At a. The epicenter is near the city of Padangsidempuan, miles northwest of Jakarta. During the course of the next ten hours, this first earthquake is followed by 15 additional quakes along the boundary between continental plates west of Sumatra.
It's the strongest earthquake the world has seen in 40 years. Tidal waves develop, racing to the west and north at speeds of up to mph. They devastate the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands, hit the coasts of Sri Lanka and India, flood the Maldives and, only hours later, unleash the remainder of their strength onto beaches in Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya, about 3, miles from the epicenter of the earthquake.
The corpses that can be identified are cremated immediately. When he heard about the catastrophe on the radio, he boarded the next flight for Thailand. His parents had been spending Christmas in Khao Lak. His father was lucky. He had returned to the hotel to fetch a camera. Vavrina's mother, 63, was sitting on the beach. The father plunged into the water to save his wife, to save other people. He was unable to save anyone, he says, "the wave was so powerful that you couldn't hold on to anyone.
After the tsunami, father and son searched local hospitals, turning over corpse after corpse. Then they found the woman they were searching for, identified her, and released her for cremation. Hundreds of corpses lie on the grounds of the Lumkuen temple in Khao Lak, and convoys of trucks keep arriving to unload more corpses. One has to be careful here not to step on charred, smoldering body parts. It's an apocalyptic, unspeakable scene. As the daylight fades, Buddhist monks walk aimlessly about the grounds.
What can they do? They're wearing polo shirts and masks over their mouths. They watch the body of the woman who was one man's wife and the other man's mother burn in the temple courtyard. For Germany, Khao Lak has become something like Ground Zero at the center of this catastrophe that has affected the entire world.
