Updates from Phuket, Thailand

From David - Dec 28, 2004:

It is midnight on Tuesday and we are just winding down after a very sad day

Katie and I went to Dulwich school first thing in the morning to check on who had arrived during the night and see what help we could provide. Katie took over the registration desk (keeping track of who was arriving, leaving and which family members they had lost). The school is being used as temporary accommodation for anyone who has ended up homeless as a result of the tsunami who is not in a critical medical condition. There is food, water, clothing donated by local families and medical care. The boarding houses were filled up with mattresses being separated from their bases to make 2 beds. In addition all the exercise mate were put out in the gym to accommodate more people.

I took a Swedish father and daughter to hospital in Phuket Town who had arrived from Khao Lak (a tourist resort in Phang Nga province on the Thai mainland north of Phuket island) the previous night. Peter (the father), a fireman from Sweden had been on holiday with his wife, mother-in-law, 6 year old daughter (Fanny) and 4 year old son. They had been asleep at 8am when the tsunami picked up their beach chalet and smashed it into pieces and left them in the water. He found his daughter at the local police station on Sunday afternoon but has no idea if anyone else in his family has survived. He feels there is little hope for his mother-in-law but is praying that his wife and son have ended up in a hospital somewhere. On Sunday night there was a rumor that another tsunami was coming so they were taken to the nearest hills a distance of many miles. Peter has bad damage to his leg so it was very painful to run/walk all that way. They spent Sunday night in the forest before coming down on Monday and eventually being brought by pick up truck late Monday night to Dulwich school.

We went to Vachira hospital for 2 reasons, firstly there was a boy there who matched the description of their missing 4 year old son and secondly they were badly lacerated and needed medical attention. We got to the hospital, found Peter a wheel chair and checked in at the temporary reception built at the front of the hospital. There were convoys of ambulances and pick-up trucks arriving all the time delivering victims of the disaster. They are all from remote islands around Phuket or from Phang Nga province on the Thai mainland north of Phuket. The victims on Phuket has all been admitted during the previous 2 days. One of the staff then offered to take us to see the boy however it became unclear whether we were going to identify a live or dead child. Peter could not easily move through the mayhem in the wheel chair and was struggling to deal with the prospect of identifying a corpse so Fanny went with a nurse to check if it was her brother. Fanny was gone for about 30 minutes so I talked to Peter about anything I could think of that was not to do with the disaster. Being with someone during that very long 30 mins while they wait to find out if their son is dead or alive is very emotionally draining but obviously nothing compared to being in that position yourself.

The boy was alive but sadly was not the missing son, the hospital has no idea where the family of the boy in the hospital was maybe he has no family left.

We then queued up to get treatment for Peter and Fanny, there were many people with much worse injuries than them. Peter had many stitches put in his legs and wounds on the rest of his body dressed. I held Fanny’s hand while the staff cleaned out the lacerations on her legs. The wounds were now over 2 days old so had started to heal over the dirt. The staff had to open up the wounds to clean them before resealing them. Fanny was very brave as she was put through a lot more pain. On the next bed was a man who was having the left side of his face stitched back on to his head, the right side is still hanging off. One bed over another victim has lifted onto the bed, they removed some bandages and support below his knee and most of his foot and lower leg just fell off onto the sheets. Fanny was cleaned up before Peter so I took her to the donations of clothing to find her and Peter some clean clothes – their only possessions are what they were wearing. Fanny chose a t shirt and shorts for herself and her Dad, found some flip flops, a back pack to put spare clothes in and a teddy bear!

After getting treatment for Peter and Fanny we tried to telephone other staff from Dulwich school who were located in various hospitals and the provincial hall to check that there was no one matching Peter’s family description. We got through to some, not others, the mobile telephone network is completely overloaded. There was no point in remaining at the hospital so I brought them back to the school. Peter and Fanny got some food then went back to the dormitory to sleep and pray.

The school received a request for people to go and help put coffins together at Khao Lak, it was becoming clearer that there was a large scale disaster unfolding up there. There were now more than enough volunteer drivers to take care of local shuttles so I drove home picked up Sam, Max, bottled water, food, hammers and nails and we drove to the Khao Lak Watt (temple) about 1 hour north of where we live.

We found the Watt and parked the pick up. We walked over to the stacks of coffins and offered our services however they had finished putting together all the coffins they had (which were not nearly enough). There were piles of coffins stacked up with the lids on containing the remains of bodies that had been identified. There were then row upon row of coffins with lids off where the bodies were yet to be identified. There were also further rows of bodies laid out of the grass where they had run out of coffins. You could tell the difference between corpses that had been in the water rather than dumped on land as they were swollen up. Across the sea of corpses limbs stuck up in the air frozen into place by rigormortis. We looked at the rows of dead bodies in and not in coffins for anyone who matched the description of the missing relatives of people who were staying at the school. There were about 200 unidentified bodies at the Watt at the time but none that matched the descriptions I had although for a lot of them they were too badly damaged to identify so I could not be sure. Pick up trucks laden down with more corpses were arriving constantly and being unloaded into rows on the grass however there appeared to be little point in staying there so we went back to the car. A thought occurred to me that in the first 43 years of my life I had only seen 2 dead people, both adults someone gunned down in New York although I was quite a distance from it and only found out the next day that the man had died and a body floating down the Mekong river in Cambodia. Now in the space of less than an hour I had seen hundreds and they ranged from babies through children to the elderly.

We then drove further north as we had been asked to go to the Sofitel hotel at Khao Lak resort to offer to bring back any survivors to the school so they could be evacuated from the area. Khao Lak is a tourist resort with about 6,000 rooms built around a crescent shaped sandy beach surrounded by a natural amphitheater of hills. We drove up a slope and over the crest of the hill where the Khao Lak resort came into view. I had last been to Khao lak a few months ago to visit friends who were on holiday there. Khao Lak is not built up like Phuket resorts but low rise buildings a lot made from local wood that nestle at the base of the amphitheater along the coastline.

It is difficult to describe the impact of the scene of complete carnage that unfolded as we drove over the hill and into Khao Lak. The first thing to hit you was the white sandy beach was no longer white but completely covered with debris. The resorts that line the coast were ……. just not there anymore, nor were the trees or anything that had been standing between the sea and the road, a distance of about 500m. As we drove down the hill at the entrance to each resort was crowds of people and pick up trucks ….. laden down with bodies. Some were partially wrapped in sheets, some were just lying there. There were bodies laid out by the side of the road having been retrieved from where the resorts were.

Unlike Phuket Island there is no off-shore reef to slow down the tsunami at Khao Lak so the coast had taken the full hit of the wave traveling at 500 miles per hour. The whole area (apart from the road that had been ploughed) was covered with 10ft high piles of debris, the power and telephone lines were all down, there were overturned vehicles that had been bent in half, collapsed buildings, you could see how high the water had been as the first floor balconies of buildings on the right of the road were piled up with debris.

There were many Japanese emergency recovery teams that has been flown in, they have been specially trained for dealing with the aftermath of a disaster like this and it was impressive that they were on the ground in numbers helping recover bodies.

As we drove along the road each gathering of people only meant one thing – another body being extracted from a ditch, a pile of debris, a vehicle …….. There were people walking up from the beach in pairs with a pole over their shoulders, each pair had a body slung from the pole. We could now see an area of beach as the road got closer to the shore and as I focused on the shapes of debris on the beach it became clear they were bodies – who knows haw many.

Back hoes were being used to turn over the piles of debris until someone spotted a limb, stopped the machine, pulled out the body on to the side of the road and then continued. We saw many hundreds of bodies lying along the stretch of road we drove and this was clearly only the tip of the iceberg.

We passed a bus barley visible under the water by the road.

When we got to the Sofitel there was very little left of the hotel and no survivors left at the scene so we turned around. To try to give you an idea this is a 350 room hotel built from concrete and bricks on the beach that has been completely decimated, only piles of rubble remain.

About ½ a mile inland up in some trees we could see a steel police ship that was at least 150ft long.

We drove back to Phuket and stopped at the airport to see how many of the tourists staying at the school could be flown to Bangkok that night. The airport was packed but well organized. Thai airlines is putting on extra flights to Bangkok that are free to anyone until the area is cleared so we went back to the school to pass on the news and work out how to get as many people to the airport as we could.

Communications has been a real problem as the mobile phone network is completely overloaded so SMS messages were the only way to communicate and they were often delayed for some hours before being delivered.

I took Sam, Max and another friend home for some food while Katie helped organize getting people to the airport and checking in new arrivals at the school. There are still people arriving from outlying areas 60 hours after the event as well as doctors and consular staff from Bangkok who are staying at the school.

Hopefully tomorrow will bring better times for all

From David - Dec 28, 2004 - including a link to a BBC article:

David saw this story on BBC News Online and thought youshould see it.

** Message **Sam, Max and I were here today, we went to help put coffins together for the dead

** Hundreds dead in Thai resort

**Thai officials say more than 700 people have died at Khao Lak resort in the south of the country near Phuket.< http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/4129417.stm >

From Katie - Dec 27, 2004:


Just spent the day at school – Dulwich -- manning the registration desk for people needing shelter for a night (or until they can find a next staging ground – whether a flight home or whatever).

Very sobering. Adults catatonically distraught at the loss of a spouse (with me not knowing whether they already knew it was hopeless or whether the spouse was just ‘missing’ – so just having to say, “Now what is your name? Where are you from? Where were you staying?”). People with severe cuts, bruises, and wounds – all over their bodies. Others just lost – mentally and physically -- from the experience. Most were tourists, but there were also many Thais among the 200 odd I checked in, e.g., doctors and nurses, flown down from Bangkok. Other Thais were staff from resorts up the coast which were ruined (along with the staff housing).

Dulwich teachers went out to hospitals, helping those walking wounded being released find a place to stay until flying out, and to the Phuket city hall, where the embassy staff had desks, issuing temporary travel permits/passports. They would collect people needing a place to stay and vanloads would then descend upon Dulwich and we would assign them to boarding houses. Embassy staff were also staying at Dulwich, but they’re not expected to show up to sleep until late tonight.

Some Dulwich staff – experts at diving – spent the day searching submerged carparks and buildings/cellars in Patong, looking for bodies.

Most of the people coming in today were from the outlying areas – e.g., the island of Phi Phi and the northern shores of Khao Lak – not from on Phuket island. These refugees had spent the night either in the jungle or in primitive medical areas, before being driven down to Phuket – the major metropolis.

We heard the British embassy was bringing in extra staff – so we needed extra beds – and the rumour was that the British government was flying in special planes to take out the British citizens. Most of the people I registered were German or Swedish or Finnish. (Those Nordic countries really love the sun in the middle of winter….)

Then there was a call for A Negative blood – a rare blood type among Asians. Several of the traumatized foreigners were willing to climb into a mini-van for a long trek and wait at a local hospital to give blood – knowing what a difference it would make.

Heard horrible stories of babies and children being swept away. Most of the Dulwich staff is now accounted for. The art teacher was finally located after being medically evacuated from Phi Phi Island. We only know she is “ok”. Another teacher had gone to Sri Lanka for the Xmas holiday. We’ve given up on him.

Tomorrow I imagine my day will be spent ferrying people to Phuket Town (where the embassy reps are stationed) or to the airport (where there are shuttle services to Bangkok).

It’s all so sad.

-- Katie

From Katie - Dec 27, 2004 - an expanded version of Email #1:


Just to let you know – though I know you would have checked with Westbrook if you were worried. Yes, we’re all safe.

We definitely felt the quake. Yesterday morning David and I were each sitting at computers downstairs at 8 AM and suddenly began to feel sick to our stomachs as things in front of our eyes began to move – it was the house starting to shake. And it kept on shaking slowly but surely. I kept staring at a mirror hanging on the wall in front of my computer and it was swaying back and forth. David was sitting at our big dining room table which he said was shifting back and forth. After several long minutes, we decided to get the kids up and out of the house -- not knowing how long it would go on and how sturdy this house was. And even though going outside is NOT what you’re supposed to do. The tremors didn’t last that much longer, but it was weird.

We then began to start looking on the internet, waiting for news of it to seep out – which took awhile. This site is the US one that we particularly watched, to see the number of aftershocks building up – none of which we felt -- http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/Maps/region/Asia_eqs.html.

By late morning we began to hear via friends (the mobile phone network was jammed, but text messages (SMS) were going through fine) of news on the west side of the island – bodies floating in the streets, destruction, but also reports of minimal destruction in other areas. For example, the boys have a good friend who lives down near the southern most point of the island – and he said he there was minimal damage – he went swimming on a beach that had been relatively protected by a bay. But then he went up to the next areas on the west side, Kata and Karon, which are totally exposed to the open ocean and he said it was horrible. The boys have another friend who is staying at a beach resort up the Thai coast from Phuket and he got through last night to say that beach was badly hit.

We were/are in no danger at all from the wave. The damage on Phuket was limited to some of the western beaches and we live on the east side, which is much more sheltered by sitting to the left of the mainland. In fact, I’d say the tsunamis affected perhaps just 10% of the island – in terms of both area and numbers of people.

Phuket has a steep spine of mountains running north-south, so people on those low-lying western beaches had hills (with houses, hotels, and other human beings on them) readily available to run to. There are also plenty of available resources of food, shelter, and hospitals on this island – which were untouched. I know our school – Dulwich – was preparing last night for an influx of 1,000 evacuees (all tourist or not, I don’t know) to sleep in boarding houses and on the gymnasium floors. I sent over extra bedding, towels, and food. Must call and see what the needs are today. We didn’t go driving around yesterday as the roads traversing the island are narrow and windy and it would be all too easy to clog them.

It is the smaller islands, like Phi Phi, which sound much worse off – in that they’re small and the only development was on the beach front. So they don’t have any strong back-up resources on the same island. I also feel so much more sorry for the peoples of Sri Lanka and India – where the tsunami was so much stronger. Not to mention the Indonesians – it will be interesting to find out what really happened in that remote northern province of Aceh.

I must say, some of the news reports are a little exaggerated. We just saw on CNN a trailer that said: “Witness: Famed Laguna Beach Resort destroyed”. Yet yesterday late afternoon we were talking to the general manager of that hotel at his home two doors down. He’d been at his hotel all day and they had had damage, including one tourist drowned and the need to re-accommodate maybe a hundred guests – due to flooding of rooms closest to the sea – and lots of debris to clean up – but it was NOT destroyed, by any stretch of the imagination. Of the five 5-star hotels that make up the Laguna complex, one – the Dusit – was the worst hit with a whole restaurant structure destroyed, while another was completely untouched (except for the seaside hawkers’ flimsy booths being washed out to sea). As for food supplies, according to that hotel manager, all but one or two of the restaurants in the whole complex of hotels were up and running. And hotel guests had been asked to volunteer to double up in rooms and people were being very accommodating, he said. He seemed quite calm about it all – at least from the high-end tourist point of view.

Of course, the CNN/BBC TV reports focusing on tourists is a little bizarre – though understandable. People around the world watching the English-language broadcasts have more in common with English-speaking tourists than with the local inhabitants of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand. But, come on, losing all your holiday belongings is not quite the same as losing your life belongings. And the number of tourists dead will be minimal compared to the natives.

One silver lining of the event was that it was still early morning – by tourist holiday standards – so the beaches were not packed. How much worse it would have been at midday or in the afternoon. The news that will only gradually emerge will be about the people missing -- out on diving trips or out in boats for the day. The hope is that people are safe but stranded on little islands. All of our personal friends have been accounted for, but I do wonder when we get back to school whether there will be any deaths within our community.

We were due to go out on a friend’s boat at midnight last night for a two-day cruise. I must say I try not to think about the random timing of these things. What if we had been out on the sea? Would we have just bobbed along on the top of the tsunamis? Would we have capsized? Where might we have been when the thing hit?

Such is life…..

Love,
Katie

From Katie - Dec 26, 2004:


10:30 PM

We all just went over to Boat Lagoon, but the ship’s captain said too many boats were coming in the channel, so we couldn’t get out tonight. I’m NOT terribly disappointed. We’ll wait 24 hours and see how Mother Nature is doing…

So you don’t need to worry about us on the open sea…..

Love,
Katie

From Katie - Dec 26, 2004:


http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/index.html

David and I were each sitting at computers downstairs this morning at 8 AM and suddenly began to feel sick to our stomachs as things in front of our eyes began to move – it was the house starting to shake. And it kept on shaking slowly but surely. After several long minutes, we decided to get the boys up and out of the house (not knowing how long it would go on and how sturdy this house was). It didn’t last that much longer, but it was weird.

Since then we’ve been watching on the internet (check out the site above). If you look at a map, the northern tip of Sumatra where an 8.1 earthquake hit is not far from Phuket and since that first quake there have been other ones moving up a chain of islands – all to the west of Phuket.

I just spoke with Angie Batt, our neighbor two doors down whose husband is the manager of one of the 5-star Laguna hotels on the west coast. Evidently the sea water level rose by 2 meters, flooding the shoreline (sweeping all the hawkers’ booths into the lagoon), even flooding some of the ground-floor rooms of hotel buildings near the shore. One guest drowned when the wall of the lagoon he was standing next to collapsed due to the flooding water. We hear there are dead bodies floating in the seaside streets of Kamala and that there are deaths in Patong. I guess anyone swimming at 8 AM or walking along the beach on that western side of the island would have been swept away.

Gee, and we’re due to go out on Clive’s boat tonight. At least it’s big and steel-hulled, so impossible to capsize (they say). We’re on the east side of the island – as is Clive’s boat and we were due to head east – away from the earthquake area. We’re not going for 12 hours, so there’s time to see what’s happening with the earth.

But it’s horrible to think of drownings on the west side of the island – and lots of flooding damage.

More later,

Love,
Katie

My sister Katie lives on Phuket, Thailand, and she was there with her husband David and teenaged sons Sam & Max during the tsunami on December 26th. (Her daughter Maggie is here in Maine with us for a few months.) Many people have called or written asking how Katie & her family are, so I thought this would be a good way to keep people informed. Katie and David have written several emails, and I will cut & paste some of them here.