Destruction
I'm writing this laying in bed, under the mosquito net and my outside screened window is opened. It's 6am and I can't sleep any more. My time clock is still messed up and it seems my body is taking a long time to adjust. Some rooster is crowing and fortunately the mosque is some distance away and I could barely hear the Imam calling out the morning Islamic prayer. It's hot and humid and the only air-conditioning I've been in since being in Banda Aceh is when we get in the car for the 5 minute ride to the VSAT internet cafe. Once there we're in a tent and even though it's open it gets hot and we're basically outside all day long helping people use the system and get their email.
I'm staying in a typical Indonesia house with limited water and the typical bak. So, to bathe you stand in the tiled bathroom and dip water from the bak and dump it over you. It's cold water and it actually feels pretty good after cooking all day in a tent.
More on the after-shock -
The aftershock was pretty strong. The floor was moving around and rolling for about 20-30 seconds. We didn't react right away but it seemed to increase in intensity and we started for the door. Within minutes we could hear people outside walking down the street. The night jaga (watchman) pounded on our door and said that we must leave and go to higher ground. We got our shoes on and grabbed a few things. I got my GPS so I could track our location and get back if we got lost.
Our car and driver were gone so the only option we had was to walk somewhere. By the time figured out what we were going to do, someone said we didn't need to go after all and we went back in the house. We talked about how this might be a good opportunity for robbers to get into houses.
I asked our driver what he did. He said he and his wife were very afraid and they used the car to head toward higher ground. The streets were jammed with traffic and people were panicking. These people have been through so much and they are very much traumatized(he actually used that word). He personally lost several relatives in the tsunami.
When we drove out through the devastated areas, I was stunned by the huge areas of waste and ruin. Cement foundations lay bare with grotesquely twisted rebar clearly showing the direction of flow. Anyone caught up in that awful washing machine of tumbling, churning water was either drowned or crushed by the huge amount of debris. There are several small rivers and drainage canals and our driver said they were full of floating dead. Bodies were lying along streets and it’s unimaginable what it must have been like to not only see the physical destruction, but the human carnage. These people experienced the fourth largest earthquake ever recorded followed by an unprecedented tsunami, then had to view the massive loss of life.
I'm staying in a typical Indonesia house with limited water and the typical bak. So, to bathe you stand in the tiled bathroom and dip water from the bak and dump it over you. It's cold water and it actually feels pretty good after cooking all day in a tent.
More on the after-shock -
The aftershock was pretty strong. The floor was moving around and rolling for about 20-30 seconds. We didn't react right away but it seemed to increase in intensity and we started for the door. Within minutes we could hear people outside walking down the street. The night jaga (watchman) pounded on our door and said that we must leave and go to higher ground. We got our shoes on and grabbed a few things. I got my GPS so I could track our location and get back if we got lost.
Our car and driver were gone so the only option we had was to walk somewhere. By the time figured out what we were going to do, someone said we didn't need to go after all and we went back in the house. We talked about how this might be a good opportunity for robbers to get into houses.
I asked our driver what he did. He said he and his wife were very afraid and they used the car to head toward higher ground. The streets were jammed with traffic and people were panicking. These people have been through so much and they are very much traumatized(he actually used that word). He personally lost several relatives in the tsunami.
When we drove out through the devastated areas, I was stunned by the huge areas of waste and ruin. Cement foundations lay bare with grotesquely twisted rebar clearly showing the direction of flow. Anyone caught up in that awful washing machine of tumbling, churning water was either drowned or crushed by the huge amount of debris. There are several small rivers and drainage canals and our driver said they were full of floating dead. Bodies were lying along streets and it’s unimaginable what it must have been like to not only see the physical destruction, but the human carnage. These people experienced the fourth largest earthquake ever recorded followed by an unprecedented tsunami, then had to view the massive loss of life.
posted by Dave Ketcham at 10:25 PM
1 Comments:
Wow, those photos are pretty shocking. So much damage and distruction two months after the event. Keep us updated. We enjoy reading your blog.
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