BANDA ACEH (INDONESIA): From India to Indonesia, communal prayers, shared meals and candlelight vigils were held yesterday to honour victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
For many survivors, the modest ceremonies were a time to reflect on their lives and weigh progress in rebuilding homes and communities wiped out by the killer waves that struck a dozen nations.
Mr Ibrahim Musa, a 42-year-old civil servant in the worst-hit Aceh province of Indonesia, said it felt like yesterday that his family was taken by the sea.
'Even after four years, I cannot forget how I lost hold of my wife and baby,' he said. 'I have tried in vain to look for them for three years. Now, I have no choice but to accept their departure as destiny.'
Mr Musa gathered with thousands of others along the Aceh coast, where a massive 9.2-magnitude tremor triggered the tsunami that killed around 230,000 people - more than half of them in Indonesia. The epicentre was located 9.6km under the Indian Ocean, south-east of Banda Aceh, Sumatra.
Ms Siti Hasnaini, 40, who still lives with her two sons and husband in a temporary shelter, prayed 'for my daughter who was washed away with my house'.
Homes for Ms Hasnaini and nearly 900 other families are scheduled to be completed by February, a month before the Indonesian government winds up its reconstruction mandate, said government spokesman Juanda Djamal.
Total spending has reached US$5.48 billion (S$7.9 billion). Seventy per cent has been paid out of foreign donations, and more than 124,000 houses have been built, he added.
However, many survivors still remain without homes. Some 50 of them chanted and waved placards after an Islamic prayer ceremony yesterday, demanding housing and accusing authorities of failing to look after victims.
Indonesia is also marking the anniversary with tsunami drills over the weekend at the northern end of the sprawling island of Sulawesi and on Java island, local media reported.
In Sri Lanka, the country that suffered the second-highest death toll from the tsunami, the government asked people to observe two minutes of silence in memory of the victims.
Religious services were held across the island's coastline for the estimated 31,000 people who perished there in the disaster.
Officials said the government's newly set up disaster management authority had by yesterday commissioned 25 out of 50 tsunami early warning towers planned after the disaster.
In Thailand, where an estimated 5,400 people were killed, half of them foreign tourists, hundreds of people gathered along the country's south-west coast to place wreaths, float lanterns and release over 150 sea turtles to commemorate the disaster.
In the tourist hot spot of Phuket, around 1,000 residents and tourists gathered on the main Patong Beach, with three other events held elsewhere on the island.
Thousands of candles were lit and placed in coconut shells along a 3km stretch of Kamala Beach, south of Patong, in a ceremony attended by Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya, a provincial official said.
Mrs Paulette Wyngaard and her husband, Bauke, a Dutch couple who return to Patong Beach every year to visit the spot where they survived the deadly surge, were among them.
'We were lucky to survive. Others were not as lucky,' said Mrs Wyngaard, who was pulled from the raging water by a hotel worker.
A total of 388 bodies of tsunami victims remained unidentified after four years, the Thai Tsunami Victim Identification and Repatriation Centre said on Wednesday.
In India, where thousands also perished, inter-faith prayers and a moment of silence will be held.
Meanwhile, an Australian report said the Asia-Pacific faces an era of large-scale natural disasters that could kill up to a million people at a time, with Indonesia, the Philippines and China most at risk.
The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday cited a scientific report that said the impact of natural events such as earthquakes and tsunamis would, in the coming years, be amplified by rising populations and climate change.
