Within 30 minutes, Simeulue became the first coastline in the world to experience the awesome force of the Dec. 26 tsunami as waves as high as 33 feet smacked ashore. But only seven of the island's 75,000 people died, thanks to the stories passed down over the generations.

"After the earthquake, I looked for the water to suck out," said Kiro, 50, who like many Indonesians uses one name. "I remember the story of the semong and I ran to the hill."

"Everyone ran to the hills," said Randa Wilkinson of the aid agency Save the Children. "They took bicycles and motorbikes and wheelbarrows and piled the kids in whatever they could get them in."

Suhardin, 33, said that when the quake struck he didn't think about his grandmother's stories about the 1907 disaster because nothing happened when another big temblor shook the island three years ago. It was only when a man from another village ran past shouting "Semong! Semong!" that Suhardin and others from Laayon village fled.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 7:17 PM  |