Aussie surfer's Krakatoa omen came true in Sumatra

Aussie surfer's Krakatoa omen came true in Sumatra

Ahmad Pathoni, Agence France-Presse/Banda Aceh

Only days ago, Australian surfer David Lines was reading a book
about the famed 19th century eruption of Indonesia's Krakatoa
volcano, which warns the region could be hit by a giant
earthquake.

Not long after he turned the final page at the house he shares
on Sumatra island with his Indonesian wife Norma and their seven-
year-old son, the ground began the tremble and the oceans
gathered into a colossal tsunami.

Lines and his family barely escaped with their lives as they
fled the crashing waters which obliterated their home village of
Lhoknga on the western coast of Aceh and killed more than 80,000
people across Asia.

"I don't think there's even a 100-year-old man who's ever
experienced this," Lines said after bringing his family to Banda
Aceh, the semi-destroyed capital of Aceh province, close to the
epicenter of Sunday's 9.0 magnitude quake.

"The funny thing is that I just read a book on the explosion
of Krakatoa. In that book it talks about how there would be
another great earthquake."

The disturbingly similar carnage wrought by waves thrown up by
the volcano in an 1883 eruption has been documented in a recent
bestseller, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, by renowned
travel writer Simon Winchester.

Some 36,000 people died in that incident, a toll that has been
far surpassed by the magnitude 9.0 quake off Aceh, which
Winchester called "the most violent explosion ever recorded and
experienced by modern man".

"I can't believe I'd just finished reading that book," Lines
said.

The surfer, who has spent six months in Aceh every year since
1995, joined others fleeing for higher ground as the waves
struck, swallowing an entire stretch of coastline around his
home, 10 kilometers outside Banda Aceh.

"When the earthquake and tsunami hit us, we ran to the hill
with about 200 people. We stayed there and saw wave after wave
hit us," Lines said, shortly before boarding a plane to leave
Aceh.

Lines, from Sydney, said he was overwhelmed by kindness fellow
survivors showed during his family's four-day ordeal.

"Everybody was unbelievable. If you came across somebody who
had only two bottles of water, he would give it to you. There was
no hoarding. We hoarded slightly because we had a child," he
said.

"The worst thing was thinking that we would be there for more
than one week. But we moved and stayed behind a mosque," he said.
Lines said there had been a food airdrop but it missed the mark.
"They did it from way high it was like a stupid gesture so nobody
could do anything," he complained.

"My main concern was getting water for my wife and seven-year-
old son," he said.

Relief to many parts of Aceh's northwestern coast, most of
which has been isolated since the wave struck, has only just
started to arrive with reports from the damaged coastline
recounting horrifying levels of death and ruin.

tn/bjn/br

Asia-quake-Indonesia-survivor
AFP

GetAFP 2.10 -- DEC 30, 2004 15:53:27