Back and Alive

A tsunami survivor's tale: forwarded by my son

..... back and alive.... Sitting around, day after Christmas, just staring at the TV –some movie we’ve seen before. Mid-morning, post-breakfast stupor controlling Karin andme. The power flickers and we moan. We ’ll have to get up and dosomething? Then we hear some yelling outside. I look out the front door, still puffed up with pride about our new house,just 400 feet back from the beach. People are running up our streetyelling. It looks like a fire at the large two story resort thateffectively blocks our view of the beach. Smoke and dust coming up and allthese people. Then a small line of really brown water comes rolling towards us. That ’sweird. But I reckon it must be some strange full moon high tide. So we goupstairs so we don ’t get wet. I look out the window and try and take some pictures. There is a quietrumble to it, like those white noise generators that are supposed to helpyou sleep. The water is getting higher and higher and then it destroys ourfriends cement bungalow! Then our front door caves in, and then water iscoming up the stairs! HOLY SHIT. This was the last point my brain workedfor a long time. We try and throw a mattress out the window to float on, but the water isrising too fast, and out the window we climb. It ’s all going so fast. It’s faster than conscious thought and by the time we are on our secondstory roof, the water is coming out the window. We jump. Karin doesn ’t jump at the same time or did I jump too early? We ’reseparated. I scream her name, but the crashing roiling water mutes me. Ican ’t hear her. I scream and scream until I get hit by something andpulled under. I can ’t swim to the top, I pull myself through trash andwood to the surface and off I go. Ahead are trees wrapped in flotsam and as I look a Thai guy is strugglingto get free of it, as I pass by at 30 MPH I realize he is impaled on apiece of wood and can ’t even scream. My brain shut down when Karin disappeared, and now all I can do issurvive. Something triggers and I swim. I swim to avoid the trees whichwill trap me, possibly kill me. It seems that I am atop the crest of thetsunami, which is less like a wave than a flood. From on high I can see the water hit buildings, then rise, then watch thebuildings collapse into piles of concrete and rebar. I swim to avoidthese. Left and right I paddle, looking ahead the whole time trying tofigure the hazards. None of this is conscious, this isn ’t me thinking itout, it ’s some recessed part of the brain coming out and taking control. I was busy seeing the weird things, like massive diesel trucks beingrolled end over end. Or the car launched through the 2nd storey wall of aformer luggage shop. Or the person high up in a standing tree in a luridorange thong. Or the older foreigner that got stuck in the wood and steelwrapped around a tree, and then his body torn off while his head remained.I couldn ’t scream. I was pulled under, my pants caught on something, I decided that this wasneither the place nor time for me to die, and ripped my pants off. Isurfaced into a hunk of wood which cut my forehead. A 5 gallon water bottle sped by, and I wrapped myself around it like ahorny German Shepard on a Chihuahua. I was passing people with bleedingfaces and caked in refuse. Some people reached out to me, and I back, butthe water was too fast and erratic. Some people screamed for help and Itold them to swim. Some people just stared with empty eyes, watching whathappened, but seeing nothing. Some were just floating bodies. At some point, I passed a guy, cut on his cheek, holding onto big piece offoam. We just made eye contact and shrugged apathetically at each other.Then I turned ahead to watch fate. When I looked back he was gone. Trees were pulled down, and their flotsam added to the flow. I was hit bya refrigerator and pushed towards a building that was collapsing. I swamand swam and swam and swam and still was pushed right towards a huge clumpof jagged sticks and metal. I was pulled under, kicked towards the mass,cut my feet and kicked again. I popped up on the other side, spun aroundand pulled under again. Down there, I knew it was not the time, and I pulled my way up through thefloating rubbish of my former town. I pulled and pulled and my lungs achedfor air. I flashed on Star Wars, the trash compactor scene, and had somebig grin in the back of head as I popped up. Sucking shitty water and airdeep in my lungs. This went on for weeks. Time simply left the area alone. I grabbed theedge of a mattress and floated. Breathing, just breathing. Awarenessbrought back by the sound and look of a water fall. Trying to push up ontothe mattress more and more, and it took my weight less and less. Tumblingover the edge, sucked under again, and out I shot, swirled into a coconutgrove, where the water seemed to have stopped. There was even a dyke likewall around the grove. The water spun and churned, but went no where, and got no higher. It wasn’t swimming, or climbing, but something in between. I made my way to theland. Every step had to be careful with broken glass everywhere, and sheetmetal poking out. It was a long slow struggle. The low rumble had stopped, and now is the occasional creak of wood onwood and metal scraping. Moans came across the new brown lake. A small boywas in a tree crying, asking for his parents in Norwegian. I climbed up onto the dyke and looked around. I screamed out for Karin,only getting responses in Thai. I stood there, panting, trying to find athought, anything. As I came back to earth I needed to pee. The firstthing I did after surviving the tsunami was piss! Along limps an olderThai guy, finds me, naked atop a dyke amid the destruction, covered in mudand filth –pissing. He didn ’t even smile …nor did I. I spent the next minutes running from high point to high point screamingout for Karin. If I made it, she could too. There was no response fromher. I found plenty of other people, and helped who I could, but alwayslooking across this vast area of new lakes for her head. Through the trees was a PT boat, a large steel police cruiser. The boatand I had been brought more than a kilometer (2/3 mile) inland. I was standing near a tree, hoping for a clue, anything to say she was outthere somewhere. A small boy in a tree whimpered, and I pulled him down.We went inland. There were houses, still standing, a whole neighborhoodatop a rise that was untouched. Just feet away were cars wrapped aroundtrees. I handed them the boy. I had finished my medic training exactly one month before, so I went towork. Pulling people out of mud, from under houses. One car, uprightagainst the trunk of a tree still had the driver. He was dead. It went on.Before this I had only seen a dead body once or twice. That was remediedvery quickly. I pulled people out of the water, only to have them chokeand die right there. I would take someone ’s pulse, scream for help, thenfind that they had died before we could do anything. It was beyond anynightmare or fear I have ever had. An older Thai woman came up to me with a pair of shorts and averted eyes.She was ashamed that I was totally naked. I smirked and slipped them on.She smiled and scurried away. Was it the bright white ass or the fearshriveled cock that had embarrassed her? Roaming the former streets looking for foreigners to send to the higherground, a place where we could all meet and tend to wounds. After an hourthe Thais came screaming out of the mud saying there was another wavecoming , and flying into the hills. We were left alone. Those that couldwalk did, the rest were carried. We made a new base, higher and safer. Andthe same thing happened again. And again. Eventually we ended up in the jungle at a park, where there was water andhigh ground. It was messy. Eventually there were about 300 foreigners,about 120 of whom were injured pretty severely with broken limbs and ribs,near-drownings, everyone had gashes of some kind, severed fingers or toesand shock everywhere. There was no medicine, no tools, no scissors, no bandages. Nothing butwell water (of questionable cleanliness) and some sticks and clothes. Itried to find anyone medically trained. It was only the diving instructorswho all had basic first aid. So we cleaned with the water, we broke sticksand set bones and talked people into a relatively calm place. If someonewas severely cut, we used their own clothing to mend the wounds. It was ahorror story. The floor was covered in blood, people were moaning, orvomiting or asking us to help them. And more arrived with every new waveof cars and trucks fleeing the “next wave ”. After hours of this, we got news of helicopters evacuating the injured. Soeveryone rushed towards the trucks. I had to scream and push and pullpeople out of the way. The ones who needed the evac the most were the oneswho couldn ’t get to the trucks. After twenty minutes of sorting throughthe priorities, and feeling like we had a handle on it, someone brought meto a girl who was bleeding severely out of her thigh and was in shock. Noone had brought her to our little clinic area, they had left her in theback of truck. Finally, after a few helicopters had pulled out the worst, I headed backdown. Through rubber tree plantations, and coconut groves we drove. It seemedquiet and relaxed. At the last corner it was devastation. The road wasclear and dry up to a certain point and then it was a horizon of rubble. Ishuddered. Someone on a scooter came up and asked for a doctor. Everyone looked atme! I jumped on and they took me up roads I never knew existed, and overbridges that were barely standing until I was brought to five foreignersin the middle of nowhere. One of them was a good friend and divinginstructor. It was the first person I had seen that I knew. It was a totaljoy. He was banged up pretty bad, but he got out and sent off to thehospital. Then the Thais came roaring up the hill, saying there wasanother wave. We had to carry four more people with broken bones(including a broken hip) up a hill. There was no wave. There never was. I stumbled back down, wandering through the town looking for people tohelp. I found only bodies. I found one with a tattoo like Karin ’s on ascooter under some rubble. I pulled her out, and it was a Thai woman.Still griping her scooter, mouth agape. Eventually I made my way back to the dive shop I worked at. We had alwayswhinged about how it was too far off the main road, but it survived. Itwas a center for the survivors. I walked up to find friends alive andthings clean and organized. I had been able to keep on, doing what I could to help people, to closeout my mind to what was around me and look only at what I was doing, tonot see the dead people, to not worry about where Karin was. I had heldtogether so well. When I found out Karin was alive it all fell apart. I could smell thedestruction, the horror I had just walked through, just lived through,that she had lived through. My body shouted out all the bruises and cuts Ihad ignored. It all struck me and threw me to the ground. It was too much–I could no longer accept this. We hugged and ate and slept. My feet were cut up, I had small cuts allover my body, and a sinus infection from all the bad water. Karin had gotten hold of a coconut tree, wrapped herself around it andnever let go. She had a few bruises and small cuts and a black eye. I wasecstatic to see her like that. First time I ’ve been happy to see a womanwith a black eye. Most of the rest of our friends had come through. They had set up firstaid stations and help stations, organized food and created a center forpeople to meet. The diving community came together and became our support,our medical care, our food - they did everything they could to help andthen some. I can ’t help but give massive appreciation and even a bit of awe toseveral people. Whether you know them or not, these are the true heroes.Keith –he was tireless - for days, running around, getting medicine, doingfirst aid, cooking food, getting clothes, talking to the forlorn,coordinating doing everything he could. His energy was endless and bright.Jim and Andrea opened the doors of their shop, and clothed and housedeveryone they could. Joakim ran about grabbing people, helping wherever hecould, evacuating people to the next town, the whole while wondering aboutthe safety of his own family. And the two DMT ’s that helped me out –twoguys who had just taken a first aid class and then had to deal withmassive trauma, death and chaos. And all the others –this was not the workof just one or two people. Of course the diving community at large shined like a beacon over themadness. When there was no one else, they all stepped forward. I can ’thelp but swell with pride to count myself among them. The next day I went back to where my house had been and surveyed thedamage. One bungalow nearby had been lifted up and dropped on top ofanother. The whole beach was visible, meaning all of the two or threestory hotels that had lined it were gone. There was a jet ski just nearour house. The bottom floor of our house was gone, the upper floor wasmissing a couple of walls. The only thing left, was a plastic Jesus doll Ihad bought as a joke. So I was left with nothing in the world except my own plastic Jesus. The level of destruction is virtually impossible to describe. On our beachwe had approx. 2500 hotel rooms. It looked to me, that maybe 50 couldstill be called hotel rooms. The week between Christmas and New Year ’s isthe busiest of the week. Without warning, without an evacuation plan thesurvival rates were minimal. The wave at our house was about 7 meters high(20 feet) and in some places it was 10 meters (30 feet) high. It wiped outthe third floor of most resorts. The number of dead is astronomical,several thousand on my beach alone. By the second day you could smell it,and in the short walk to my former house, we passed about 10 bodies juststrewn about. Our final glance of the town was a cattle truck stacked full of wrapped upcorpses. We wanted to go home. In Bangkok most people got help pretty quick. The Swedes, Germans andEnglish had charted flights for their citizens to get home. The Thaigovernment gave free hotel rooms to survivors and there were lists ofplaces to get food. EXCEPT the Americans. I went in to find out what help I could get –I wasable to get a replacement passport, a toothbrush and a paperback book.They said it was not their policy to arrange flights home. I was cut up,still covered in a pretty good layer of mud, I had no home, no money, noclothing (except some borrowed off Keith) nothing at all, and they coulddo nothing to help. They did offer to let me borrow money, but they would have to find threepeople in America who would vouch for me, and that process should takeless than a week. In the mean time I was fucked. I was destitute andrejected by the embassy. Karin was with me (she ’s Swedish) and said thatI could still try and emigrate to Sweden. I was VERY tempted. In these last days, watching politicians go on about helping and givingaide, but they won ’t even take care of their own citizens? I am very,very angry. All the other nations of the world were taking care of theirown citizens! Eventually I got a flight home with JAL –that would be JAPANairlines –not even an American company, but a JAPANESE company helped meget home. I am still listed as neither found nor alive. Before I left I had spokento the embassy twice on the phone, giving my name so I would be listed asalive so my family would not worry. I went to the embassy twice, once toget a passport to replace the one lost in the tsunami, and they neverlisted me as alive or found. I flew out of the country using said passportand am still not found. I went to the hospital three times, and, as ofyesterday I am now listed as injured (having been in the states three daysalready). My family is now waiting to see how long it will take beforethey are notified about my status. So am I. It does raise a good question –if I am missing or dead, do I have to paytaxes? While spiteful about the embassy, I am grateful to be alive, and thatthose I care about are still alive. I still look around and am in awe atwhat just happened. I really feel like someone has slipped me some roofiesand I woke up in America. No real moral to this story …yet. While I am fairly devoid of cash right now,
Most of our community, while surviving, lost everything. This is agreat site with some news of the area and those affected. My story is just one, there and 100,000 ’s more far worse off –I hadsomewhere to fly to. Donations should be sent to good charities, ones thattruly help. Doctors Without borders www.doctorswithoutborders.org and the Thailand Red Crosswww.redcross.or.th/english/.../index.php4 were both there fast and helpingout immensely. I can ’t speak, or even dream of what it must be like inSri Lanka and Indonesia. Breathe … =====