I could never understand why over a quarter million people died in the Boxing Day Tsunami in Sumatra. I was on a small island off the west coast of Thailand when it happened, and the destruction was pretty amazing, but the death toll never reached the proportions that it did in Indonesia. And now I know why.
Banda Aceh sits in the middle of a wide, flat plane that is surrounded by an arc of dormant volcanos, effectively forming a half-ring along the coast, in the center of which sits Banda Aceh. The arc of mountains is aligned so that the epicenter of the earthquake that caused the tsunami happened to be directly in front of the ring. The power of the waves that flattened the city must have been phenomenal, while the enclosing mountains ensured that the water level continued to rise as subsequent waves crashed to shore.
Banda is an interesting town today, if only for playing "spot the aid organization logos", which are everywhere, labeling everything. It is pretty much all cleaned up, but there is still a lot of construction to be done. The surprising thing was how empty it felt. Indonesia is a fairly crowded country, but Banda felt positively deserted by local standards. I couldn't figure out if that was because Banda Aceh sits at the very tip of the most western part of Indonesia, or if 250,000 people were missing from daily life.
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