Video: Pilot Sees Indonesia Tsunami Approaching Land

A pilot recorded video footage from a plane that shows a tsunami moving towards an Indonesian island after last week’s 7.5 magnitude earthquake hit.

“I heard that the earthquake started at 18:02 and my departure was 18:02 as well,” pilot Ricosetta Mafella said in a CNN video. “I felt just a strange feeling at very last of my takeoff phase. Like the aircraft [moved] to the left and the right.”

Then, from the sky, he saw how large the tsunami was. “If you can scale it, it’s quite huge,” Mafella said of the tsunami, adding that he didn’t realize that it was a tsunami at the time.

“As I took off, I looked out of the window and saw something strange happening on the sea along the coast of Palu and Donggala. There were about five large round white waves forming a row along the coast. I had no idea what they were. Something strange was happening but I tried to think positively,” he also said, according to Arab News.

He saw that there were about eight round, white waves with a radius that got longer and longer.

“It was like a row of white plates you put on a table, but in reality they were really large, round waves on the sea. I saw them all during seven minutes after we took off and before we changed our direction,” he added.

When he arrived in Makassar in South Sulawesi province an hour later, he learned that a strong quake and tsunami hit Palu.

“Apparently those were the initial waves that later turned into a tsunami,” Mafella said.

The 7.5 quake hit Indonesia’s Sulawesi on Sept. 28, and according to reports on Oct. 3, at least 1,400 have died. Thousands of people were injured and tens of thousands were left homeless.

“I saw the waves come and sweep out everything ... buildings, factories, warehouses and some people who were lost, racing from the waves, some of them women and children,” Khairul Hassan, a witness, told The Associated Press. “Also, warehouse workers who were trapped under goods, all swept by the sea. It’s so tragic. It’s so scary to remember.”