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SA victim tells of survival
30/12/2004 19:06 - (SA)
Tokyo - Antonia and I were booked into the Phi Phi Charlie's Resort Bungalows from December 20 to 25. When we decided to extend our stay, Charlie was full, so we had to move to Viewpoint Resort Bungalows some way up a hill. We checked out on the 24th.
Charlie's was one of the most popular resorts on Phi Phi. It consisted of a lot of bungalows located virtually on the beach in the middle. All that is left of Charlie's is the concrete slabs on which the bungalows were built. We didn't find many survivors from Charlie's.
The Viewpoint Resort is less popular and consisted of bungalows built up the side of the hill, overlooking the beach. The lowest bungalow is about 20m above the beach and so all of these survived. Antonia and I were incredibly lucky that we moved the day before.
On the morning of the 26th Antonia left about 07:30 to go scuba diving. She was out at sea when the tsunami hit. I slept late and was reading in the bungalow. I heard shouting from outside as the first wave hit and went outside to see what happenned. From the Viewpoint hotel all the residents had a clear view of the sea rising up and washing away most of the island.
Naked, cut and bruised
For about 30 minutes we stood helpless and during that time helped one girl to safety who had been washed out. The water had been so violent that she had had all her clothes torn off her body and was completely naked, badly cut and bruised. Her name was Sarah (British). She ended up staying in our bungalow until the next day when she was flown out by helicopter.
We tore up bed sheets to make bandages as we could see inland across the water that many people were injured. We stuffed these into pillow cases. As soon as the water looked like it had subsided enough a whole lot of us ran across and began trying to help others.
I spent the next 30 minutes to an hour bandaging people up and giving them water. Then we heard word that another wave was expected. We then tried to move as many of the wounded to higher ground. Many people were too badly injured to move and some were trapped. There were many bodies.
We got many people up as high as possible and waited for the wave. In this way a badly injured man (missing fingers, massive cuts, severed achilles tendon and an injured girl ended up in our bungalow as well. The man was from Austria, I think. He was in too much shock to tell us his name properly but we called him Glen, which seemed close enough.
The girl, Leena and her boyfriend Lucas were from Germany.
While she was not bleeding badly she was badly bruised and we thought her ankle may be broken as she could not walk and it was badly swolen.
South African dive instructor
For about 15 minutes there were some unusually large swells, but nothing as big as the first waves. We decided that we couldn't just sit and wait, so we set out to save more trapped and badly hurt people.
One of the people we knew was badly hurt was South African dive instructor Becky from Cresta in Johannesburg. She had a massive back injury and very bad blood loss.
About that time a helicopter arrived. We began loading the injured onto the helicopter which flew them back to Krabi, returning each time with supplies such as water, salt crackers, bandages. Becky was one of the first to get flown out. the last we heard she was in hospital in Krabi in a critical condition with massive blood loss. We don't know what has happened to her.
The rest of the day was spent finding people still alive, digging them out of the rubble and carrying them to the helicopter landing site - the tennis court of the Cabanna Hotel. The wounded consisted of locals and tourists. We made stretchers out of whatever we could find.
Went into labour
The diving instructors were the hardest workers. Among them were at least two South Africans, Kobus and Johan - who worked tirelessly finding and carrying people. They included people with broken backs, an eight-month pregnant lady going into labour from shock (we got her onto the helicopter alive but I just found out today she died in the hospital), people who were alive when first found but dead when help arrived, people so badly injured that they did not know they were lying next to or on top of their dead partners. We carried people until we could not close our hands to grip any more.
The wounded were being brought to the helicopter site faster than the helicopter could fly them out, so the area was covered with wounded lying on makeshift stretchers and blankets.
It's hard looking back now, because I know that at least three of the people that I gave water to and said would be OK are dead, I've seen their pictures on the unidentified bodies litsts posted by the hospitals. Then after resting we would go back out and fetch more people.
It was already dark now and there had been yet another warning of an aftershock wave. I went back with Antonia and some other people we had met on the 'holiday' to our bungalow. We shared the bungalow that evening with 3 Swedes, 3 Austrians, two Germans, and three British. 'Glen' had been taken out by helicopter during the day as he was bleeding very badly. I can't say I slept much. Antonia give away much of her clothing to those that needed and consoled Sara for much of the night.
The next morning we got Sara and Leena onto helicopters. By this time all the most seriously wounded had been evacuated already and work had begun on finding and wrapping dead bodies.
Antonia and I stayed to help with the rescue operation and only flew out to Tokyo on the 29th. We intend to document as much as we can remember and remain in touch with all the people we have met.
- News24
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