Book Description

Earthquakes and tsunamis are two of humanity's greatest natural threats. The mightier they are the more deadly they are, and few were more deadly than the earthquake that ripped open the floor of the Indian Ocean on Boxing Day 2004 unleashing massive waves of death and destruction to steal the lives of a quarter million people from 50 countries. Then the world's greatest natural disaster, certainly its most widespread in terms of human impact, the Boxing Day Tsunami hit Indonesia's western-most province, Aceh, hardest. Aceh was tsunami central. Rebuilding it and the lives of its shattered community is one of the great recovery stories of human history. Yet, ten years later, the achievement is barely remembered except by a few closely involved. One is author and poet Bill Nicol who played a central role in rebuilding Aceh in four short years. Working at the blistering coalface of recovery as a deeply-committed humanitarian, he shored up success while fighting and defeating the deep corruption, incompetence and political obstructionism that daily threatened the multi-billion-dollar recovery effort. Tsunami: A Poet's Journey captures the hot belly of passion and politics that drove and ripped at the fabric of Aceh's tsunami recovery. It's a poet's gift of remembrance for the 10th anniversary that adds to his earlier investigations in Tsunami Chronicles and Crisis Leadership.