Hardcore New Zealand surfers rode a wave of terror as earthquake struck
Hardcore New Zealand surfers rode a wave of terror as earthquake struck
Victor Tjahjadi, Agence France-Presse/Gunung Sitoli
Hardcore New Zealand surfers Bevan Carr and Mark Thorn are used to traveling to the ends of the earth to find its last secret beaches, but when a massive earthquake struck a remote Indonesian island this week, they were frightened they would never make it back.
"We were thinking, 'Oh my God, what's coming our way?'," said Carr, 31, recalling the moment the magnitude-8.7 tremor exploded in waters close to the remote beach of Afulu on the northwestern tip of Nias island.
Nias is a magnet for adventurous surfers, boasting some of the most thrilling ocean rides, unspoilt by mainstream tourism.
But Carr and 30-year-old Thorn were among only a handful of surfers to have ridden waves at Alufu, where powerful world-class breakers crash onto unspoilt coral reefs. They were the only foreigners in the area during Monday's quake.
Despite years of experience ripping through terrifying walls of water on a fiberglass board, for Carr, the seismic shockwave was the most horrifying thing he had ever experienced.
"No doubt!" he told AFP, shortly after completing an arduous six-hour motorcycle ride along quake-buckled roads to the main Nias port of Gunung Sitoli, from where he and Thorn hoped to catch a plane home.
Behind the fear was the knowledge that three months earlier, another powerful quake had unleashed the Indian Ocean tsunami, which went on to kill 270,000 people on shorelines around the region.
"It was the actual violence of the event itself, just the terror of the villagers saying that this quake was much bigger that the last one. And considering the size of the last tsunami, we thought 'this is it, we're going to get one any minute now'."
As the walls of the house the skinny surfer and his friend were sharing with an Indonesian family came crashing down around them, they joined villagers dashing for higher ground in blind panic.
"I picked up one of the kids of the family we were living with, and we just started running for the high ground in the dark," he said.
"Even now, just the noise of it, I can't get it out of my head. You know when your next to a train track when a train is going past, it's kind of similar to that but just amplified." Carr described how he, Thorn and one of his Indonesian hosts clung to each other for safety.
"The three of us were all holding on to each other and struggling to stay on our feet. It was terrifying."
After the tremor subsided, Carr and Thorn spent two days with the villagers of Alufu, at least 20 of whom died in the quake, trying to find out more information about what had happened and if it was possible to get out.
Unwilling to risk more than a few minutes in their badly damaged house, they sprinted in to retrieve passports and money, eventually embarking on their trek back to Gunung Sitoli with just the scruffy shorts and t-shirts on their backs.
"Before we left we went down and had a last look at the local beach, and we noticed the water had gone at least 200 metres (yards) farther out to sea than it was originally.
"The reef was sticking out of the water in a place that we didn't know there was reef before. It was absolutely mind blowing what has happened there. The earth moved."
Although they were relieved to be out of Alufu and able to call their friends and family to let them know they were safe, Bevan said the experience had not dampened his enthusiasm for the village's surf nor destroyed his bonds with its residents.
"No doubt about it, we'll be back, not only for surfing, but for our friends," he said.
vt-bjn/lh/jah Asia-quake-NZealand-surfers AFP
GetAFP 2.10 -- APR 1, 2005 08:23:58