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Welcome to Creep Radio, where we dive deep into the dark, the bizarre and the unexplained. Dim the lights and lock your doors.
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Prepare to get creeped out. Because the unknown is calling, and we’re about to answer.
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I’m your host, the Master of Creep.
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Welcome back, my little creepies. Today we’re gonna talk about a 2004 disaster. It was the Indian Ocean earthquake in tsunami. Now a tsunami is a series of waves in a body of water caused by the deplacement of large volumes of water generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanoes eruptions, and other underwater explosions below and above the water have all been known to cause a tsunami. Another cause is landslides. Sometimes a volcano eruption will cause a landslide to slip into the ocean, which generally causes a super tsunami, the extra big ones. The country of Japan experiences more tsunamis than any other country. In fact, that’s where the name tsunami originated. It translates into harbor wave because that’s what it looked like. It was a big wave in the harbor. But they didn’t know at the time that these waves can go clear across the ocean many thousands of kilometers, and they reach very high speeds, several hundred kilometers per hour. On december twenty sixth at 7 58 AM in Sumatra, Indonesia, there was a huge tsunami at following an earthquake. Now this is a story of a 38-year-old fisherman who lived through this. His name was Muhammad. Now Mohammed speaks Indonesian, so as he tells his story, of course, we have converted it into English. My name is Mohammed, and I was born on the island of Sumatra, which is the largest island in western Indonesia. It’s the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory. In fact, Sumaltra is the sixth largest island in the world. I work on a boat and catch tuna using pole and line. This is known as one by one fishing. Indonesia produces about 16% of the world’s supply of tuna each year. This puts Indonesia as the world’s top tuna exports along with Japan. Fishing tuna pole and line is different from what you might think. Pole in line means that we use live bait. We throw the bait fish overboard and spray the water to attract schools of tuna. Then each fisherman uses a single pole with a barbless hook. So we hook the tuna and we pull them into the ship. The tuna falls off the hook as soon as the tension is released. This all happens within about two or three seconds. We fish for tuna year round, however, October through December is usually a very slow time of year. Some of the fishermen take these months off because they can find work on shore that actually pays better. On December the 26th, early in the morning, I was scheduled to work at the dry dock repairing boats that were pulled out of the water for their annual inspection. I was in my home at Banda Achi getting ready to go to work when I felt the ground shaking. Well I knew right away that this was an earthquake, and it was a big one too. I also knew that the big wave would soon hit us. I had to get my wife and three kids out of here quick and move to higher ground. There were the five of us and we only had transportation from a small scooter that I used to go back and forth to work. We had a few pets and some chickens, but they would all have to be on their own. We had very little time, and the kids were still in bed. I yelled at the kids, get up quickly. We need to move now. There was no way that we were all gonna fit on the scooter, so I put my oldest son who was sixteen in charge of his two sisters who were twelve and eight years old. They all barely fit on the scooter, and I told him to drive as fast as he could to the mountains. You must get to high grounds. You only have a few minutes, now go. We didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye. Just go. The two girls were crying and of course my son was scared. My son asked, What are you and Mom going to do? And I said I don’t know yet, but you need to go now fast. And I watched as they started the scooter and drove off. My wife wanted to go and get her mother, and I didn’t know it at the time, but the earthquake was measured at 9.3 on the Richter scale, and it happened only about a hundred and ten miles away. The tsunami was only sixteen minutes from us, and I knew it was going to be fast, but I didn’t realize it at the time just how soon it would hit. By the time we got the children up and dressed and out the door, we had already used eight minutes, so we only had about eight or nine minutes left before the first wave hit. As with all tsunamis, the first wave isn’t the biggest. However, by the time the third wave hit, it was more than a hundred feet high. The wave hit the shoreline. Between the waves the sea would level out and recede and suck everything that wasn’t attached to the ground out to sea, including people. My wife and I ran to her mother’s house so that we could get her out. But she wasn’t going to leave. She claimed that the water wasn’t going to reach very high. At this point I got into an argument with my wife. I told her we don’t have time to argue with your mother. We need to leave now. My wife said no, we need to get her out of here. This is where I separated from my wife. I told her I’m leaving, we have to run. We didn’t even have a scooter, we were on our own. I was terrified and fully expected to die that day, especially after I got a few hundred yards down the street and turned around, and I saw the first wave approaching the island. It looked to be about three miles offshore, and from a distance it didn’t really look too big and till I saw it hit one of the ships in the harbor. It picked the ship up and flipped it upside down and rolled it over like it was a toy. Then I knew I was doomed. I started running as fast as I could, and looking back every few seconds, I stopped running to catch my breath and I watched the first wave hit the shore. At this point I was about a mile inland, and I had an advantage point that allowed me to see the wave as it crashed over a lot of the small huts that were near the shoreline. I knew that hundreds of people were probably dying. I thought about my wife. She was probably still arguing with her mother, and each wave that hit it hit bigger and bigger. She was stubborn, and it will probably mean their death. Looking back on all of this, I realized that the last time that I was with my wife was during an argument. But you know you can only help someone to a certain point, and they must be willing to put in the effort to want to live. I didn’t have the answer for my wife and her mother. My solution was to run and to run now, but they didn’t agree with me, and now they are gone. I finally reached high ground. After running about a mile, I hitched a ride on the back of a truck that was also escaping the tsunami. This probably saved my life. Finally, I felt for the first time since this all started that I was probably going to live. We raced up the hillside, picking up other stranded people who were also running. The truck stopped on a hill where we could watch the horror unfold beneath us. I lost count of the waves, but I noticed that they were getting smaller and smaller each time. The first few waves did the most damage and killed more than 230,000 people in fourteen different countries. People, cars, trucks, buses, entire buildings were swept out to sea. Most of the people were killed by debris, pinning them against trees and cars, large rocks and buildings with millions of pounds of pressure. A very large fishing boat was sitting on the landscape about a thousand yards inland. All in all, the entire disaster took about two and a half hours for the sea to return to its normal level. Of course, I, along with everybody else, was in shock of the amount of damage that had taken place. It turns out that the decision to send the kids ahead of us was the right choice. It saved their lives. My decision to separate from my wife saved my life. Unfortunately, her decision to stay and try to convince her mother to leave turned out to be her death. The day after the tsunami, I walked back home, and our home wasn’t there anymore. In fact, it was hard to tell exactly where our home stood. The land looked totally different, and there wasn’t anything left. My children arrived about noon the next day and I had to inform them that their mother was missing. I told them that she refused to leave her mother, who was determined to stay in her home. It was a happy reunion and a sad reunion all at the same time. Fast forwarding one year later, we rebuilt our home using some of the slabs of concrete stones and other debris left behind. Truc from the airport supplied us with food and water and gave us tents so that we could have a place to sleep at night while we rebuilt our home. My oldest son helped rebuild our home and then left for the mainland and now has a job there. I don’t blame him for leaving. If I didn’t have a family, I would have also left the island. But fishing is all I know, so I decided to stay and rebuild. My wife and her mother were never found. We set up a memorial for them in our home. I know that the waves killed them. I only hope that it was a quick death. After the tsunami, the entire world responded. Many countries responded to the disaster by sending life-saving aid, food and water and supplies. Japan gave everything they had, and because of them we were reable to build our island. The United Nations and World Health Organization also helped a lot. The tsunami killed a lot of people. However, the aftermath killed even more. Thousands of people were injured and left homeless. But after that, sickness set in and many people died from flu like symptoms. It was later called tsunami flu, and it is believed that many people ingested seawater that contained organisms that made them sick. Also, malaria broke out in many of the areas causing even more deaths. I don’t think that anybody knows exactly how many people died in this event, but it was probably close to 500,000 people. At the time we did not have an early warning system, but now we do. But I would like to leave you with this one thought. If you find yourself at the shoreline enjoying the beach, and you see the water rushing out to sea, it’s time to run.
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