The BBC's Jonathan Head is in Aceh province, where the damage from the tsunamis was the most severe. Here are some of his thoughts on trying to make sense of it for an audience:

They are probably dead, but their bodies are among the piles that are being dumped into mass graves outside the town, or crushed under mounds of concrete and mud, or floating in the river.

They will never be identified, never properly buried, just mourned without ceremony by survivors too shocked to make sense of their loss.

How are we supposed to report a human tragedy of this magnitude?

The words and phrases used to capture the scale of previous disasters seem hopelessly inadequate this time.

And there is no one to blame, no failures to rectify that could prevent a recurrence.

This was a natural phenomenon so brutally destructive it almost seems evil. ...

We, the news media, will be gone in a couple of weeks.

And if the Indonesian government re-imposes its ban on foreign journalists, we will not be back.  ...

But when I tell the Acehenese the international community is going to help them get their lives back together, they ask me when.

Who is going to give them the money to rebuild their houses, their shops and fishing boats, who should they ask.

And I tell them to be patient, it will come.

But knowing Aceh's wretched history of war, abuse and corruption, I cannot be sure that even now, they will not be disappointed.