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Journalism of Courage
Rudi Kurniawan remembered the last time he heard his father8217;s voice.
It was 10 minutes after the earthquake shook Kurniawan8217;s second-floor apartment in the city of Banda Aceh on the north-western tip of Sumatra on December 26.
His father called on the telephone from his home in Meulaboh, 120 miles to the south-west. 8216;8216;Are you OK?8217;8217; his father asked. 8216;8216;We8217;re OK,8217;8217; Kurniawan replied. Nothing had happened to the house.
Then, a click of the phone. That was it. Neither father nor son knew at that moment that monstrous waves would soon overwhelm both cities, and life would never be the same.
Kurniawan, a baby-faced 26-year-old engineer who loves computers and John Grisham novels, escaped from his apartment in Banda Aceh with his sister, stopping only to free a girl lodged up against his apartment building behind a boat.
Kurniawan left his sister with a friend, and finally caught a ride in a car from Banda Aceh to Medan, the nearest unscathed big city about 120 miles, to the south-east. From there, he took refuge at a friend8217;s house and began a search for his parents that mirrors hundreds of thousands of searches taking place across South Asia. Kurniawan tried to call his parents several times, but had no idea whether his home or the phone existed.
He camped at the airport in Medan for days, trying to get a flight home, but few planes were flying.He pored over an aerial photograph in a newspaper showing the town8217;s devastation to determine id his family8217;s home was still standing.
He prepared himself for the worst, imagining his father, a government bureaucrat, and his mother, who teaches at a medical school, already dead and gone. But on Saturday, at the airport, Kurniawan met a Boston Globe reporter and a group of humanitarian aid workers. And on Sunday, he accompanied them on a flight to Blangpidie, a town with the closest airport to Meulaboh, and a centre of relief activities.
Kurniawan met a woman from his neighborhood. Kurniawan bent down and drew a map of his neighborhood in the dirt, and asked her if his parents might still be alive. 8216;8216;My friend tells me that my home is gone, but that there was time for them to run,8217;8217; he said after talking to her. One man told him to stop hoping, but another told him his parents might still be alive and gave him a list of makeshift refugee camps.
A few hours later, Kurniawan, the Globe reporter, and a translator made the two-hour drive to Meulaboh in the car of a businessman who had just been there to pick up survivors from his own family.
He asked the driver to stop at a wooden house on the outskirts, the home of his grandfather8217;s brother. There, he asked two women about his parents, and then a smile flashed across his face 8212; They were alive.
Twenty minutes later, he stood in front of his family8217;s home, the door flung off its hinges, a water mark higher than the chandelier. His father stood in the doorway, stunned, and they embraced. His mother moaned quietly on the stairs, which ascended over a living room of ankle-deep mud.
Slowly, each one told the story of survival 8212; how his father was buying seeds when the earthquake and tsunami struck, and how he saw people running down the street in such a hurry that some had not bothered to put on any clothes. He, too, ran and escaped.
His wife had been cleaning the house. She ran outside and tried to climb in a car, but there were too many people in it, so she ran. They found each other at hospital and rejoiced, but eventually learned Banda Aceh, home to their children, had also been struck. 8212;NYT News Service
