Matt George reports from Indonesia where 429 have died and 150 are still missing after the catastrophic Sunda Strait tsunami.
DAMN THE SCIENCE for now — this is what it was like. Anak Krakatau doesn’t care if you know how to surf.
December 22, 2018
When we all saw the first wave coming, which was a little crazy at night, we thought it was the new swell coming and we all cheered. But then the wave did not stop and it got bigger — four metres, more, and then we knew and all of us wished we had our surfboards but we did not bring them to the party.
"I watched it come and I don’t know why but I smiled at it, the wave, like I smile at many waves for me, but hoping this one would leave me and my wife alone."
It didn’t. Swept into the torrent, he and his wife were headed for a gutted cottage that was still standing.
“I swam strong with my wife and grabbed the stairs and dragged us up the top. And that was when I saw the third wave and maybe I knew my luck was gone.”
Running to the back of the cottage, Diki pulled his wife up into the top of a bunk bed and waited for the end.
Diki says:
Out the window I saw many people wash by and the wave came into the house but did not reach us. Later, the river nearby seemed to be helping drain the water go away and we survived. But so many people being pulled out to sea. So many. Thank God my friends and me can surf.
For local surfers in North Java and South Sumatra, many felt the same way as Diki. Thanking their lucky stars that Saturday’s Sunda Strait Tsunami hit at night and that they knew how to swim. This is because observing local customs, they don’t night surf like a lot of Westerners do and with swimming skills extremely rare in Indonesia, the local surfers would have a distinct advantage when it comes to survival.
This last point is why the death tolls of Indonesian tsunamis are so high. Swimming is not a priority of the coastal cultures throughout the archipelago due to mythology and spiritual beliefs — which is a shame considering they live in the cross-hairs of the most active seismic roilings on the planet. And with over 17,500 islands, Indonesia has myriad bays that act as catchers' mitts for these seismic waves.
An Australian marine scientist (who chose to remain unnamed for this article for fear of government reprisal and grant cancellation) told me, however, that the ability to swim would not be that heavy a factor in a tsunami survival situation. Of course, the guy doesn’t surf and unlike myself, this scientist has not been half drowned in giant waves or witnessed two separate tsunamis first hand. So, I am here to say that being able to swim would probably be a good thing to know around here.
Alright, to the science.
Anak Krakatau, the “child” of the main volcanic island of 1883 eruption fame, has been blowing its stack lately and on 22 December, it had had enough. The devastating tsunami is suspected to have been caused by a sub-ocean landslide on the volcano’s eastern and southern slopes. The displacement of water would have been a force unimaginable to mortals and impossible to detect. Hence, absolutely no warning. And the fact that the volcano is a feature on the near horizon to most of the affected areas means there would be virtually no time to prepare. Not for the party people on the beach or those peacefully sleeping under a tropical moon. The first thing that came to mind to most of us in Bali to the south-east, was concern for our friends that might have been camped at Panaitan Island in the Sunda Strait waiting for the suicide waves of the surf break “Apocalypse” to happen.
Says Indonesian surfing champion Dede Suryana in nearby Cimaja, Java:
“ [The] Apocalypse wave should be blocked by the other islands. But we are still waiting for my friends to call from there.”
The morning after at Cerita Beach, surfer Naufel Angrenni was picking through the wreckage with rescuers when he paused and looked out to sea:
“Krakatau called me and I looked. She was telling me she will do it again. No one is strong enough to stop her. No one. Not even surfers.”
Matt George is a journalist based in Indonesia and editor-in-chief of 'Surftime' magazine.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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