15 years on, a look back at the Boxing Day tsunami

[ivor bigun]

I was in Pattaya got a load of phone calls to see if we were ok ,a friend of a friend was killed there ,remember how slow and useless the British embassy were, nothing changes , been that way since i used to have to go there when we had business in BKK.

[Saint Nick]

1 hour ago, ivor bigun said:

I was in Pattaya got a load of phone calls to see if we were ok ,a friend of a friend was killed there ,remember how slow and useless the British embassy were, nothing changes , been that way since i used to have to go there when we had business in BKK.

I think, everybody should know, that the real "useless" thing, was the stonewalling of the Thai- authorities in this case!

For starters, read up on who was in Khao Lak on that fateful day and ask yourself, why First Aid efforts were blocked, telephone services cut and it was super hard to get information out of the area in the first 2 days in particular.
 

[Patong2]

[Odysseus123]

On 12/19/2019 at 2:47 PM, Samui Bodoh said:

I spent a year of my life in Aceh, North Sumatra, Indonesia working on the re-building.

 

In Aceh City, when I first got there, I went to the shore and looked inwards at the place where the town was, or perhaps better to say 'used to be'. It was nothing but a muddy pile of dirt and water where 70,000 people use to live. Holy <deleted>! 70,000 people wiped out in minutes.

 

The saddest thing were small (3 inches by 5 inches) signs posted in the mud and pools of water saying things like "this is the land of Ahmed and I am still alive" ; It literally brought tears to my eyes.

 

I know that Thailand suffered around 5,000 casualties, but Indonesia had about 175,000 people dead.

 

RIP to all.

 

 

We must have been fairly close to one another.Medical team.

 

I remember the little signs...and the bodies in the trees..and the mass graves.

 

Edited December 20, 2019 by Odysseus123

[Patong2]

46 minutes ago, Patong2 said:

 

This photo I took in Sawatdirak Rd, Patong, about 10am after the 1st wave and 8-10 minutes before the 2nd wave which did the worst damage.

 

You can just see the beach at the top of the photo

 

Ignore the date stamp, I set the camera wrong

Edited December 20, 2019 by Patong2
lost connection

[scubascuba3]

8 minutes ago, Patong2 said:

 

This photo I took in Sawatdirak Rd, Patong, about 10am after the 1st wave and 8-10 minutes before the 2nd wave which did the worst damage.

 

You can just see the beach at the top of the photo

 

Ignore the date stamp, I set the camera wrong

Khao Lak was far hit far worse. I wonder if anyone has photos of that?

[Odysseus123]

3 minutes ago, scubascuba3 said:

Khao Lak was far hit far worse. I wonder if anyone has photos of that?

Probably not.It seems such a quiet thread for such a cataclysmic occurrence.

 

Perhaps there isn't any past-or history- anymore...

[scubascuba3]

10 minutes ago, Odysseus123 said:

Probably not.It seems such a quiet thread for such a cataclysmic occurrence.

 

Perhaps there isn't any past-or history- anymore...

I've always struggled to find photos or videos of khao lak, probably because 2500 died last i heard

[Samui Bodoh]

1 hour ago, Odysseus123 said:

We must have been fairly close to one another.Medical team.

 

I remember the little signs...and the bodies in the trees..and the mass graves.

 

Those damn signs; I can still see them.

 

It sounds like you were part of the very first wave of help; I came along a short time after for reconstruction and rehabilitation.

 

My first day there, I was taken down to the shore by the Mosque to see the devastation and that was when I first saw those signs. It was never the death toll or the destruction for me; they were simply too huge to ever understand properly. It was those damn little signs. 

 

I remember it like it was yesterday. There was something so inexplicable, so human about them that it shook me to my core. They were, to me, tiny little voices of the survivors that were, in the most vulnerable fashion possible, saying "I am alive". They were an expression of survival, an expression of terrible hurt and pain, an expression of the most basic part of humanity that just wanted people to know that they made it, and an expression of the tiniest, tiniest hope that somehow things might return to normal, sometime. Yet, at the same time, they were an acknowledgement that all had been destroyed.

 

I stood at that spot for about half an hour with tears streaming down my face. And now, 15 years later, it is like it was yesterday.

 

Oddy- if you haven't already, look at the link to the NYT story I posted near the bottom of page 2 of this thread. 

 

[Odysseus123]

3 minutes ago, scubascuba3 said:

I've always struggled to find photos or videos of khao lak, probably because 2500 died last i heard

I was in Sumatra after the tsunami..very close to Samui Bodoh I expect.

I took some photos initially and then concentrated on the recovery phase.

 

Somehow the smiles assuaged the sheer horror of the thing.

[canuckamuck]

3 minutes ago, scubascuba3 said:

I've always struggled to find photos or videos of khao lak, probably because 2500 died last i heard

I took a lot of photos in Khao Lak, I don't know where they are now, but imagine someone covered it in 10 meters of water and then just swirled it all around with some giant paddle. There wasn't much standing, and nearly everything was shredded or swept away. Boats all over. Cars were rolled up. There wasn't much chance for the people in the first 500 meters from the beach.

[Odysseus123]

2 minutes ago, Samui Bodoh said:

Those damn signs; I can still see them.

 

It sounds like you were part of the very first wave of help; I came along a short time after for reconstruction and rehabilitation.

 

My first day there, I was taken down to the shore by the Mosque to see the devastation and that was when I first saw those signs. It was never the death toll or the destruction for me; they were simply too huge to ever understand properly. It was those damn little signs. 

 

I remember it like it was yesterday. There was something so inexplicable, so human about them that it shook me to my core. They were, to me, tiny little voices of the survivors that were, in the most vulnerable fashion possible, saying "I am alive". They were an expression of survival, an expression of terrible hurt and pain, an expression of the most basic part of humanity that just wanted people to know that they made it, and an expression of the tiniest, tiniest hope that somehow things might return to normal, sometime. Yet, at the same time, they were an acknowledgement that all had been destroyed.

 

I stood at that spot for about half an hour with tears streaming down my face. And now, 15 years later, it is like it was yesterday.

 

Oddy- if you haven't already, look at the link to the NYT story I posted near the bottom of page 2 of this thread. 

 

Medical team-administration.

i shall look at your thread.

It is very painful.It changed me.

[balo]

Khao Lak was hit the hardest, and most of the Scandinavian tourists died there. More than 500 Swedes and 85 Norwegians died that day..... ????

 

Tsunami caught on camera . 

 

 

[scubascuba3]

35 minutes ago, balo said:

Khao Lak was hit the hardest, and most of the Scandinavian tourists died there. More than 500 Swedes and 85 Norwegians died that day..... ????

 

Tsunami caught on camera . 

 

 

Which part is Khao Lak?

[Cryingdick]

Phi Phi and Patong were actually better months after the tsunami than they are now. Talk about a squandered opportunity. Thailand was the darling of the world for a brief time which except for articles such as this is now forgotten.

 

 

[balo]

21 minutes ago, scubascuba3 said:

Which part is Khao Lak?

The German family in the video. Go to 28:00    

 

 

[scubascuba3]

20 minutes ago, balo said:

The German family in the video. Go to 28:00    

 

 

Phi Phi looked worst hit in that video but from memory Khao Lak was far worse

[Samui Bodoh]

I would love to hear from other members about those days; any thoughts, recollections, photos, memories that you'd be willing to share?

 

I will add one final... comment (?!).

 

The event took place on Boxing day 2004 in the post-Christmas, pre- New Year holiday period and thus received widespread global publicity when people were available to hear about it, which in turn led to huge numbers of donations. The simple fact, which every international aid worker knows, is that had it occurred on March 26th instead, then the donations would have been... Half of that? A third? a quarter? A tenth?

 

Was this, to use the word obscenely, lucky? Pure random chance? Serendipity? Irrelevant? A coincidence? I am not a religious person, but I do tend to believe that the universe has (at minimum) a sense of humour...

 

What does one make of this?

 

Was it merely an example of the worst kind of tragedy bringing out the best of human responses? 

 

Any thoughts?

 

 

[thaibeachlovers]

On 12/19/2019 at 8:37 PM, stevenl said:

" But what was even worse, were the many people who got away unharmed or were just arriving in Thailand the day after the disaster, trying to benefit of the situation! "

 

As someone who was in the tourism business on Phuket that day, and still is, one of the problems we had in the aftermath was a lack of tourists. We were really, really welcoming all who arrived or stayed during those days.

I took advantage of the really cheap hotel prices on Patong. Wanted to see for myself. Went out to Phi Phi as well.

The resorts I stayed at on Phi Phi previously had utterly vanished.

I was astounded that having a blank slate to start from they were rebuilding Phi Phi into the same <deleted><deleted> it had been before the tsunami. They had a chance to remake Phi Phi into a great resort Island and blew it completely. They even had farang volunteers helping to ruin Phi Phi again. What a waste of a golden opportunity that took so many lives to present.

Patong also rebuilt the horror it had been before the tsunami.

I went up to stay in ?Kamala beach where the Fantasea show is. Apart from the shore having washed away and some buildings been damaged/ destroyed it wasn't too bad, but the show was hurting for lack of tourists.

 

I never went to Khao Lak as I'd probably have been too angry at the people that stole the land from the real owners. What an utter shame that they were allowed to do that. Not something I love about LOS.

Edited December 21, 2019 by thaibeachlovers

[ChipButty]

On 12/21/2019 at 6:52 AM, balo said:

Khao Lak was hit the hardest, and most of the Scandinavian tourists died there. More than 500 Swedes and 85 Norwegians died that day..... ????

 

Tsunami caught on camera . 

 

 

Lots of people from Finland died there 

179 Finnish people died 

Edited December 22, 2019 by ChipButty

[ChipButty]

This was about 3 days after on Kata beach getting the place cleared up 

[balo]

On 12/21/2019 at 5:54 AM, Samui Bodoh said:

that had it occurred on March 26th instead, then the donations would have been... Half of that? A third? a quarter? A tenth?

 

Was this, to use the word obscenely, lucky?

Donations would be half? Maybe, but nothing lucky about that, if the tsunami had happened in March , very few tourists would have been killed.  So many European tourists visit during the Christmas period. 

 

[scubascuba3]

i just saw this on BBC, shows that Khao Lak area was the worse hit by far in Thailand which explains why very little footage from that area and personal accounts

Edited December 26, 2019 by scubascuba3