Account from one of my wife's co-workers. The pictures are staggering.
Beach Vacation Ends With Tsunami's Wrath
By Rita De Ramos
A DOW JONES NEWSWIRES COLUMN
(Editor's Note: Dow Jones Newswires Hong Kong reporter Rita De Ramos was vacationing in Phuket, Thailand, with her husband Abe and daughter Gari, about six years old, when one of the tsunamis that may have killed more than 40,000 people hit on Sunday. The following is an excerpt of an email she sent to colleagues and friends upon her return.)
HONG KONG -- We got back here in Hong Kong -- safe and sound -- last night at around 9 p.m. after leaving Phuket at 1 p.m. Flights were delayed (as expected) from Phuket and then again from the stopover in Bangkok.
I wanted to email last night but I simply couldn't get myself to start typing anything. Strangely, I couldn't actually sleep.
We arrived in Phuket on Dec 23. For several days, we started our day late because we slept late and woke up late. But on the 26th, our plan was to wake up really early and head for the beach immediately.
As God planned it, Gari couldn't be forced to wake up that day. I woke up early but was feeling really lazy anyway so I just stayed in bed. Abe was still asleep.
Around 8:30 a.m. I felt our bed shaking very hard. I thought Gari and Abe were playing a prank on me and shaking the bed, but they weren't. When I told Abe I thought there was an earthquake (the bed was still shaking while I was telling him), he said I was just imagining things.
Being so lazy, all I could do was take a token look outside our resort balcony; when I saw that people were walking around as usual, I thought that perhaps I was indeed imagining things. (Later on, after everything happened, we realized while talking to other tourists that so many of us felt the earthquake but dismissed it when our partners/friends said we were imagining things.)
Even the staff downplayed the early signs of the earthquake and attributed the movement to the strong gusts of wind that were rocking the resort. The shaking of the bed finally prompted me to rouse Abe and Gari so we could go down to have breakfast in the open-air ground-floor restaurant (150 meters from the shoreline). Then we would head to the beach and start our day.
Gari and I were even planning to rent a raft again, as we did the previous day, and ride the waves. Imagine that! Had we been on the beach as Gari and I excitedly planned, I don't know what kind of story I would be telling now. (The previous day, I was even pushing Gari out to sea on the raft and letting her paddle her way back by herself using her arms).
Around 9:15 a.m. to maybe 10 a.m. (we didn't have watches) we were having breakfast. We were at the end of dessert when we saw lots of people (maybe 50) running towards us. Gari and I stood up, at first amused at the sight (for one or two seconds). Then we saw their shocked faces. In my case, the first thing that entered my mind was there could be a rebel or terrorist attack, like maybe there were rebels coming from the sea bearing machine guns.
Take note that this all occurred in a matter of seconds. So on one side, you have people running towards us and then you have us (the people in the resort) who didn't know what was going on. For some reason, just seeing those people running towards us didn't make us run automatically. I guess it's human nature to be curious; we wanted to know what they were running from.
Then after a few seconds, we saw the water rising above the tall coconut trees and beachfront restaurants that obstructed our view and saw it rushing toward us. That's when we and the other people at the resort finally ran for our lives. From the moment we first saw the people running toward us to the moment that we ourselves began running ourselves was less than 10 seconds.
Since it wasn't clear to us what was going on (earthquake or tsunami?) we didn't immediately know what we should do. First we ran away from the beach but stayed outside. (We're always told that during earthquakes, it's better to stay on the ground rather than go up in a building.)
We kept together near the driveway of the resort, ready to make a run for it. People were running around, some were screaming, others were obviously in shock, staring into space while running. Then after about three to five minutes, things seemed to have settled down. No more running or screaming.
So we thought everything had returned to normal and Abe, Gari and I went back to the area where we were having breakfast to see what had happened.
Then we saw what was once such a beautiful garden and beachfront turned into a debris-filled swamp.
So many people were bloody. Then there were tourists and locals being carried, some were unconscious while others were in shock. Some were badly wounded and couldn't walk. In my case, I preferred that we stayed there where everyone was -- believing there was power in numbers.
But after about five minutes of calm, we saw the waters rising again and people running again toward us. Abe was far from us, taking pictures, and I knew he could take care of himself, so Gari and I ran. At this point, since we already knew it was a tsunami, we all ran to the upper floors of the resort. Gari and I ended up in the sixth-floor balcony, where we saw the water rushing inwards on the ground, flattening everything that was in its way.
Gari and I stayed put even when the waters stopped rising (because we didn't really know if it was over). Then Abe found us. We went to our room to quickly get our passports, tickets and water. We wanted to be ready to evacuate at a moment's notice.
Our resort was very efficient. At that point, they parked their vans and small truck on the driveway (which was luckily elevated), ready to evacuate us. But since they weren't sure if evacuating us was a good idea -- we would have to pass through the flooded road and there might be more tsunamis -- they didn't enforce the evacuation. It became a matter of individual choice. We decided to stay put, thinking that the resort would take care of us if something happened to us while we were there -- and no one would really feel responsible for helping us if we got washed away on the road.
But we remained ready to go at all times and only felt truly safe at around 3 p.m. By that time, I realized that my arms and legs were shaking, something I didn't notice until then. You know, to be honest, part of the reason I texted some people from the hotel was to make it known where we were, so someone would look for us in case we died.
Our resort, Club Andaman, was seven stories high, made of concrete and was among the few that weren't totally devastated. What was destroyed were the rustic-type wooden cottages on the ground level. There were tuktuks, cars, pick-up trucks, billboards, concrete slabs, everything and anything else dumped on them. Tourists who were staying in the cottages lost almost everything.
They say close to a 1,000 died in Phuket. But if you look at the aftermath, it's really a miraculous wonder how so many of us survived unhurt.
Around 2 p.m., when we thought it was safe, I ventured towards the beach by myself to see what happened, and to take pictures. (Abe and I took turns because we didn't want Gari anywhere near the beach anymore,
obviously.) What I saw was shocking -- cars, boats, jet skis, lounge chairs, luggage, televisions, billboards, concrete slabs everywhere around you.
The thousands of wooden lounge chairs, food stalls, carts, and massage tents on the beach were gone, completely swept away. The concrete breakwater was destroyed; very old and strong trees were uprooted.
The Starbucks, the seafood restaurant, and Haagen-Dazs where we ate the day before were wiped out. The bag and shoe stores and the Warner Brothers store where we shopped the day before were wiped out. The 7-Eleven where we went to buy our water was demolished.
The Thai people are remarkably resilient and I have long felt that they are the nicest people among those I've encountered in all our travels; but this time I am fully convinced. In all the chaos and its aftermath, they weren't shouting at each other or at us. They were mostly smiling while helping out and answering questions even in the crush. The policemen were so calm, telling us ever so nicely to please go to higher ground. No one was being rough.
During dinner time, the restaurant staff (though diminished in numbers) was there, feeding us.
When we finally got to the airport, there were so many people there -- many trying to get a flight out. There were tourists (maybe around 30 of
them) who still had fresh wounds. So I have a feeling they went straight to the airport as soon as they could and had been waiting there the whole time. They didn't even have bandages on their wounds. They were huddled, crying, in shock. They had other people caring for them.
Abe and I are actually determined to go back to Phuket one day .. but not with Gari. She says she doesn't want to go back there, ever.
To see the photos taken by Rita De Ramos's husband, Abe, go to:
http://homepage.mac.com/alternativeman/ ... after.html
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11 300 casualties so far and rising fast.
