Reunited after the tsunami
Five years after the Asian tsunami, Rina is a happy eight-year-old who wants to ride a motorbike like her dad. But she and her father might have lost each other forever if it weren’t for our work after the 2004 Boxing Day disaster.
Rina, aged eight, pictured with her father. Save the Children reunited them almost a month after the tsunami struck Indonesia.
On the day of the tsunami, Rina was sitting outside her home. "I felt the shake from the earthquake,” she says. “Then the fishermen yelled that the tsunami was coming. My mother was carrying me, but then the wave came and we were separated."
Rina was torn from her mother's arms and never saw her mother or sister again. She was eventually pulled from the water by a young man with a rope. Through him, she met Halimah and her husband, who took her in and cared for her.
Meanwhile, Rina's father Mustafah, who’d been away on business in the Northern Sumatran capital Medan, heard the disaster had struck and raced back to Banda Aceh.
The search
"From the day I came back, I searched for my wife and children,” he says. He walked the final part of the journey because the destruction made travel by vehicle impossible.
“I was looking everywhere. I searched with my friends. And I saw that other people were finding their family members, so I had hope." A month after the disaster, Mustafah got a call from his brother: Rina's name was on a list at the local Save the Children office of children who’d been found. Elated, Mustafah raced to the office.
Rina and Mustafah both had to be interviewed to make sure he really was her father. Rina gave the names of her parents and where she lived. "They kept shuffling the pictures and asking me to point to my father. Every time, I did,” says Rina.
For Mustafah, the wait was agonising. "They asked me what she looked like, if she had identifying marks. I couldn't wait to see her."
The reunion
"There were other children in the room when I walked in. And at first I didn't recognise her,” explains Mustafah. “Her long hair had been cut short, but when she turned and smiled at me, I knew it was Rina."
The moment Rina, aged four, was reunited with her father.
And Rina knew too. "I didn't say anything. I just hugged him," she says.
Now a smiling eight-year-old, third from top of her fourth-grade class, Rina’s favourite subject is traditional dance. And she wants to be a policewoman when she grows up so she can "catch bad guys and ride a motorbike."
Five years on… our commitment
By the tsunami's six-month anniversary, we’d helped reunite 139 children like Rina with surviving family members and were helping other agencies do the same.
We remain committed to the tsunami-affected region's children, families and communities. Five years on we’ve:
- provided 210,000 children and adults with new village health facilities
- built and equipped 41 schools
- provided training and materials to women, farmers, fishermen and weavers to help them recover their incomes so they can meet their children's needs once our work has finished
- helped school children create and practice disaster drills so they’ll know how to survive if another disaster strikes.
When she turned and smiled at me, I knew it was Rina
Mustafa
Rina's Father
One of the greatest lessons we learned from the tsunami response is the value of preparing for emergencies. Over the five years since, we’ve responded to more than 50 large disasters. We’ve built our capacity to respond to the natural and manmade crises that affect children — including pre-positioning supplies and training staff in disaster-prone areas. Today, our responses are faster and more effective.
Find out more about our other emergencies
