KHAO LAK, Thailand // Tearful mourners lit candles yesterday to remember the almost 230,000 people who died a decade ago when tsunami waves devastated coastal areas along the Indian Ocean, in one of the worst natural disasters in human history.
On December 26, 2004, a 9.3-magnitude earthquake off Indonesia’s western tip generated a series of massive waves that pummelled the coastlines of 14 countries as far apart as Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Somalia.
Among the victims were thousands of foreign tourists enjoying Christmas on the region’s sun-kissed beaches, carrying the tragedy of an unprecedented natural disaster into homes around the globe.
In southern Thailand, where half of the 5,400 dead were holidaymakers, people recounted stories of horror and miraculous survival as the churning waters, laden with the debris of eviscerated bungalows, cars and boats, swept in without warning, obliterating resorts and villages.
A minute’s silence in the resort of Khao Lak, much of which was washed away by the towering waves, was broken by a lone trumpeter, as mourners each lit a single white candle, some sobbing as they illuminated the darkness.
Among them was a Swiss national, Katia Paulo, who lost her boyfriend on a nearby beach.
“I had my back to the ocean. My boyfriend called me. The only thing I remember is his face. I knew I had to run away, then the wave caught me,” the 45-year-old said. “I was pushed under water many times and thought it was the end.”
She called for help, only to realise the people nearby were already dead.
“I managed to hold on to a tree branch,” she said. As the waves retreated, she was six metres off the ground.
Nearby, 40-year-old Somjai Somboon was grieving for her two sons, who were ripped from their house when the waves cut into their fishing village of Ban Nam Khem.
“I remember them every day,” she said, with tears in her eyes.
“I will always miss my sons.”
Among the international commemorations, in Sweden, which lost 543 citizens to the waves, the royal family and relatives of the victims attended a memorial service in Uppsala Cathedral yesterday afternoon.
There was no warning of the impending tsunami, giving little time for evacuation, despite the hours-long gaps between the waves striking different continents.
In 2011 a pan-ocean tsunami warning system was established, made up of a network of sea gauges, buoys and seismic monitors, while individual countries have invested heavily in disaster preparedness.
But experts have cautioned against the perils of “disaster amnesia” creeping into communities vulnerable to natural disasters.
The scale of the devastation in 2004 meant nations initially struggled to mobilise a relief effort, leaving bloated bodies to pile up under the tropical sun or in makeshift morgues.
The world poured money and expertise into the relief and reconstruction, with more than US$13.5 billion (Dh49.5bn) collected in the months after the disaster.
Almost $7 billion in aid went into rebuilding more than 140,000 houses across Indonesia’s Aceh province, where most of the nation’s 170,000 victims died.
In the main city, Banda Aceh, several thousand mourners gathered in a park yesterday for the nation’s official remembrance.
It was near the epicentre of the massive undersea quake and bore the brunt of waves towering up to 35 metres high.
“Thousands of corpses were sprawled in this field,” Indonesian vice president Jusuf Kalla told the crowd, many among them weeping.
“There were feelings of confusion, shock, sorrow, fear and suffering. We prayed. And then we rose and received help in an extraordinary way,” he said, hailing the outpouring of aid from local and foreign donors.
The disaster also ended a decades-long separatist conflict in Aceh, with a peace deal between the rebels and Jakarta struck less than a year later.
Mosques held prayers across the province, while people visited mass graves – the resting place of many of Indonesia’s tsunami dead.
But a Red Cross display of hundreds of salvaged ID documents and bank cards served as grim reminder that many victims simply vanished.
* Agence France-Presse
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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Ads on social media can 'normalise' drugs
A UK report on youth social media habits commissioned by advocacy group Volteface found a quarter of young people were exposed to illegal drug dealers on social media.
The poll of 2,006 people aged 16-24 assessed their exposure to drug dealers online in a nationally representative survey.
Of those admitting to seeing drugs for sale online, 56 per cent saw them advertised on Snapchat, 55 per cent on Instagram and 47 per cent on Facebook.
Cannabis was the drug most pushed by online dealers, with 63 per cent of survey respondents claiming to have seen adverts on social media for the drug, followed by cocaine (26 per cent) and MDMA/ecstasy, with 24 per cent of people.
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UAE v Gibraltar
What: International friendly
When: 7pm kick off
Where: Rugby Park, Dubai Sports City
Admission: Free
Online: The match will be broadcast live on Dubai Exiles’ Facebook page
UAE squad: Lucas Waddington (Dubai Exiles), Gio Fourie (Exiles), Craig Nutt (Abu Dhabi Harlequins), Phil Brady (Harlequins), Daniel Perry (Dubai Hurricanes), Esekaia Dranibota (Harlequins), Matt Mills (Exiles), Jaen Botes (Exiles), Kristian Stinson (Exiles), Murray Reason (Abu Dhabi Saracens), Dave Knight (Hurricanes), Ross Samson (Jebel Ali Dragons), DuRandt Gerber (Exiles), Saki Naisau (Dragons), Andrew Powell (Hurricanes), Emosi Vacanau (Harlequins), Niko Volavola (Dragons), Matt Richards (Dragons), Luke Stevenson (Harlequins), Josh Ives (Dubai Sports City Eagles), Sean Stevens (Saracens), Thinus Steyn (Exiles)
Fifa Club World Cup quarter-final
Esperance de Tunis 0
Al Ain 3 (Ahmed 02’, El Shahat 17’, Al Ahbabi 60’)
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