The pain is still fresh as Cut Sylvia recalls the last time she looked into her two-year-old daughter’s eyes.
It was a normal morning in the Indonesian coastal city of Banda Aceh in north Sumatra when Sylvia and her husband began to see people fleeing in front of their home, warning of oncoming sea water.
Holding her infant daughter, Siti, in her arms, it was a matter of minutes before Sylvia was overwhelmed by the waves inundating their home.
“I cannot describe that moment when I saw her eyes, and she saw my eyes, and we were staring at each other,” Sylvia told media.
“She was not even crying or saying anything. She was just staring at me. I knew that we would be separated,” she said.
Siti was swept away, taken by the tsunami.
After 15 minutes of feeling as though she was “in a washing machine”, Sylvia clambered on to the rooftop of a house where the enormity of what had just happened began to sink in.
“I felt so sad, very sad. I cannot express with words what I felt when I knew my daughter was lost.”
Sylvia’s husband, Budi Permana, was also washed away, finding safety at the top of a coconut tree – the height the sea waters had risen to. He later collapsed from exhaustion while searching for his family and was found by members of the Red Cross, who initially thought he was dead.
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