The cliché goes that “Seeing is believing.”
This especially holds true for something as unimaginable as a catastrophe like the tsunami that struck Indonesia in 2004. Heidi R. Kling does a magnificent job of describing the aftermath of the giant wave in her book Sea, where readers experience the horror through Deni and the children at the pesantren. But in reality, these are fictional, second- or third-hand descriptions.
To bring home the magnitude of the disaster and what Deni and his real-life counterparts had to deal with, we’ve brought you several poignant videos. We did a good bit of scouring and decided these best told the story.
**Please know that these videos contain very disturbing images.**
The first ones shows the before/during part of the tsunami:
This video shows pictures from the immediate aftermath and destruction:
Our final video is a news segment documenting the recovery. Readers will recognize the real-life counterparts of the children described in Sea.
For the comments: What did you see in the videos that really hit home? What parts were really well-described in Sea?
Novel Novice 
I found it s hard watching these videos i really am speechless its so terrifying what happened that day it teaches us that anything is possible at any moment
It is really hard to watch these videos. We don’t usually think of what happens around the world when we go by everyday.
Yes, and we didn’t post them for “shock value” — I just think it’s important to see what actually happened. It makes SEA that much more meaningful.
very sad. It is still shocking for me to see this.