Word: wave
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They were the iconic images of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami from Sri Lanka - the twisted hulks of eight carriages and a locomotive swept aside and tossed around like matchboxes by the killer waves. The train was packed with passengers and others who had sought refuge in them when the first wave hit Sri Lanka's southern shore. When the larger and deadlier swell struck them on the tracks, villagers estimate that as many as 1500 died inside...
...magnitude earthquake off the Indonesian coast on Dec. 26, 2004. It was a truly international catastrophe: the tsunami struck 13 countries, killing 226,000 people of 40 nationalities. Five years later, a first-time visitor to the worst-affected countries - Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand - might find the wave's terrible path hard to detect, thanks to a multinational, multi-billion-dollar reconstruction effort. Across Aceh, thousands of houses were built with foreign aid in what were once wastelands. In Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, new homes surround a 2,600-ton ship pushed a mile inland...
When I traveled to Aceh in 2005, three weeks after the wave struck, some 3,000 bodies were still being pulled from the rubble every day. Most aid-workers and journalists saw more dead in their first few days than in a lifetime of conflicts and emergencies, yet it was the living who haunted us. I will never forget a gaunt, dignified Acehnese woman called Lisdiana, who was combing the debris for any trace of her four-year-old nephew Azeel. She had dreamed he was still alive. "He's a very handsome boy," she told me, "with skin...
...town about 90 miles from Banda Aceh that was rebuilt by the Red Cross. She seemed unfazed by the prospect of another tsunami ("That's God's business. Why should I be afraid?") but is tormented by the loss of many of her relatives, including her parents, when the wave swept over their coastal village. Syamsiah had found only their bones. "It broke my heart," she sobbed. (See pictures of what was lost in the 2005 tsunami...
...pledged in aid, with an unprecedented $5.5 billion donated by the general public. Not since the Live Aid famine-relief concerts of 1985 had the world's compassion been so galvanized. At one point, Britons were donating nearly $14,000 a minute to the main tsunami relief fund. The wave slammed into Asian and east African shores, but the whole world seemed to absorb some of its impact, some of its grief. Today we can reflect upon what our overwhelming response five years ago means as we face other global emergencies: that out of nature's darkest hour can come...