I have had a good go at getting us killed before. I wrote the following on New Years Day 2005, about the events of the Boxing Day Tsunami.
We were staying at a place called Poseidon Bungalows on Khao
Lak beach, some 60k north of Phuket itself. We were standing on Khao Lak beach in
the morning, and we looked out to sea.
It was obvious something was going on - the waves looked unbelievable,
and I said to Hayley that it was strange because it looked like really rough
surf, and there's no-where to surf in Thailand. But the main wave didn't seem to be moving, it just seemed
to be building. It looked
fantastic, really quite beautiful.
We wandered over to the other beach at our resort, to get a
better view, this must have been around 11am on the 26th. The part of KL beach we were on was at
the bottom (South) of the main beach, and you had to walk around a headland to
get to the main beach. The waves
came closer in and everyone stood and stared – there were probably 15 or so of us on this
particular bit of beach. As we
stood and watched, H said – I’ll go and get the camera from the room. She took a couple of paces, then turned
to me and said jokingly – feel free to run if you need to. We both stood and watched the
wave. It seemed to be moving
incredibly slowly, just building and building. It came further and further and further, to where it should
break, then five feet past that, then another five feet past that, and then
suddenly we were all running.
To get down to the beach we were on, you had to do a bit of
a scramble down a rocky slope, and it was this we had to run up. I’ve since realised that it was the
existence of this slope that saved all our lives (no one from Poseidon was
killed, although there were, of course, several injured). The main part of Khao Lak beach,
North of Poseidon and around the headland, is very flat with a long flat
hinterland, and my guess is this is why there was such devastation, and
terrible cost to human life, there.
We scrambled up the slope, aware that all the time the water
was around my ankles – it was never above my ankles, but even as we climbed it
never seemed to be below them -
and onto the path running through the small resort. I had Hayley with me, but neither of us
had the first clue in how to react.
At what stage in your life are you taught how to react to a
Tsunami? There were people running
in every direction in blind panic.
Below us was the first bit of beach we had been standing on that
morning, and looking down we could see the water ripping into the bungalows
which were directly on the beachfront.
Within five to ten seconds, we saw (I think) three bungalows ripped
apart. We found ourselves standing
with three overweight Italian men wearing tight speedos and sunglasses, all
jabbering at each other and running around in circles, and I’m afraid that I
thought – how wonderful to be with the Italians in a crisis.
There were people screaming and shouting everywhere but one
woman really sticks in the mind.
She was a Swedish (Khao Lak is extremely popular with the Swedes, which
is why the toll for that nationality is disproportionately high) lady of about
40, and she was shouting for her two children and husband who she had been
separated from. She shouted their
names over and over again, and then she just started screaming. The noise she made I can only describe
as a primal scream – she screamed again and again and then she was sick, and
then she screamed again. Finally
she collapsed. We went to her, as
did some others around us, but all we could do was put our arms around her for
a while, or hold her hands (happily, in this instance, we later saw her
reunited with her husband and children, who it turns out had run to safety in
the forest).
As luck would have it, we were due to change rooms that day
so we had left our bags packed on our beds. Once we saw that the wave was not anywhere near our bungalow
(which was much further up the slope than the ones on the beach) we quickly
grabbed our bags and ran into the forest with them. H and I walked some way down the road which led from the resort
to the main road. Half way along
this approach road we saw another large slope which led into the forest. We scrambled up this and sat as close
to the top as we could get – at this point we thought there was a good
possibility of more waves coming.
We sat there for a while – I’ve really no idea how
long. The owner of the resort –
Olof - drove by, and we waved at him through the trees. He shouted to us – what is your room
number and we looked at each other and in spite of everything laughed. Had we forgotten to pay our bar
bill? We realised though that he
was compiling a list of people that were ok, and he said – I need to go back
and work out who is dead.
It was only then that we started to get a bit of an idea of
the severity of what was going on.
After some more time and no more waves we walked back with
our bags into the resort. We were
told that Phuket had been hit.
Alex, a nice German guy who worked at Poseidon said – Kata beach is
gone. Karon beach, Patong beach,
all gone. But like everything that
happened at the time, and pretty much everything that has happened since, it
didn’t seem real, didn’t connect.
It’s like someone has wrapped your brain in cellophane and nothing can
penetrate it – new thoughts and concepts can’t get in there, they just slide
off.
Everyone from the resort congregated at a bus shelter on the
main road, a little distance away from the sea. We waited and drank water and tried to stay out of the
sun. We waited for Olof to tell us
what to do. At one point an English
guy drove by and said – don’t stand there, another wave is coming – another
bigger wave is coming in half an hour.
We all looked at each other, and then up and down the road. There was no where to go. Miles and miles of road ran roughly
parallel to the coast. Thankfully
as it turned out, there was no bigger wave (I have heard reports that there
were between five and seven waves which hit Khao Lak, but strictly from the
point of view of Poseidon Bungalows, it didn’t seem that the subsequent ones were
bigger, more powerful or more destructive than the first).
Olof took us to a local thai mans house – a guy who worked
as a ranger in the Khao Lak national park. There were approximately fifty westerners that descended on
this place – more and more people kept on arriving. The thai family were magnificent – they didn’t once complain
about fifty strangers in their front room, in their garage, all around their
house. They just cooked endless
rice, provided us with drinks and were unfailingly hospitable. The wonderful response of the Thai
people was to be a continuous theme in our remaining time in Thailand.
We spent an uncomfortable night there. I think for us this was the lowest
point. Many people there were
injured – many had extensive cuts on their legs, faces and arms – and even
worse, many people did not know the whereabouts of their loved ones. We spent some time with a Finnish lady
who was missing her husband and daughters. The only thing she could think to do was phone home to let
them know she was ok – but she didn’t know the relevant codes for Helsinki,
just the local no for her family.
We texted the number to Rupert and asked him to find out the codes, call
the family, tell them the lady was ok and call my mobile to talk to her. Rup played his part brilliantly and it
was nice to be of some help to someone.
H spent some time patching up the ladies legs using our meagre first aid
kit. Her family called her back
quickly on my mobile, but after we left the house we didn’t see the woman again
and I don’t know what happened to her family.
We spent a horrible night. Along with everyone there we were emotionally drained and
physically tired. But H and I had
nothing to complain about. It was
already apparent to us that we were extremely lucky. We were alive, we were almost completely uninjured, and we
had not been separated. We also
had our possessions.
The next day Olof drove us in stages down to a local temple
which had been designated as a Crisis Centre. It was a filthy and depressing place. We elected to get onto a truck which we
were told was going to Phuket airport.
In fact it dropped us off at another staging area. This was also a depressing place. While we were there we spoke to another
English chap called Graeme. His
story made us feel even more lucky – if that were possible. Graeme has survived not only the wave,
but had encountered looters, hordes of rats, been concussed after falling from
a truck, and, dreadfully, had seen his friend die from a heart attack. His was the most extreme story that we
personally came across, but each time we spoke to people we thanked our lucky
stars that we were unscathed, we had not been separated and that we had our
passports and money. As we met new
people and left them again, we noticed that nobody said goodbye – everyone said
good luck.
We made it to Phuket airport, which was complete and utter
chaos. We (almost literally) had
to fight to get onto a plane to Bangkok.
I don’t mean this as a criticism of the Thais though – all throughout
their response to the incredible disaster engulfing their country was
magnificent. They were just
struggling to cope in the face of an unprecedented situation and I think they
coped brilliantly. I heard that
very shortly after we had been through Phuket airport the situation there
improved a lot – apparently the army have opened a temporary terminal there to
cope with the situation.
We got to Bangkok completely shattered. We were put up by the authorities in a
hotel. I can’t remember ever
sleeping as well as I slept that night.
We woke early and started making calls to try to get ourselves on to a
flight. We found one on Thai Air
that night, and TA told us we could have seats (for free) if Air France (who we
had tickets booked with) would agree to transfer the tickets. Hayley really had to argue with Air
France to get them to let us transfer, but in the end they did. This was the only part of the experience
that angered me. I could
understand if they were keeping the seats for people who were badly injured,
but that didn’t seem to be the case – it just seemed that this sort of transfer
wasn’t normal procedure!
We flew back that night and landed about 6am on the morning
of the 29th, incredibly happy to be home.
Several things stick in my head. The first is how small the wave seemed to me. I’ve heard that at Khao Lak it was six
metres, but it seemed much smaller than that to me – just a bigger than usual
wave that kept on coming and coming.
The second is the response of the Thai people. Finally we want to know what happened to the people that we
met, especially on a snorkelling boat trip that we were on. We have heard that an American couple
we met are safe and well, which is wonderful news. The staff on the boat are also fine. There were 12 Swedish people (3
families) on the boat who as yet we’ve no news of. We just hope and pray that they’re not among the casualties.
