“It was just like a war zone” – memories of Aceh
19 December 2024


On Boxing Day 2004, a massive earthquake struck an area off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The 20-metre-high waves reached Aceh in northern Sumatra in minutes, where they smashed into the coast and destroyed everything three kilometres inland. In some areas, the waves reached eight kilometres inland. These scenes were repeated elsewhere, including in Thailand and Sri Lanka.
The world watched in horror as more than 285,000 people were killed and millions more were affected in 14 countries bordering the Indian Ocean.
“It’s very hard to comprehend the tsunami because it affected 14 countries. People just disappeared.”
Kiwi Judy Owen was one of the first international delegates on the ground in Aceh after the Boxing Day Tsunami.
“In Indonesia alone you’re looking at over 100,000 people who disappeared. It’s a lot to take in,” she recalled, 20 years later.
In January 2005, Judy had 25 years of experience as a Red Cross international delegate. A registered nurse since 1974, her service record shows assignments to countless conflict zones across the world. Aceh was familiar in that way. Before being decimated by the tsunami, the region had experienced armed civil conflict for almost 30 years.
“When you have a conflict situation of 30 years, and you don’t have well-functioning services or the service structures aren’t in place, and all of a sudden you have a disaster, it’s very, very difficult for these countries to respond.”
On the ground in Aceh
Aceh from above on 30 December 2004.
Judy was part of the first International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation to arrive in Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province, in January 2005.
“I was shocked when I first arrived there. It was absolutely appalling, especially around the coastal area where the tsunami had come in. It was just like a war zone. Everything was just completely taken out.”
Shortly after arriving in Aceh, Judy was shown videos shot by local people after the tsunami made landfall.
“There were people in the city block who managed to get up to the second or third floor, and the water coming in was extremely high. If you were caught up in it there was no way you were going to survive, because you would have been crushed by a car or a building. It was a very, very powerful wall of water.”
Judy and her ICRC colleagues got to work. This included making sure that health centres had enough supplies, that tracing services for missing people were set up, and they established the welfare of people held in detention because of the conflict.
The legacy of Boxing Day 2004

Indonesian Red Cross volunteers removing human remains in Aceh, January 2005.
After Aceh, Judy continued to work in conflict zones with ICRC for the next 15 years before retiring from international assignments at the beginning of 2020. She remains one of our longest serving delegates, with 40 years of experience helping the victims of war across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
Recovery from the tsunami was a long process. The first Red Cross search and rescue teams were mobilised in Aceh in December 2004. The last project in the recovery operation — a major infrastructure project that brings piped water to coastal towns in Sri Lanka — was completed five years later. Where there was little or no tsunami warning systems, there are now, so no community should face the potentially catastrophic forces of a tsunami with no warning again.
Many communities are now stronger, more resilient, and better able to face the risks posed by future hazards. Houses can be rebuilt, but scars remain for people who survived and few people alive at that time will ever forget the disaster.
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