On this trip, I decided to see a little more of Thailand than the urban congested city of Bangkok. On Christmas Day, we boarded a ferry to Ko Phi Phi,  a small island that is, or was, quite a tourist destination. Charlie and Ae had spent their honeymoon there.

The only reservation available was at the most expensive resort on the island. I was a little miffed, but we had a swim, a nice dinner, talked about plans for our few days. We met in the restaurant about 9:30 the next morning and talked about what we were going to do that day.  Charlie and Ae were going to snorkel, and I was going to sit by the pool and take in the sights.

About 10, we noticed staff running away from the beach as if something was chasing them.  Then we saw the water rising.  It wasn't as much a wave as a very rapid swell. The water rose 15 feet in as many seconds.

We were dry on the second-floor restaurant balcony. We rushed to the rail. Charlie saw a young woman clinging to a tree and the water and floating furniture pounding her with terrible force.  He started tying table cloths together to make a rope. When the flow ebbed for a second, he waded out and brought the woman to the steps up to the balcony.  I grabbed her. She was shaking so hard that I could hardly hold on.  Then Charlie brought up an injured man, and the triage center opened right there in the restaurant.

A path of destruction

The water flowed over the island with enough force to destroy almost everything in its path.  The building we were in was spared because it was built on reinforced concrete posts and open to the second floor.  After the first surge, everything on the central part of the island was gone. 

When the water came back over the island in the opposite direction, it washed into the sea everything that had been knocked down the first time. 

I started to walk around the deck to see what I might do to help. At the top of a stairway, I found a little boy about 3 shaking like he was freezing cold and screaming, "My papa!"  He was bleeding and had a pretty big lump over one eye.  I picked him up and tried to console him.  He was Japanese and couldn't tell me what had happened, so I carried him around asking if anyone spoke Japanese.  No luck.

The crowd started to get hysterical, fearing the next wave would be even bigger. People started climbing on tables to get onto the roof.  I handed the little boy up to a Thai man and continued to look for a Japanese-speaking person.

The wounded continued to arrive. One young man, a fireman or paramedic of some sort,  took charge of the first-aid center.  He and other volunteers cleaned wounds with whiskey, hotel towels and restaurant linen.  Charlie and others rounded up chaise-lounge cushions. Pretty soon we had 15 to 20 patients in various stages of disrepair.  It was just awful!  We had nothing to work with. The whole island was absolutely unprepared.  I can't tell you how helpless I felt. 

Our lives were spared

If we had stayed in the hotel we first tried to reserve --  the place Charlie and Ae stayed on their honeymoon -- we would have been washed away in the first wave.  If we had gone to breakfast half an hour earlier, we probably would have been down on the ground when the swell hit the island and been washed into the sea.  Our rooms were on the second floor. After the big surge, there were fish in the hallway of the second floor. The lobby and all of the first floor were demolished.

My son moved into a leadership role.  He was taking care of people, digging out folks stuck under debris piles and breaking down doors to get folks in and out. By 3 o’clock, Charlie and the manager were consulting about what to do next, and Charlie (who speaks pretty good Thai) was making announcements in English.

Early in the afternoon, they brought a small boat up to the shore, a diving boat that held 25 or so.  Charlie and his crew loaded the seriously injured into the boat -- doors were the stretchers of choice -- and the boat headed for the mainland about two hours away. 
A military helicopter flew over the island to survey the damage and pulled up two of the injured.  Thai police arrived with a couple of choppers and evacuated some of the seriously injured folks.

We stayed in the triage center to help those who couldn't walk. Then we spotted a ferryboat waiting out beyond the cluttered harbor. Thai “long tail” boats were carrying the injured from the pier to the ferry. We started taking the rest of the injured down to the pier to put them on the little boats.

As the last injured person from our group was loaded, it was getting dark. We got on the boat ourselves and went out to the waiting ferry.  We felt a little guilty to be leaving while hundreds of others, some in worse shape than we were, were waiting up on the hillside, but it didn't seem to make any sense to let the boat go with empty seats. We knew that the ferry would have to leave before dark because without lights there was no way to avoid the tons of debris in the sea.

Three hours later, in Krabi, we got the injured off the boat, found a hotel, had a little fried rice and said our prayers!  At that point it seemed that we were going to survive.

In the aftermath of disaster

We reached Hua Hin by car about noon. I finally was able to use a computer and get a message out that we had survived.  I called the U.S. Embassy and told them that I had lost my passport.  They told me to come that evening, and they would issue a temporary passport.  I called United Airlines and told them that my ticket was gone, and they told me to come to the airport at 5 a.m. and they would get me on a plane.

Now it is about 4 a.m., time for me to go get in line with the hope that I'll be on my way home in a few hours.  There are a few details to add … First, the story of the little Japanese boy ended happily.  In about two hours, the child's mother arrived with the boy's sister.  She found her husband in the triage center, injured but alive, and her son still in the arms of the Thai man on the roof. 

Rarely do we see the power of nature.  No words can adequately describe what we experienced, and it leaves me feeling pretty helpless and powerless.  Never again will I travel without a flashlight.  I will buy travel insurance.  I will never stay right on the beach, and I will have my will brought up-to-date within a week.  I never again will feel the earth move without feeling panic, and I'll never hear the word “tsunami” without feeling fear.

About justice: In a natural disaster, there is none.  I could give you a hundred reasons why I should be the one missing from just the one small island where I was.  The German man who was able to get his two small children to safety before he was swept away and the Israeli man who had his infant and toddler swept from his arms as he tried to escape the torrent come to mind.  I am older.  My children are adults.  You know what I mean.

And about my hero: God, the things you learn in a natural disaster. Watching my son spring into action, address real life-and-death human needs and be of considerable assistance in addressing emergencies and maintaining order was enough to bring tears to my eyes.  There is something in that man … a sense of confidence, a great deal of ability, good common sense, great courage, excellent communication skill and an ability to relate to people that reassures and calms.

All I can say is that if either you or I are ever again in a situation of great peril, I hope Charlie or someone like him is there with us.

And one last note.  The day I arrived in Bangkok, Charlie and Ae discovered that sometime this summer they will have a baby in their household (and guess who will be a grandfather)!

To respond to this first-person account, write to firstperson@episcopal-life.org.