At resorts, apocalypse -- then chaos

By Rafael D. Frankel

PHUKET, Thailand, Dec. 28—The day after massive tidal waves leveled large swaths of Thailand’s Southwestern coast was a mix between picking up the pieces for some and struggling to cope with severe loss for others here, as the death toll across Thailand climbed to 918 with 7,396 injured according to government officials.

While beach-front shop owners in this resort island returned to their businesses to comb what was left of their shattered livelihoods, thousands of foreign tourists and Thais scrambled to find their way off devastated islands, sought medical attention and searched desperately for some of 1,000 people officials estimate are still missing in the aftermath of a natural disaster the likes of which have never before been seen here.

Many of the missing are believed dead, Interior Minister Bhokin Balakula told the Chicago Tribune, indicating the loss of life could grow even higher over the days ahead. He added that most of the casulties were Thai.

The Thai military transformed Phuket Town Hall into a triage and support center yesterday. Thousands of foreigners and Thais who came down from the high ground of Phuket or arrived from some of Thailand’s smaller, adjacent islands this morning filed through. Local volunteers passed out free food and clothes to the survivors, many of whom had not eaten in a day and lost everything they owned in the tsunami.

Among the stricken were also scores who were hoping to find news of loved ones here whom they had not seen since the tsunami struck more than 24 hours beforehand.

“Everyone I’ve talked to has lost someone, sometimes entire families,” said Ita Caegrou, an Irishwoman who has lived in Thailand for six years. She was there offering free accommodation to survivors of the waves on behalf of a local language school which she teaches at.

One Belgian man in his 60’s, his bruised and scraped body clothed in donated hospital scrubs, pulled over Thai and foreign officials alike asking if they had seen his wife who he was vacationing with here. He was referred to a white board standing in the court yard where lists of the dead were posted along with pictures of corpses for which no identification had yet been made. A sign below the pictures read: “If you know their names, please alert the authorities.”

In another section of the yard, hundreds of tourists lined up on what was a sunny, temperate (by Thai standards) day, to have their finger prints taken for the issuance of temporary IDs. Some who were hurt or exhausted dragged plastic chairs with them in line while others were still dressed in swimming suits they were wearing at the time they fled their respective beaches for higher ground.

Inside the building, volunteer doctors and nurses treated those with minor bruises and lacerations while those with more serious injuries were transported by helicopter and truck to local hospitals. Upstairs, 30 countries setup make shift embassy stations in a converted conference room to assist tourists who were left without passports, money, and any means to contact loved ones in countries thousands of miles away.

Two men manning the U.S. embassy table were themselves on vacation in Phuket when the disaster struck. They had assisted around 50 stranded Americans who were injured or had lost passports, said Richard Hanrahan, who is normally posted to the U.S. consulate in Delhi.

As of last night, one American was confirmed dead here, a U.S. embassy spokesman said.

Nearly to a person, foreigners who were caught in the tidal waves said they were grateful for the hospitality and genuine caring so many of the local people had provided them. And Jacob ***, a representative of the Israeli embassy said he was impressed with the response Thailand had mounted to the disaster.

At the crowded and chaotic Phuket Airport, all the survivors from Koh Phi Phi and Phang Nga Bay—two of the worst stricken areas—told stories of barely escaping the colossal onslaught that the successive tidal waves heaved against the beaches.

Clair Kent, 40, from England, sat on a luggage x-ray machine with her three children, 6, 8, and 11, while her husband attempted to find a way home for their family after they saw hundreds of bungalows all around them, most with people inside, washed to sea from the vantage point of their beach-front hotel roof in Phang Nga.

When helicopters came to their hotel to rescue Thai Princess Ubolrat, who’s son Boom Jensen was killed in the wave, Kent thought “they would come back for us. But they didn’t,” she said. After two hours, when the water began to recede, her family “walked through mud, up the hill” until they were found by the Thai owner of the hotel who kept them at his house that night.

“These are all his clothes. Just that one t-shirt,” Kent said, pointing at her 11-year-old daughter, “belongs to us. Everything we had is gone.

“But we were very, very lucky,” she added.

On Koh Phi Phi, a popular destination for backpackers, the scene was “apocalyptic” after the wave hit, one survivor said, while others described mass chaos with zero direction from the police or any authorities.

The anarchy combined with the destruction and fear—rumors continued throughout the day that more waves were incoming—led to scenes of mass hysteria, Dutch traveler Floris Havelaar, 27, said.

He and his girlfriend, Claire Knight, 21, spent the night in the higher jungle off the beach along with hundreds of others. During the night, fires which were started by the survivors to ward off mosquitoes spread, Knight said, and people already in a state of paranoia began screaming.

“Everybody panicked. There were hundreds of people running over each other. And every time someone screamed it happened again,” she said.

When the sun rose and the couple began making their way down the hills and toward the pier to escape the island, they saw scores of bodies strewn across the flattened landscape and shopping quarters on the island where “The Beach” was filmed.

“There were so many bodies down by the pier. A girl, 17 or 18, was stroking the hair of her dead mom,” Havelaar said. “And there were so many people trying to get off the pier onto the boats the whole [pier] was shaking.”

Down on Patong Beach, the hardest hit area of Phuket, locals and tourists were walking the beach and the main street yesterday in near silence as they surveyed the damage from the day before.

Store owners sat stunned in their shops before slowly beginning the long clean-up job in front of them. They picked their way through the debris of restaurant menus, mannequins, and Christmas decorations strewn clear across the beach and 500 meters up from the water. Everything was coated in a fine layer of sand deposited by the waves.

Twisted iron support beams hung from punctured ceilings in many of the shops while corrugated metal sheathes, once used as garage doors, were torn to pieces.

Cars stacked three high were piled on top of each other on the road just off the beach and one boat named the “Good Luck” nested in the remnants of its owners restaurant.

On the beach during a picture-perfect sunset, among capsized boats and tree trunks snapped like twigs, a scattering of tourists walked the sands as they would on any day at that time here.

Kid Koernoon, 29, a life guard from Phuket, said it was time now to “clean it up and make everything new. But we don’t know where to start,” he said. “This high season is gone, but maybe in a couple years it could be like before. But who knows?”

Other shop owners said they would probably pack up what was left and go to Bangkok to look for work.

For its part, the Thai government kicked its rescue and support operations into high gear across the country yesterday, with the Thai Air Force flying survivors from Phuket back to Bangkok in five C-130 military transport planes. Bangkok Airways and Nok Airways were also providing some free flights back to Bangkok.

The Thai Navy continued its search and rescue operations across the Andaman Sea, the interior minister said. While they were focusing on their rescue efforts over the last two days, they would soon turn their attention to recovering the hundreds of bodies scattered across Thailand’s beaches and seas, Bhokin said.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, touring Koh Phi Phi yesterday morning, estimated the economic costs of the damage at around $500 million. So far he has not called for foreign aid money to assist Thailand with recuperating from the disaster, unlike the leaders of many of the other stricken countries.

On a walking tour of Patong Beach, Finance Minister Somkid Jurisripitak predicted Phuket would bounce back within a year. “It is not permanent. The problem is how to revitalize the local entrepreneurs,” he said.

© 2004 Rafael D. Frankel and The Chicago Tribune