Twenty years after the Indian Ocean tsunami devastated Banda Aceh, Budi Permana, a survivor, recounts the harrowing experience and his enduring search for his wife, lost in the disaster.
Budi Permana was struck as his wife prepared their family's Sunday breakfast. In minutes, the calm of a Boxing Day morning was ripped apart, the couple and their baby daughter swept away when their house collapsed as a black wall of seawater barreled through the city of Banda Aceh in Indonesia. Waves, unleashed by a 9.1 magnitude earthquake, had hurtled across the Indian Ocean at up to 500 mph, close to the speed of a passenger jet plane.
was unleashed on unsuspecting communities, Mr Permana was churned through 16ft waves “like a washing machine”.Speaking ahead of the 20th anniversary of the disaster, Mr Permana, 52, told“I saw people struggling with their lives, people spinning by, children. Old men, old women.” Budi Permana holding his three-year-old niece Tasya Syhira (right), who died in the tsunami, and his wife Cut Sylvia with their daughter Siti Anya Laquisha (left), who also died (Photo: Supplied) It is estimated that the energy released by the quake was equivalent to 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs. Mr Permana and his wife Cut Sylvia, 49, survived – he later woke up in a morgue after rescuers took him for one of the countless dead bodies that filled the streets.The grief-stricken father still searches for her sometimes as he holds on to hope that she might one day return. “Still now, if I see who I think looks like my daughter. I ask them their name, where they live. Everything about her,” he said. On 26 December 2004, the devastating earthquake struck off the west coast of Sumatra, triggering a deadly wave of billions of tonnes of seawater that slammed into coastal areas across Asia for thousands of miles. Banda Aceh was devastated by the Boxing Day 2004 earthquake and tsunami (Photo: Bay Ismoyo /AFP via Getty Images) Around 230,000 people died as the tsunami levelled villages, ports and tourist resorts in Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka and neighbouring countrie
TSUNAMI INDONESIA SURVIVOR EARTHQUAKE DISASTER
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