Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Girl Who Survived a Tsunami - The Raudhatul Jannah story

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

Raudhatul Jannah was swept up and lost in the 2004 Tsunami in Meulaboh Indonesia.

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Oh! Marvel Studios The Fantastic Four First Steps, now streaming on Disney Plus, we did PG-13. What time is it, Ben? It's Clubber Time! So one day, suddenly, boom, there's a massive earthquake underwater. And that earthquake sets off a series of tsunamis. And one of those tsunamis is headed right for this town in Indonesia.

Now in this town, there's a girl who lives there. We'll call her 4, because she's 4. So 4 lives in this town in Indonesia called Meulabo. And she lives there with her mom, her dad, and her sibling. So anyway, this huge wave of water is coming towards the town. And everyone is alerted, and they're freaking out, and they're all trying to evacuate. And Forrest family, they all jump on a motorbike

to try and drive away. But, unfortunately, everyone else has the same idea. So the streets are packed with traffic. And soon enough, pow, one of the tsunamis hits. And the water comes crashing through the town and the buildings are being knocked over and people are being swept away. It is complete chaos.

And people are panicking and everyone is grabbing on to whatever they can to stay afloat and not get swept away. And as the water rushes in, Four's dad realizes his two little kids are gonna drown if he doesn't do something. So he spots a big floating piece of wood in the water, and he picks up four and her brother, this kid, Arif, Arif is seven, so dad picks them both up and he puts them on top of this floating piece of wood to keep them safe. But then, bam, more waves hit and it knocks them all apart.

And pretty soon the current catches them, and it carries the wood away and the kids are still on it. And Four's parents are screaming, they're like, no, come, back. And so the wave carries them out to the ocean. And to make it worse, for and our reef, they're so young, neither of them know how to swim. So if they fall off this wood or if something knocks them off, they're definitely going to drown. But we'll come back to them. Meanwhile, back in town, things are not looking so great. Meulabo is one of the worst places hit by the tsunami, and there's no way for anyone to send

help because all the bridges to get to the capital have been washed away. A quarter of of the town's population is without food or water, and most people have to pick through the debris to look for any food scraps. And sadly, Fours Mom, who will just call Mom, she has to go to the hospital where I guess they bring all the bodies of people who didn't make it. And each time they bring in a new body,

she checks it to see if it's for or a reef. And weeks go by, and Mom is still out there looking for them. But now she's looking through refugee camps too. But unfortunately, it's not really looking good. I mean, this tsunami was massive and super deadly. I mean, it killed like an estimated 230,000 people across 14 countries. And by the way, this is considered one of the deadliest disasters in modern history. Supposedly the highest recorded waves from this tsunami were over a hundred feet high

and traveled across the ocean at the speed of 500 miles an hour. That's roughly the speed of a commercial airliner. So imagine 100 foot waves coming at you, at the speed of an airplane. That's how insane this natural disaster was. In fact, the earthquake under the ocean that caused the tsunami was so powerful it literally altered the Earth's rotation slightly, which is just wild to think about. Okay, so anyway, back to four in Arif.

At this point, they have drifted away on this piece of wood way out into the ocean, and they've been floating for a long time, and they drift 155 miles from Mehulabo, where they're from all the way to the Banyak Islands. And eventually, four in a reef, they wash up onto shore. And they have no idea where they are. I mean, remember, they're little kids. But then, a local fisherman spots them. And we'll just call him fisherman.

And fisherman spots them, and I guess he's just like, hey, free kids. So the fisherman snatches them up, and he brings them back to his home with him. Now, fisherman, he has a wife, who will just call wife. So fishermen and wife, they decide to raise four. and Arif as their own. And that sounds sweet and all like oh cool, some nice couple took them in and they decided to take care of them. But here's the sad reality. Wife actually ends up being pretty abusive. Like sometimes she beats them and one day I guess she gets super mad at Arif because she ends up throwing boiling water in his face, leaving him with this huge scar. Like it's a really terrible for them there.

And after that, after the altercation where she scars him, Arif is officially taken away from them. So now, It's just four living there by herself with this couple. And two years later, for whatever reason Fisherman and wife suddenly feel like, eh, they don't want to raise four anymore. They're just like, yeah, we're done. So they send her to live with Fisherman's sister. And the poor girl lives there for a couple of years, and I couldn't find any information on what that was like, but I'm sure it wasn't fun. And then several years after that, four is probably 10 years old at this point. For some reason, Fisherman's sister decides she no longer. wants to raise them. So she sends four to live with fishermen's mother. So now four lives a fisherman's

mother. And of course, life isn't all that great there either. Four doesn't really get to go to school much because they're really poor and they don't have enough money for food. So four spends a lot of her time collecting used water bottles so they can resell them and use the money to eat. And life just sucks for four now. Not to mention, through all this, she really just misses her real family. And she's constantly wondering if she'll ever even see them again. Until. One day, Four is walking home from school. She's minding her own business, and she's like 14 years old now.

But she's walking home from school and suddenly, bam, this strange guy, he's just like staring at her. He's looking at her like he knows her. Now, the guy, we'll just call him Uncle, because he's actually Four's biological uncle. And Uncle just happens to be visiting the Banyak Islands, and he's. He just happened to cross paths with four. So Uncle, he's like looking at her and he's like, yo, I know her from somewhere.

And he becomes convinced that this teenage girl right in front of him is the same little four-year-old girl who got washed away in the tsunami all those years ago. So Uncle takes a photo that he has of four from when she was younger and he shows it to all the people in the town. He's like, do you think this is the same girl? And everyone in town agrees are like, yeah, that's totally the same kid. So then he takes a photo of four.

Or now as a 14-year-old, and he sends it over to his sister, Four's mom, in Meulabo. And Four's mom sees it, and she's like, holy shit, this is my kid. So Mom travels from Meulabo over to the Banyak Islands, and after 10 long years, Four is finally reunited with her mother. Oh, wait, wait, wait, but the story's not over yet. I mean, it's great that they found four, but remember, Arif is still missing. And so this story about them finding four after she had been. missing for 10 years, it's so incredible that it makes news all over Meulabo, all over Indonesia,

I mean, all over the world. This story blew up. And then this random woman in the Banyak Islands who owns an internet cafe, she sees one of these news reports about Four being reunited with her family. And in the news report, they show an old photo of Four's whole family, including Arif. And this woman, she's looking at this picture of Arif on the screen and she's like, hey, I think I'm I know him. And of course, Arif, he's no longer a little kid. He's like 17 years old now. And he's homeless. In fact, sometimes he happens to sleep outside this woman's internet cafe. That's how she recognizes him. So I guess she finds a way to get in touch with Arif's family and sure enough, when they investigate further, they find out that the boy is in fact Arif. And so finally,

Finally, after 10 years, Arif is reunited with his family, and here's a photo of all of them together. Four is right here, and it looks like Arif is down here in the corner. Good for that.