Fred Burks for
the WantToKnow.info
team
P.S. I am sending this email from Indonesia, where there are nearly one
tsunami million refugees without homes.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/01/07/MNGQOAMQHR1.DTL
Paul's Story
Sitting around, day after Christmas, just staring at the TV - some
movie we've seen before. Mid-morning, post-breakfast stupor controlling
Karin and me. The power flickers and we moan. I suppose we'll have to
get up and
do something. 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 street yelling. It looks
like a fire at the large two-story resort that effectively blocks our
view of the beach. Smoke and dust coming up, and all these people.
Then
a small line of really brown water comes rolling rapidly towards us.
That's
weird. But I reckon it must be some strange full moon high tide. We
go upstairs so we don't get wet. I look out the window and try and take
some pictures. There is a quiet rumble to it. The water is getting
higher and higher.
Then the now surging water destroys our friends cement bungalow!
Then our own front door caves in! Then water is coming up the stairs!
HOLY SHIT. This was the last point my brain worked for a long time.
We try and throw a mattress out the window to float on, but the water
is rising too fast. Out the window we climb. It's all going so
fast. It's faster than conscious thought. By the time we are on our
second story 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're
separated. I scream her name, but the crashing roiling water mutes me.
I can't hear her. I scream and scream until I get hit by something and
pulled under. I can't swim to the top, I pull myself through trash and
wood to the surface, and off I go, pulled by the relentless mass of
water.
Ahead are trees wrapped in flotsam. A Thai guy is
struggling to get free of the flotsam. As I pass by at 30 MPH, I
realize he
is impaled on a piece of wood and can't even scream.
My brain shut down when Karin disappeared, and now all I can do is
survive. Something triggers and I swim. I swim to avoid the trees which
will trap me, possibly kill me. It seems that I am atop the crest of
the tsunami, which is less like a wave than a flood. From on high I can
see the water slam into buildings, then rise, then watch
the buildings collapse into piles of concrete and rebar. I swim to
avoid these. Left and right I paddle, looking ahead the whole time
trying to figure the hazards. None of this is conscious. It isn't me
thinking it out, it's some recessed part of the brain coming out and
taking control.
I was busy seeing the weird things like massive diesel trucks being
rolled end over end. Or the car launched through the 2nd story wall of
a former luggage shop. Or the person high up in a still-standing tree
wearing a
lurid orange thong. Or the older foreigner that I saw stuck in a jumble
of wood
and steel wrapped around a tree, only to then watch his body be torn
off while his
head remained. I couldn't scream.
I was pulled under, my pants caught on something. I decided that this
was neither the place nor time for me to die, and ripped my pants off.
I surfaced into a hunk of wood which cut my forehead. A 5 gallon water
bottle sped by, and I wrapped myself around it like a
horny German Shepard on a Chihuahua.
I was passing people with bleeding
faces and caked in refuse. Some people reached out to me, and I back,
but the water was too fast and erratic. Some people screamed for help,
and I told them to swim. Some people just stared with empty eyes,
watching what happened, but seeing nothing. Some were just floating
corpses.
At some point, I passed a guy, cut on his cheek, holding onto big piece
of foam. 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
by a refrigerator and pushed dangerously towards a building that was
collapsing. I
swam and swam and swam and swam and still was pushed right towards a
huge clump of 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 around and was pulled under again.
Down there, I knew it was not my time. I pulled my way up through
the floating rubbish of my former town. I pulled and pulled and my
lungs ached for air. I flashed on Star Wars, the trash compactor scene,
and had some big grin in the back of head as I popped up. Sucking
shitty water and air deep in my lungs.
This went on seemingly for weeks. Time simply left the area alone. I
grabbed the
edge of a mattress and floated. Breathing, just breathing. My awareness
brought back by the sound and look of waterfalls all around me. Trying
to push up
onto the mattress more and more, as it took my weight less and less.
Tumbling over the edge, sucked under again, and out I shot, swirled
into a coconut grove, where the water seemed to have stopped.
There was even a dyke like wall around the coconut grove. The water
spun and
churned, but went nowhere, and finally, it got no higher. I wasn't
swimming, or
climbing, but something in between. I made my way to the land. Every
step had to be careful with broken glass everywhere and sheet metal
poking out. It was a long slow struggle.
The low rumble stopped, only to be replaced by the occasional creak of
wood on
wood and metal scraping. Moans came across the new brown lake. A small
boy was 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
a thought, anything.
As I came back to earth I needed to pee. The first thing I did after
surviving the tsunami was piss! Along limps
an older Thai guy who finds me naked atop a dyke amid the destruction,
covered in mud and filth - pissing. He didn't even smile...nor did I.
I spent the next minutes running from high point to high point
screaming out for Karin. If I made it, she could too. There was no
response from her. I found plenty of other people, and helped who I
could, but always looking across this vast area of new lakes for her
head.
Through the trees was a PT boat, a large, empty, steel police cruiser.
The boat
and 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 Karin was out
there somewhere.
A small boy in a tree whimpered, and I pulled him
down. We went inland. There were houses still standing, a whole
neighborhood atop a rise that was untouched. Just feet away were cars
wrapped around trees. I handed the boy over to people there.
I had just finished my medic training exactly one month before, so I
went to
work. Pulling people out of mud, from under houses. One car, upright
against 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 remedied very quickly. I pulled people out of the water, only to
have them choke and die right there in my hands. I would take someone's
pulse,
scream for help, then find that they had died before we could do
anything. It was beyond any nightmare 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.
Roaming the former streets looking for foreigners to send to higher
ground, to find a place where we could all meet and tend to wounds.
After an
hour the Thais came screaming out of the mud saying there was another
wave coming. They flew into the hills. We were left alone.
Those that could walk did. The rest were carried. We made a new base,
higher and safer. And then moved higher again and again. Eventually we
ended up in the woods at a park, where there was water
and high 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 toes and shock everywhere.
There was no medicine, no tools, no scissors, no bandages. Nothing but
well water (of questionable cleanliness) and some sticks and clothes. I
tried to find anyone medically trained. It was only we diving
instructors who all had basic first aid. So we cleaned with the water,
we broke sticks and set bones, and talked people into a relatively calm
place. If someone was severely cut, we used their own clothing to mend
the wounds. It was a horror story. The floor was covered in blood.
People were moaning or vomiting or asking us to help them. And more
arrived with every new wave of cars and trucks fleeing the "next wave".
After hours of this, we got news of helicopters evacuating the injured.
Everyone rushed towards the trucks. I had to scream and push and
pull people out of the way. The ones who needed evacuation the most
were
the ones who couldn't get to the trucks. After twenty minutes of
sorting through the priorities, and feeling like we had a handle on it,
someone dragged me to a girl who was bleeding severely out of her thigh
and was in shock. No one had brought her to our little clinic area.
They had forgotten her in the back of truck.
Finally, after a few helicopters had pulled out the worst, I headed
back down. Through rubber tree plantations and coconut groves we
drove. It seemed quiet and relaxed until we hit the last corner where
it was
devastation. The road was clear and dry up to a certain point, and then
it was a horizon of endless rubble. I shuddered.
Someone on a scooter came up and asked for a doctor. Everyone looked at
me! I jumped on and they took me up roads I never knew existed,
over bridges that were barely standing until I was brought to five
foreigners in the middle of nowhere. One of them was a good friend and
diving instructor. It was the first person I had seen that I knew. It
was a total joy. He was banged up pretty bad, but he got out and sent
off to the hospital.
Then the Thais came roaring up the hill, saying
there was another wave coming. We had to carry four more people with
broken
bones (including a broken hip) up a hill. There was no wave. It never
came.
I stumbled back down, wandering through the town looking for people to
help. I found only corpses. I found one with a tattoo like Karin's on a
scooter under some rubble. I pulled her out. 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
always whined about how it was too far off the main road, but it
survived. It was a center for the survivors. I walked up to find
friends alive and things clean and organized.
I was able to keep on, doing what I could to help people, to close
out my mind to what was around me and to look only at what I was doing,
to
not see the dead people, to not worry about where Karin was. I had held
together so well.
When I finally found Karin alive, it all fell apart. I suddenly could
smell the
destruction, the horror I had just walked through, just lived through,
that she had lived through. My body shouted out in pain from all the
bruises and
cuts I had 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 all
over my body and a sinus infection from all the bad water. Karin had
gotten hold of a coconut tree, wrapped herself around it and never let
go. She had a few bruises and small cuts and a black eye. I was
ecstatic to see her like that. First time I've ever been happy to see a
woman with a black eye.
Most of the rest of our friends had come through. They had set up first
aid stations and help stations, organized food and created a center for
people to meet. The diving community came together and became our
support, our medical care, our food - they did everything they could to
help and then some.
I can't help but give massive appreciation and even a bit of awe to
several people. Whether you know them or not, these are the true
heroes. Keith - he was tireless - for days, running around, getting
medicine, doing first aid, cooking food, getting clothes, talking to
the forlorn, coordinating and doing everything he could. His energy was
endless and bright.
Jim and Andrea opened the doors of their shop. They clothed and housed
everyone they could. Joakim ran about grabbing people, helping wherever
he could, evacuating people to the next town, the whole while wondering
about the safety of his own family. And the two DMT's that helped me
out - two guys who had just taken a first aid class only to find
themselves dealing with unbelievably massive trauma, death and chaos.
And so many other heroes - this
was not the work of just one or two people.
The diving community at large shined like a beacon over the
madness. When there was no one else, they all stepped forward. I can't
help but swell with pride to count myself among them.
The next day I went back to where my house had been to survey the
damage. One bungalow nearby had been lifted up and dropped on top of
another. The whole beach was visible, meaning that all of the two or
three
story hotels that had lined it were gone. The bottom floor of our house
was gone. The upper floor was
missing a couple of walls. The only thing left was a plastic Jesus
doll I had bought as a joke. So I was left without a possession in the
world except my plastic Jesus.
The level of destruction is virtually impossible to describe. On our
beach we had about 2,500 hotel rooms. The week the tsunami hit, between
Christmas and New
Year's, is the busiest of the year. It looked to me that maybe 50
could still be called hotel rooms.
With no warning and no
evacuation plan, the survival rates were minimal. The wave at our house
was about 7 meters high (22 feet) and in some places it was 10 meters
(over 30 feet) high. It wiped out the third floor of most resorts. The
number of dead is astronomical--several thousand on my beach alone. By
the second day you could smell the rotting bodies. In the short walk to
my former
house, we passed about 10 bodies just strewn about.
Our final glance of the town was a cattle truck stacked full of wrapped
up corpses. We wanted to go home.
In Bangkok most people got help pretty quick. The Swedes, Germans and
English had arranged charted flights for their citizens to get home.
The Thai
government gave free hotel rooms to survivors, and there were lists of
places to get food.
All governments helped as they could EXCEPT the Americans. I went in to
find out what help I could get. All I
was able to get a was 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, no clothing (except some borrowed off Keith), nothing at all,
yet
they could do nothing to help.
They did offer to let me borrow money. But they required
three people in America who would vouch for me - a process that could
take up to a week. In the mean time I was screwed. I was destitute
and rejected by the embassy. Karin was with me (she's Swedish). She
said
that I could still try and emigrate to Sweden. I was VERY tempted.
In these last days, I've heard US politicians go about offering huge
amounts of
aide, 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
their own citizens!
Eventually I got a flight home with JAL - that
would be JAPAN airlines - not even an American company, but a JAPANESE
company helped me get home.
I am still listed by the US government as neither found nor alive.
Before I left, I spoke to the embassy twice on the phone. I gave my
name so that I would be
listed as alive, so my family would not worry. I went to the embassy
twice, yet they never listed me as alive or found. I flew out of the
country
using a replacement passport they gave me, yet officially I am still
not found.
Back in the US for three days now, I have been to the hospital
three times. As of yesterday, I am now listed as injured at the
hospital. My family is now waiting to see
how long it will take before they are notified about my status. So am I.
It does raise a good question - if I am still officially missing or
dead, do I have to
pay taxes?
While spiteful about the embassy, I am grateful to be alive. I am
grateful that
those I care about are still alive. I still look around and am in awe
at what just happened. I really feel like someone slipped me some
roofies and somehow I just woke up in America.
No real moral to this story...yet.
While not exactly destitute, I am rich in friends. Almost all my money,
all my dive gear (my income), as well as my
laptop (years of pictures and writing) and most everything else is
probably floating somewhere near Burma.
If you want to help out, I would recommend going to
www.diveaid.co.uk These are
divers helping divers. Most of our community, while
surviving, lost everything. This is a great site that includes some
news of the
area and those affected. Donations can also be sent to good charities -
ones
that truly help. Doctors Without borders
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
and the Thailand Red Cross
http://www.redcross.or.th/english/home/index.php4
Both were both there fast and help out immensely.
My story is just one among many. There are hundreds of thousands far
worse off than me. I had
somewhere to fly to. I can't speak, or even
dream of what it must be like in Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
Breathe...
