A 9.1-magnitude quake near Sumatra island on December 26, 2004 caused the biggest faultline fracture ever recorded, pushing giant waves into the sky and killing more than 220,000 people in 14 countries.
The sight overwhelmed Djafaruddin, a 69-year-old who like many Indonesians goes by one name, as he embarked on a voluntary mission to retrieve fellow locals.
“It is just unimaginable that this could happen. It was as though this was the end of the world,” he said.
He returned to where he pulled dead bodies out of the debris after the giant waves indiscriminately swept away the old and the young.
“This is where corpses laid, mixed with woods carried by the currents,” he said at a corner near Banda Aceh’s Baiturrahman Grand Mosque, where he collected the bodies of at least 40 victims.
“I saw children, picking them up as if they were still alive, just to find them limp and lifeless.”
‘Fathers, mothers cried’
Indonesia was the worst-hit country with more than 160,000 killed, although the true death toll was thought to be higher as many bodies were never recovered or identified.
