Family Finds Cop Alive After Believing He Died In 2004 Tsunami

An Indonesian police officer who was declared dead after the 2004 tsunami has been found alive.

Abrip Asep who has now been found and reunited with his family is said to be in good health had a mental health breakdown in the midst of the tragedy and ended up in a psychiatric hospital for the past 16 years.

Newsflash

The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami struck on Boxing Day and around 230,000 people lost their lives, making it one of the biggest natural disasters ever.

Mr Asep's family said he was on duty when the tsunami and earthquake hit Indonesia's westernmost province of Aceh on 26 December.

One relative, name not disclosed, said they only realised Mr Asep was still alive recently after photos were shared on a social media family chat group.

@subsektorblangbintang/Newsflash

They said: "I couldn't believe it, 17 years of no news and we thought that he passed away, we didn't know he was still alive."

The local police also confirmed the man found in the psychiatric hospital was Abrip Asep, reported as missing during the tsunami and later declared dead.

A spokesperson for the Aceh Regional Police said: "Even though he is experiencing mental illness due to the tsunami, his family is very grateful to have found him alive."

It is unclear why his family were not notified he was in the psychiatric hospital.

On 26 December 2004 at 7.59am, a 9.1 magnitude earthquake in the Indian Ocean resulted in a tsunami 100 feet high and thousands of deaths in 14 countries including Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

The quake - the third-largest ever recorded - lasted for 10 minutes and released as much energy as several thousand atomic bombs.

PA

In Sri Lanka 35,000 people died, while 18,000 died in India and 8,000 died in Thailand.

Following the disaster $14 billion was pledged in aid by the international community to help the affected countries recover.

Vasily Titov, a tsunami researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Center for Tsunami Research, described the scene in Sumatra months after the waters had subsided.

He told History.com: "For hundreds of kilometers it was as if somebody had taken an eraser and erased everything underneath the 20-meter line.

"The sheer scale of the destruction was just mind-boggling."

Topics: News, Weird, Tsunami

Rebecca Shepherd

I'm Becky - a journalist at LADbible. I graduated with a First Class BA in Journalism before going on to cover criminal court cases, medical tribunals and breaking news for the national media - which inevitably and eventually became as glum as it sounds. Can often be found rocking a bag for life - which I made a 'thing' way before Rihanna. You can contact me at [email protected]

@RJShepherd94