The Jakarta Post [Jakarta]

12/30/04

A few survivors of Sunday's calamity have a snake to thank for being alive. ... Riza, who was living in a rented house near the coast in Banda Aceh with three friends, dashed up to the second floor of a neighbor's house and stood on top of a cupboard. But as she told Antara from a makeshift shelter on Wednesday, the current swept her and her friends off their perch. As Riza was drifting, she saw her neighbors, two girls -- twins -- and their mother. ... As she struggled for her own life and that of the twins, she said a large snake as long as a telephone pole approached her. She and the nine-year-olds rested on the reptile, which was drifting along with the current. 'Thank God, we landed on higher ground where the water level was only about a meter deep. The twins, who were badly injured, were safe...

http://tinyurl.com/56vat


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp