Syaiful Kamal: Survivor of three tsunamis

Harry Bhaskara, The Jakarta Post/Banda Aceh

Ask anyone in Aceh about the tsunami, and the chances are you will get his or her personal account of it.

One Aceh resident says that he gave his children five minutes to eat breakfast before they fled to safety.

"After my kids finished their breakfast we jumped into our car and left the house in panic," said Syaiful Kamal, relating his story on that fateful Sunday morning on Dec. 26.

A life and death race ensued before Syaiful landed his family in Lambaro near Banda Aceh Airport, which was not affected by the giant waves. His wife and four children were safe.

"The giant waves were behind us virtually all the way," Syaiful said recently, relieved now that the incident is six months behind them.

Asked why he spent five minutes eating breakfast before fleeing, Syaiful replied that his children went hungry for some time the last time they were hit by a tsunami.

"I just wanted to make sure that they wouldn't go hungry this time around," he told The Jakarta Post and visiting journalists from Australia, supported by the Asia Pacific Journalism Center.

Syaiful said he had experienced a total of three tsunamis, with the Aceh tsunami being the last.

"There was no food for days during my second tsunami experience, hence the memory stuck; my kids ought to have food before we go," he said.

Syaiful, who happened to be the head of the telecommunications office (Telkom) in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam at the time of the tsunami, said he experienced his first tsunami when he was posted to Papua.

"It was in 1996 or 1997," he said.

The second tsunami he went through was when he was stationed in Flores in 1999.

Asked if he could transfer his skills to survive a tsunami to others, Syaiful said it was not that easy.

"I often didn't know what to do until it was very late. Like when I told my kids to have their breakfast," he said.

The Aceh earthquake occurred at 07:58 in the morning, he said, and the tsunami came 22 minutes later.

Described by his subordinates as a hard worker, Syaiful's priority in each of those tsunamis was telecommunications. When he stopped in Lambaro, near Banda Aceh Airport, during the last tsunami, it was at a Telkom office. It was from here that he painstakingly started restoring the ravaged telecommunications network in the province.

"He traveled a lot, often leaving behind his family for days," one of his co-workers says.

Half of all telephone lines in the province were brought down by the tsunami, he said, and he needed three months to restore them.

"Now it's almost 100 percent restored. It is always a little less than a hundred percent because every time there is an earthquake another adjustment is needed," he said.

Minor earthquakes continue to rock Aceh every two or three days.

Following the tsunami, he said, he couldn't find about a third of his former telephone line customers.

Eleven of his 100 co-workers went missing and 77 of them suffered from trauma, Syaiful said.

Asked where he will be posted next, he said: "Our headquarters in Jakarta has decided to maintain me here. If they move me somewhere else, they are afraid there will be a tsunami in that place."