Nine-year-old Intan was swept away in the Boxing Day tsunami. She clung to a dead body to stay alive

On Sunday morning, December 26, 2004, nine-year-old Intan Afrianti was watching cartoons with her family as usual when she suddenly felt the ground beneath her begin to shake. This was a day, she says, she will never forget.

“I was at home with my mum, aunt, older sister, and older brother at the time,” she told 9news.com.au. “Everything felt normal until I suddenly felt a very strong tremor from the floor.” Neighbors began pouring into her house, and the scene quickly became chaotic. Then, she heard an explosion. “I heard people yelling ‘the water is rising, the water is rising.’ I didn’t know what to do but run, trying to save myself,” she said.

A tsunami had struck her city of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, following a 9.1 magnitude earthquake about 250 kilometers away. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated waves reached as high as 51 meters in her province. Afrianti lost consciousness. “When I woke up, I found myself in the water, holding onto the body of a tsunami victim who was floating with me,” she said. “I was very scared, but the only thought in my mind was to keep my head above the water. I had to survive.”

Afrianti was trapped in the water but spotted a refrigerator nearby. She swam to it and found food inside. She ate to fight off hunger until she met another survivor who helped her reach the shore safely. When she realized she was safe, Afrianti assumed her family must have perished. “My heart was broken. I felt completely alone, like an orphan. The grief was so deep that I can’t even describe it,” she said.

Afrianti was one of hundreds of children who were either lost or orphaned by the disaster. Organizations, emergency services, and experts from around the world were sent to help with rescue and recovery efforts. One of them was New South Wales Police forensic expert Peter Baines, who was called to help identify the remains of victims in neighboring Thailand. There, he met 32 children who had been orphaned by the disaster and were living in tents. “I realized that I couldn’t change what had happened, the fact that they had lost their parents, but I had the ability to change what might happen now,” he told 9news.com.au.

Baines founded his charity, “Hands Across the Water,” to help disadvantaged children and communities in Thailand. The number of children needing help quickly grew to 100 and continues to rise. UNICEF Child Protection Chief Roberto Benes was also in Aceh. He said that when the days were long, busy, and urgent, he had no time to think about his own feelings. “The entire city of Banda Aceh was flattened, with the exception of a few buildings, with the Grand Mosque still standing proudly in the rubble,” he told 9news.com.au. “After I arrived, the grief was a recurring feeling because we were surrounded by death and destruction, and we knew that almost everyone we met in Aceh had lost some family members or loved ones.”

Benes spent three long years in the province, helping reunite 390 of the approximately 3,000 registered missing children with their families, which he said was the “most profound and impactful experience” of his 26-year career. Afrianti was one of the lucky children. About a month after the tsunami, she received a call that UNICEF had found her mother. “It felt like a dream—a dream that I was afraid would disappear if I opened my eyes,” she said. “I was so grateful in that moment, crying in my mother’s arms. For me, it was proof that Allah still loved me and brought my mother back into my life.”

Now 29 years old, Afrianti is a married mother of two and pregnant with her third child. “I hope my children learn from my experience: when I was swept away in the disaster, it was the power of hope and prayer that kept me going,” she said. “Hope helped me survive, and prayer brought me back to my family. Life has never been easy, but I believe that as long as we have hope, there will always be a way to survive and move forward.”

But for those children who were never reunited with their families, the pain of being without family continues to affect them. “The kids who came to us as little ones are now in their 20s and starting to have their own children,” Baines said. “What they don’t have is an extended family to help them cope with adulthood and parenthood. This is a real gap we are seeing in this generation of children, the feeling of losing an extended family is still strongly felt by them.” “The children look happy, and they are, but that doesn’t replace the fact that they are alone in this world, having lost relatives, grandparents, and parents.”