Alex Snary: Former World Vision staffer on 20 years since Boxing Day tsunami which caused widespread destruction, displacement and death in countries on the Indian Ocean rim

Today marks 20 years since the massive Boxing day tsunami which caused widespread destruction, displacement and death in countries on the Indian Ocean rim. 

A 9.0 earthquake struck off the West Coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Boxing Day 2004. It triggers a series of tsunamis that charged across the Indian Ocean and killed around 230,000 people. 

Former World Vision Staffer Alex Snary was working at the time the tsunami hit and tells Tim Beveridge he has vivid memories of his arrival to the island and the “smell of decaying bodies.” 

“It wasn’t until you really got boots on the ground that I really began to understand the extent of the devastation. When in whole villages... there’s just nothing above knee-high or waist height left.” 

In the 20 years since, World Vision have stepped up their ability to respond to disasters of the scale of the 2004 tsunami.  

“When I first joined World Vision, there was kind of the ability to respond to one place in the world. When I left, we could respond to four or five if needed.” 

On how  the events of that day and all that followed changed the way he feels about the work he does, Snary says seeing the difference of an area when he left compared to its state upon his arrival reinforced just how important the work is. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:17):
So today marks twenty years since the mass of Boxing
Day tsunami, which was caused widespread destruction, displacement and death
in countries on the Indian Ocean rim like Indonesia, India,
Sri Lanka and Thailand. It was a nine point zero
earthquake that struck off the west coast of the Indonesian
island of Sumatra. Boxing Day two thousand and four triggered

(00:41):
a series of tsunamis that charged across the Indian Ocean,
killing around two hundred and thirty thousand people. And Alex
Snari is a former World Vision staffer who is walking
at work at the time of the tsunami and he
joins me, now good morning.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Oh, good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
So twenty years take us back to the day. How
vivid are your memories of that tragedy.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Yeah, it's interesting how even twenty years later there are
some things that still stick in your memory. I think
that one of them for me is, for example, the
first village that I was taken to when I arrived
in the Underman Islands, where I was posted for the
first thirty days of the response. And as we got closer,

(01:26):
going through kind of the jungle, it was hot and
we could smell you could smell that sickly smell of
decaying bodies, and so I knew we were getting close.
And we arrived in an area that looked like a
rubbish dump. It sort of had broken piles of rubbish around,
and the washing machine or fridge. It was sort of

(01:49):
in the middle of the rubble, and I thought, I
said to the guys, oh, we very far away, because
you know, I can see we're getting close. And they said,
what do you mean, We're actually standing in the center
of This is the very center of the village. And
it kind of hit me at that point just what

(02:10):
the power of the destruction that had been wrought on
the coastline from the tsunami, just what it was really like.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Because you were working in the area at the time
it had How long How long did it take you,
Was that the moment when you realized how big it was,
or did you have a big a bit of a
sense before then that this is not going to be good?

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah? No, because actually I had just ride back in
New Zealand for Christmas with my family, and then I
got the call on day after Boxing Day and got
on a plane and was deployed as part of a
World Vision's rapid response team to the Undermann Islands. And

(02:52):
so we you know, we had been seeing some news footage,
you know, in terms of the wave coming in, but
it wasn't until you really got boots on the ground
that that I really began to understand the extent of
the devastation. When when whole villagers there's just nothing above
knee hide or waist tight left the destruction on a

(03:16):
cataclysmics scale.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
How prepared can organizations like World Vision be for these things?
And how was it at the time?

Speaker 3 (03:25):
We fortunately, well, unfortunately in the world today, there's been
a steady, steady increase in the number and scale of
disasters even over the last twenty years, and so World
Vision had been scaling up their rapid response teams. When
I first joined World Vision, there was kind of the

(03:45):
ability to respond to one place in the world. I
think when I left, we could respond to four or
five if needed to do that. So, you know, professional
organizations like World Vision have been watching the trends and
have been scaling up to the extent that they're able
to to be able to respond to these kind of things.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
How did that day and the events that followed change
the way you feel about the work you do?

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Yeah? I think for me, when you when you see
the difference from when you first enter a zone like
that to how you leave it, it just it reinforces. It's
just how important this kind of work is. Like, you know, school,

(04:37):
you know kids for example, in villages that we hadn't
reached yet, they would be sitting quietly back to the sea,
not being kids, you know, just just just dumbfounded, right,
And in villages where the psychosocial program has been operating
for a few weeks, they were running around yelling, screaming

(05:00):
on the beach, you know. Like it's just as dramatic
as that. The housing rebuilding of house we read wherever
to rebuild entire villagers, schools, whole communities where in some
cases relocated to safer areas, in other cases built back
much more resilient than what they were before. And so

(05:23):
you come away from that going, wow, that's a job
well done.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Good stuff, Alex, Thanks very much for your time this morning.
In reflections on that day twenty years ago, we really appreciate.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
It all good.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
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