out the back. I also hired a local guard, a couple of fixers/drivers and a chef/cleaner – Eva, whose husband had perished in the tsunami. She needed the money but never spoke of what had gone on. She had now assumed the role of provider in her family. Every night when she left, we gave her food to take away. Yet she was probably the lucky one, if you can call it that, falling on her feet by working for us.
I also renegotiated the contract for the house with the owners – the story might not be going to change, but we wouldn’t be leaving here any time soon. Equally, some mornings between 05.00 and 07.00, just after finishing for the Ten, we would still get the odd aftershock. There were eleven of us sharing what was no more than a building off the back of a flower shop. I paid up until 15 January.
By 4 January, things were getting better but only marginally so. Vehicles were now getting through regularly from Medan to Banda Aceh. I was sending back daily food lists. The convoy was also getting quicker – generally we would see it a day and a half after it had set out. On Indonesian TV there had been only sporadic coverage. We had no sense of the vast numbers of New Year holidaymakers, who, I later learned, had flown back without passports and in just their t-shirts and shorts. The world’s media now understood that Banda Aceh was where the story was – but look at how much time had passed.
The Indonesian army were starting to get their act together, even though one whole barracks had been completely wiped out. Muslim law regarding burials had long since been overlooked – the army was ‘hoovering up’ bodies and dumping them en masse in an airport hangar. More and more people were now on the streets but, everywhere you went, there was still the constant sound of wailing as individuals learned their fate. Photos of missing relatives hung off walls, holding out the most remote of hopes. By now those looking for loved ones were way past the last chance saloon, and as more prayers went daily unanswered, some sense of reality was returning – except for one thing that suddenly dawned on me.
There were no pets.
As if they’d been using that sixth sense that you sometimes hear of, where animals are tuned into weather patterns and seismic movements, there wasn’t a dog or cat in the street. That was unusual for these parts. I only realised this when a cat appeared near the BBC house. I immediately took it under my wing and named it Tsunami. This little ginger and white thing had come into our lives – but unbeknown to me, Ben Brown hated cats!
‘Get that fucking thing off the table,’ he yelled, after I had let it trough down a load of tuna.
‘Come on, Ben, it survived the tsunami,’ I replied.
It was a rare moment to break the stress and fatigue. So amused was I at this arrival in our lives, I decided to wash the bugger, covering it in shower gel. Then, borrowing one of the girls’ hairdryers, I entertained myself by drying it off and styling it.
Perhaps this was a sign that the story was moving on. There were only so many times you could hire a boat, watch the clean-up, go to a makeshift morgue and file accordingly. Every day we went out looking for that one success story – an act of goodwill or an overcoming all the odds moment. That’s what you did in Newsgathering in the days after a natural disaster. Deep down, we knew anyone trapped was dead. The story was over, but we were still here, mainly becauseit had taken so long to break in the first place. In the modern era, it really is unheard of for word to get out so slowly: that was the Banda Aceh story.
In the Central Business District of Meulaboh, we found a lone official fishing bodies out of the water with a rope and a stick. One by one, she pulled them out and checked their pockets for any chance of ID, and then she catalogued them on a clipboard. It was a thankless task but she told me that within a fortnight of the tsunami, the infrastructure
I also renegotiated the contract for the house with the owners – the story might not be going to change, but we wouldn’t be leaving here any time soon. Equally, some mornings between 05.00 and 07.00, just after finishing for the Ten, we would still get the odd aftershock. There were eleven of us sharing what was no more than a building off the back of a flower shop. I paid up until 15 January.
By 4 January, things were getting better but only marginally so. Vehicles were now getting through regularly from Medan to Banda Aceh. I was sending back daily food lists. The convoy was also getting quicker – generally we would see it a day and a half after it had set out. On Indonesian TV there had been only sporadic coverage. We had no sense of the vast numbers of New Year holidaymakers, who, I later learned, had flown back without passports and in just their t-shirts and shorts. The world’s media now understood that Banda Aceh was where the story was – but look at how much time had passed.
The Indonesian army were starting to get their act together, even though one whole barracks had been completely wiped out. Muslim law regarding burials had long since been overlooked – the army was ‘hoovering up’ bodies and dumping them en masse in an airport hangar. More and more people were now on the streets but, everywhere you went, there was still the constant sound of wailing as individuals learned their fate. Photos of missing relatives hung off walls, holding out the most remote of hopes. By now those looking for loved ones were way past the last chance saloon, and as more prayers went daily unanswered, some sense of reality was returning – except for one thing that suddenly dawned on me.
There were no pets.
As if they’d been using that sixth sense that you sometimes hear of, where animals are tuned into weather patterns and seismic movements, there wasn’t a dog or cat in the street. That was unusual for these parts. I only realised this when a cat appeared near the BBC house. I immediately took it under my wing and named it Tsunami. This little ginger and white thing had come into our lives – but unbeknown to me, Ben Brown hated cats!
‘Get that fucking thing off the table,’ he yelled, after I had let it trough down a load of tuna.
‘Come on, Ben, it survived the tsunami,’ I replied.
It was a rare moment to break the stress and fatigue. So amused was I at this arrival in our lives, I decided to wash the bugger, covering it in shower gel. Then, borrowing one of the girls’ hairdryers, I entertained myself by drying it off and styling it.
Perhaps this was a sign that the story was moving on. There were only so many times you could hire a boat, watch the clean-up, go to a makeshift morgue and file accordingly. Every day we went out looking for that one success story – an act of goodwill or an overcoming all the odds moment. That’s what you did in Newsgathering in the days after a natural disaster. Deep down, we knew anyone trapped was dead. The story was over, but we were still here, mainly becauseit had taken so long to break in the first place. In the modern era, it really is unheard of for word to get out so slowly: that was the Banda Aceh story.
In the Central Business District of Meulaboh, we found a lone official fishing bodies out of the water with a rope and a stick. One by one, she pulled them out and checked their pockets for any chance of ID, and then she catalogued them on a clipboard. It was a thankless task but she told me that within a fortnight of the tsunami, the infrastructure
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