The tsunami that forever haunts Budi Permana struck as his wife prepared their family’s Sunday breakfast.
In minutes, the calm of a Boxing Day morning was ripped apart, the couple and their baby daughter swept away when their house collapsed as a black wall of seawater barreled through the city of Banda Aceh in Indonesia.
Waves, unleashed by a 9.1 magnitude earthquake, had hurtled across the Indian Ocean at up to 500 mph, close to the speed of a passenger jet plane.
As one of the deadliest disasters in recorded history was unleashed on unsuspecting communities, Mr Permana was churned through 16ft waves “like a washing machine”.
Battling to stay alive, he saw dozens of people including children being carried to their deaths in an apocalyptic scene.
Speaking ahead of the 20th anniversary of the disaster, Mr Permana, 52, told The i Paper: “We saw people being washed away by a giant cobra of water.
“I saw people struggling with their lives, people spinning by, children. Old men, old women.”
It is estimated that the energy released by the quake was equivalent to 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs.
Mr Permana and his wife Cut Sylvia, 49, survived – he later woke up in a morgue after rescuers took him for one of the countless dead bodies that filled the streets.
But they have never found the body of their 13-month-old daughter, Siti Anya Laquisha.
The grief-stricken father still searches for her sometimes as he holds on to hope that she might one day return.
“Still now, if I see [someone] who I think looks like my daughter. I ask them their name, where they live. Everything about her,” he said.
On 26 December 2004, the devastating earthquake struck off the west coast of Sumatra, triggering a deadly wave of billions of tonnes of seawater that slammed into coastal areas across Asia for thousands of miles.
Around 230,000 people died as the tsunami levelled villages, ports and tourist resorts in Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka and neighbouring countries.
More than half of those killed were in Aceh, a province on the island of Sumatra, and the closest point of land to the earthquake’s epicentre.
Survivors, like Mr Permana, endured the trauma of losing their loved ones while facing an unprecedented clear-up after their homes, towns and cities were levelled.
At the time of the quake, the family-of-three were at home along with other relatives who had stayed the night at their house.
The first warnings of something catastrophic taking place came as tremors from the earthquake shook at around 7am.
“I was sleeping at that time. My wife woke up earlier than me and she was making breakfast for me and my family,” Mr Permana said.
“The earthquake happened and she went straight away into my room to wake up me and my daughter.”
After shocks continued to rock the home. About 45 minutes later, panicked shouts were heard from neighbours as the sea started to pour inland from the coast around four miles away.
“People started screaming ‘water’s coming’. We didn’t know the meaning of that. We were thinking about a flood coming,” he added.
As a high wave approached in the distance they decided to move up to a second floor balcony hoping they would be safer, with Mr Permana’s wife carrying their daughter.
Mr Permana was trying to help a brother-in-law who had broken his leg and could not walk, but was suddenly torn away by the rising water after part of his house collapsed.
“I said to my wife, ‘Don’t worry about me, worry about yourself’. As the water took me I could see my wife and my daughter,” he added.
“We saw people being washed away by a giant cobra of water. What I’m feeling is like we were coming into a washing machine.”
Desperately clutching to a sofa to stay afloat, he was carried almost two miles from his home before climbing up a coconut tree for several hours.
Clinging on for five hours and fearing he would be dragged out to sea if he fell, he saw around 100 people being carried past him in the water.
Finally able to climb down after the torrent receded, he walked back to his house where his parents told him his wife and daughter had disappeared.
“I started crying very hard and then started to look for the bodies of my daughter and my wife,” Mr Permana said.
He later discovered his wife had survived after being dragged in a separate direction to him.
“My wife ended up on the second floor of a roof, also 3km from the house. Our daughter was lost. We have never found her body,” he said.
Exhausted, he later collapsed in the road while searching in the aftermath of the tsunami.
Discovered by rescue crews who thought he was dead, he was taken to a morgue, waking up among the corpses of people killed by the waves.
“In the morning I woke up because of the sun shining in my eyes. People started to scream because they thought my body was alive again,” Mr Permana said.
“They thought I was a ghost.”
Banda Aceh’s flattened landscape looked like the aftermath of a war, with dazed survivors unable to locate where their homes, now razed to the ground, had once stood.
Mr Permana, whose legs had been injured by debris in the water, spent several days recovering at his parents home before driving to a nearby town to find medicine, where he learned his wife was alive.
“I went back to searching for my daughter. Even though I still had wounded legs. I didn’t care, I just cared about my daughter, “ he added.
To this day, he still hunts in vain for her, talking to women who he thinks look like she would now, news reports of survivors found alive after years providing the merest flicker of hope.
Around 60,000 died in Banda Aceh alone, the couple’s three-year-old niece and her parents and their nanny were among the dead.
As the city tried to come to terms with the disaster, Mr Permana switched from his job for the state electrical company to a logistics role with the Red Cross along with his wife, working from 9am to 3am.
“We just went home, slept, then worked again,” he said. “I said to my wife, we cannot forget our past, but we can make a distance with our past.”
Temporary accommodation was constructed for internally displaced people as charities helped coordinate a massive relief effort.
The UK public raised £10 million for the Disaster Emergency Committee’s (DEC) tsunami earthquake appeal in the first day alone, then a world record for the most money raised online in 24 hours.
Most of the funding was spent on building homes for survivors in the worst impacted areas of Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka as well as sanitation facilities, clean water and healthcare.
Mr Permana now works at Islamic Relief, one of the 15 charities that work alongside the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC).
He now has a son, Muhammad Sulthan Al Fatih. aged eight, and a daughter Siti Lara Nabeela, 18. The family plan to mark this year’s anniversary together, at home.
“On the tsunami ceremonial, every day we have a small ceremony in our tiny house, praying together,” Mr Permana said.
