BOP 2006 > Still Photography Winners > Natural Disaster Single 2005
- 2nd
00011006-DSR-Tsunami-002: Tsunami aftermath Indonesia.1.1.2005. "Helping hand". A survivor is given a helping hand getting of a boat on arrivel to Banda Aceh. She was amongst survivors picked up by boats from the islands and along the coastline outside Aceh.
Picture is made in January 2005 and in December 2005.
On the 26th of December 2004 an earthquake appeared 150 miles of the Aceh coast situated in western Sumatra, Indonesia. The quake created several huge Tsunamis (seismic sea waves). The deadly waves would strike the coastlines in the Asian region with a speed up to 500 miles pr hour. Everywhere the Tsunamis left death and destruction. More than 225.934 were killed in the affected countries. The Aceh province in Sumatra was the most affected area in the Asian region with 165.708 people killed, and 532.708 had been left without housing.
I arrived in Aceh on the 1 of January 2005. The areas close to the coastline were severely damaged by the giant waves. Housing areas flattened. What were left of Aceh were debris, dirty seawater and the smell of death and silence.
Some survivors wearing masks to keep out the smell were in state of total chock; many of them had lost their loved ones. They were waiting to get out of the area into camps.
During my stay I only saw very few civilians come back to enter the hardest affected areas of Aceh. Mostly teams of soldiers and young boys working in groups came into the area to pick up dead bodies among the debris and from the river where hundreds of bodies were floating.
The few civilians who went into the disaster area would carefully look amongst the debris to find anything left from the lives that they had before the tsunami.
I returned to Aceh in December 2005. Many of the survivors had returned to their land where their houses once had been. Only 20.000 houses have been rebuilt out of the 120.000 houses that are needed therefore many people still have to live in tents. There is little work to get in the area and many people have still not recovered from the tragic personal losses. However the situation is slowly getting better.
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