the wave. He still has his wife, but lost his grandmother. Another local had escaped with his family in a car, only to get trapped in the giant wave. He lost his wife and two children.

Back home, we spent the night in the dark, in the terror of more tremors and the waves. Once every hour a tremor reoccurred and we ran outside.

The rest has been told. Until now we are always listening, always on the alert. For we fear we may not save ourselves if we don't hear the signals that we must watch out for.
Nani left Banda Aceh "to seek solace," she told a friend, and then headed for Medan in North Sumatra. Before that she tried to track down her media colleagues, asking everyone who knew them, and sent news of who was missing, who was safe and who had lost relatives. From Medan she wrote in an e-mail, "Again, I've been permitted to rejoin all of you (she was feared to be lost forever when joining an attempt to free cameraman Ferry Santoro from members of the Free Aceh Movement in May). Thank you for your support and prayers. This is all very terrifying for me; but I will return to Aceh, if only to cover what is left."

Ulee Lhee Beach Aftermath

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South East Asia Earthquake and Tsumani / Dec.30th, 2004aA

After the eathquake and the tsunami which followed, the death toll has jump to mothan 120,000 people across southern Asia, after Indonesia reported that nearly 80,000 people were killed in that country alone.
U.N. relief workers arrived in Indonesia's Aceh province Thursday to find devastation in the region closest to the epicenter of the earthquake that spawned the killer tsunamis.
Emergency workers reported that in some parts of Aceh, as many as one in every four citizens was dead.
Scenes of destruction -- homes and businesses flattened, buses tossed about like toys, piles of rubble filling the streets -- were repeated across the region, as were the scenes of grief -- residents and vacationers searching in vain for loved ones, or, at times, finding them in makeshift morgues.
Aceh province, nearly inaccessible in the best of times because of its remoteness and the presence for years of an armed insurgency, was even more cut off after Sunday's disaster.
The events began just before 7 a.m. (midnight GMT Saturday) when a massive earthquake -- at magnitude 9.0, the strongest in the world since 1964 -- struck just 160 kilometers (100 miles) off Aceh's coast.
The tsunami swamped shores, villages, the jungle and Aceh's capital, Banda Aceh, which was nearly destroyed.

South East Asia Earthquake and Tsumani / Dec.26th, 2004
IAbout 8,000 people have been killed across southern Asia in massive sea surges triggered by the strongest earthquake in the world for 40 years.
The 8.9 magnitude quake struck under the sea near Aceh in north Indonesia, generating a wall of water that sped across thousands of kilometres of sea.
More than 3,200 died in Sri Lanka, 2,400 in Indonesia and 2,000 in India. Casualty figures are rising over a wide area, including tourist resorts on Thailand packed with holidaymakers. 12/26/2005