'flattened By A Wall Of Water'

[Darknight]

'Flattened by a wall of water'

From BBC news

The dramatic scenery is still there: forested cliffs rising from a turquoise sea.

Almost all the resorts on the Thai island were destroyed

But as you approach the beach in Phi Phi's main bay, you are confronted by scenes of horrifying destruction.

The Thai army is now here in force.

They have got a helicopter here, a lot of soldiers to join the hundreds of civilian volunteers trying to deal with this appalling mess.

And they all have face masks - against the overpowering stench of death that still hangs over Phi Phi.

There is nothing left.

Everything has been absolutely flattened by the wall of water.

it is all gone. The whole resort has just disappeared.

Just some of the market stalls - just their roofs left, collapsed on the ground, and bodies still underneath, we are being told.

Most of the resort has simply vanished.

The rest has been crushed by the immense power of the waves into mangled heaps of wreckage.

Diving teams

Hundreds of Thai volunteers are pulling at the wrecked buildings to reach the dozens of bodies still trapped inside.

There is no heavy lifting equipment or machinery of any kind to get into this horrific jumble of collapsed buildings, and firemen are literally having to pull away the pieces of this destroyed shop by hand to try to get at the two bodies that are trapped inside.

Each victim is carefully wrapped in a body bag and hauled off to be shipped out by army helicopters and speed boats.

I watched as seven bodies - all foreigners - were lifted from one destroyed restaurant with a mechanical digger.

Others are left lying on the beach, seemingly forgotten by the overworked volunteers.

Teams of divers are searching the bay for the bodies still drifting there.

Dick Henderson, a diver from Britain, is among them.

"We've been diving in the bays, recovering bodies from the sea. We're diving down into the bays a bit later on this afternoon, here on Phi Phi".

He told me that many bodies were trapped in rocks out at sea.

"There are bodies that are drifting out as well, so we're picking those up on the way".

I met Evan Fowler, a Canadian who ran a boat tour business here, and narrowly escaped with his life.

'Nothing left'

"I lost a bunch of friends. We were standing right on the beach when the wave came in.

"So I'm just really happy to be alive. I came to see if we can find them. We still can't find a bunch of people working in our office.

"There are people way worse than me. It's pretty sad. In the hospital, we kept seeing people we knew and there wasn't one person who wasn't looking for someone".

It is even harder now for Saichong Suria.

She is a migrant from Thailand's poor north-east, and she spent 12 years here, building up a massage business which supported an entire village in her home province.

"I went outside and saw the water coming. So I said to my friends 'Run, run!'.

"I went to a high place and looked down and nothing was left of Phi Phi.

In about 10 minutes - nothing. My shop - nothing too. Many people died," she told me as she sobbed.

Some of the survivors who were evacuated from Phi Phi are coming back now to survey their ruined livelihoods - Thais and the many foreigners who have settled here, hugging each other and staring at devastation that is still hard to comprehend.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4135787.stm