Tsunami death toll nears 60,000
Updated
Tens of thousands more bodies have been found in the
sea and wreckage of coastal towns around the Indian Ocean, pushing the
death toll from Sunday's tsunami close to 60,000.
Many thousands more people were injured.Governments and relief agencies have recovered thousands more corpses while trying to treat survivors and take care of millions left homeless, increasingly at threat from disease.
The United Nations has launched what it called an unprecedented relief effort to assist nations hit by the devastating tsunami, which was triggered by a magnitude 9.0 undersea earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
A top World Health Organisation (WHO) official has warned that disease could kill as many people as those killed by the wall of water.
While grieving families in wrecked coastal towns and resorts buried their loved ones, others, including many foreign tourists, looked for friends and relatives still missing.
"Why did you do this to us, God?" wailed an old woman in a devastated fishing village in southern India's Tamil Nadu state."What did we do to upset you? This is worse than death."
Paradise lost
In Thailand, where thousands of tourists were enjoying a Christmas break, many of the country's paradise resorts were turned into graveyards.In a French-run hotel at Khao Lak on the Thai mainland north of the island of Phuket, up to half the 415 guests were believed killed.
A reporter from France's Europe 1 radio said many bodies had been found in their rooms.
"The Army is still bringing out bodies from the rooms because most of the tourists and staff of the hotel who were there were trapped by the wave, which completely swamped this hotel," reporter Anthony Dufour said.
Bekele Geleta, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in South-East Asia, said: "The enormity of the disaster is unbelievable."
In Sri Lanka, hundreds of people were killed when the wave crashed into a train, wrecking eight carriages and uprooting the track it was travelling on.
The train was named 'Sea Queen'.
Surge of water
Of the overall death toll so far of 59,186, Indonesia has suffered the greatest number of victims, with its Health Ministry reporting 27,174 dead while Sri Lanka reported about 19,000 people killed.India's toll of 11,500 included at least 7,000 on one archipelago, the Andamans and Nicobar.
On the island of Chowra in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, rescuers found only 500 survivors from 1,500 residents.
One hundred Air Force officers and their families vanished from one island base.
Hundreds of other people died in the Maldives, Myanmar and Malaysia.
The arc of water struck as far away as Somalia and Kenya in Africa.
Fishing villages, ports and resorts were devastated, power and communications cut and homes destroyed.
Aceh
In northern Indonesia's remote Aceh region, closest to the quake's epicentre, bodies littered the streets.About 1,000 people lay on a sports field where they were killed when the three-storey-high tsunami struck.
"My son is crying for his mother," said Bejkhajorn Saithong, 39, searching for his wife at a wrecked hotel on the beach.
Body parts jutted from the wreckage.
"I think this is her," he said. "I recognise her hand but I'm not sure."
At the Thai holiday resort of Phuket, foreign tourists pored over names on hospital lists and peered at 80 hospital photos of unidentified bodies.
"My father was not there," said German yacht skipper Jerzy Chojnowski, who was looking for his 83-year-old father, missing since the tsunami struck. "My father was not a good swimmer."
Relief teams
Relief teams and rescuers have flown into the region from around the globe to help in what the United Nations says will be the biggest and costliest relief effort in its history.Gerhard Berz, a top risk researcher at Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurer, estimated the economic cost of the devastation at more than $16.6 billion.
More than 20 countries have pledged emergency aid worth more than $77 million.
Several Asian nations have sent naval ships carrying supplies and doctors to devastated areas.
In Geneva, the WHO's David Nabarro said it was vital to rush medicine and fresh water to the worst-hit countries to prevent further catastrophe.
"There is certainly a chance that we could have as many dying from communicable diseases as from the tsunami," Dr Nabarro said.
There was a serious risk of an explosion of malaria and dengue fever, already endemic in South-East Asia, he said.
Around the ring of devastation, Sweden reported 1,500 citizens missing, the Czech Republic almost 400, Finland 200 and Italy and Germany 100.
Eight Australians are confirmed dead, with serious concerns held for 11 more.
The tremor off Indonesia was the biggest in 40 years and tore a chasm in the seabed. That launched the tsunami, which appears to be the deadliest in more than 200 years.
A tsunami at Krakatoa in 1883 killed 36,000 people and one in the south China Sea in 1782 killed 40,000, according to the National Geophysical Data Centre in the United States.
-Reuters
Two Australians found safe in tsunami zone
Updated
Two Australians feared missing in India's Nicobar
Islands in the wake of Asia's deadly tsunami have been found alive and
well overnight.
However, the Foreign Affairs Department says it still has serious concerns for the wellbeing of another eight Australians.The Australian death toll from the disaster stands at eight.
A 49-year-old man was killed in Sri Lanka while seven others died in Thailand.
They are three men aged 59, 54 and 52 from Queensland, a three-year-old girl from New South Wales, a six-month-old girl and an 81-year-old woman from Western Australia and a 16-year-old boy from Melbourne.
Foreign Affairs Department spokeswoman Lindal Sachs warns there are many more Australians in the affected areas that are yet to be accounted for.
"The situation there is still very chaotic and local communications are still extremely difficult," she said.
"We understand there are upwards of 8,000 Australians in the affected areas and we're still working very hard to try to confirm the whereabouts of these individuals."
AFL player Troy Broadbridge is among the Australians unaccounted for.
The Melbourne defender disappeared when the tsunami struck Phuket, where he and his new wife were honeymooning.
Broadbridge's wife is safe but his mother says they still have not heard about her son.
The Melbourne Football Club says Broadbridge's family was distressed when some television stations last night incorrectly announced that Broadbridge had been found.
Sri Lankan tsunami survivors survey devastation
Posted
Jordanian tourist Ahmed Hmoud went to Sri Lanka to
watch his son get married on an idyllic white sand beach, but the Indian
Ocean washed away his dream and his close shave with death is only just
sinking in.
Mr Hmoud was relaxing by the pool of a palm-fringed
resort on the island's southern coast when a tsunami swept up the beach,
engulfing him and his wife and leaving a deadly trail of destruction in
its wake.As the death toll on Sri Lanka approached 19,000, his family's lucky escape gradually dawned on him.
"I didn't believe or take stock of what was going on," he said, sitting on a mattress among hundreds of fellow tourists holed up in a convention centre in the capital Colombo.
A giant wave swept the couple through the hotel's garden, but they managed to clamber onto one of the building's upper floors.
They saw dead bodies, stray luggage, furniture and even a tractor float past as they looked on in horror.
His son and future daughter-in-law were rescued from their room.
"When we saw the news we were shocked because we had no idea how big this thing was," he added.
The tsunami spared no one as it smashed into the southern, eastern and northern shores, submerging entire towns and villages and destroying hotels.
Government officials fear at least 200 tourists have been killed in Sri Lanka, but have also predicted the overall death toll could reach 25,000 or more as the ocean washed scores of bodies ashore.
Waiting game
As thousands of Sri Lankans desperately searched through rubble and undergrowth for relatives, many tourists safely back in Colombo anxiously waited for news of loved ones.Danish tourist Lise-Lotte Hacke sat with her daughter clutching a mobile telephone and anxiously waiting for a call from her husband.
Ms Hacke had been on a river excursion in the southern holiday beach mecca of Bentota when the tsunami hit.
Her husband was on an excursion near the capital, and she has not heard from him since.
"My husband was travelling around ... I don't know where he is," she said, fighting back tears.
Tourist Board officials said about 1,000 tourists, most of them from Britain, Germany, Sweden, France and Italy, were camped at the impromptu shelter, where a Christmas fair was in full swing just days earlier.
Therese Henriksson came to Sri Lanka desperate to discover her native land 22 years after she was adopted by Swedish parents as an infant.
Her visit lasted just two days before the tsunami brought it to a premature end.
"I wanted to see my country, see where I was born," she said. "I hope to come back when it is more calm."
Clothes and shoes were drying in the sun outside the centre, while some tourists bare chested and barefoot sat trying to take-stock of what had happened.
Some stood glued in front of the television, bewildered by the scope of the destruction.
Sri Lanka is heavily dependent on its booming tourist industry, and economists said the disaster was a major setback for the $US18 billion economy.
-Reuters
ANZ, NAB to collect tsunami donations
Posted
The ANZ Bank has joined the National Australia Bank in offering to channel relief funds for victims of the tsunami disaster.
The
ANZ says it will accept donations to the World Vision Asia earthquake
appeal from this morning and will also contribute $200,000.World Vision's emergency operations are initially concentrated on the three worst affected countries, Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka.
The NAB says it is also setting up a fund to go to World Vision and donating the first $100,000.
It will receive public contributions at its branches from midday today.
Tsunami toll in Maldives rises to 55
Posted
The Indian Ocean atoll nation of the Maldives said
its confirmed death toll from the weekend's tidal waves had reached 55,
but was expected to rise as information came in from outlying atolls.
"At the moment the confirmed death toll is at 55, with 69 still missing," government spokesman Mohamed Hussain Shareef told AFP."We expect the figure to rise as information from the outer atolls is still coming in."
At least two Britons were among those killed, officials said.
Officials said a total of 9,000 people were driven out of their homes by the tsunamis while at least 2,000 houses were also destroyed.
-AFP
Over 300 bodies found on 'The Beach' island
Posted
Rescue workers recovered more than 300 bodies on
Thailand's remote Phi Phi Island on Tuesday, two days after a series of
powerful waves devastated the tourist paradise.
Bloated and
decaying bodies continued to wash ashore as hopes of finding survivors
in the rubble of hotels and shops slowly faded on the tiny island made
famous by Leonardo DiCaprio's film The Beach."It's not hard to find the bodies. You just have to follow the smell," said 43-year-old French rescue volunteer, Serge Barros.
"It's hard to tell which bodies are foreign because they are just unrecognisable. They have discoloured and many have their tongues sticking out because they drowned," he told Reuters while trawling the beach for more bodies.
Mr Barros said resources and rescue workers on the island were stretched to breaking point with not enough people to carry the overwhelming number of corpses.
"We have been working all day in this incredible heat to find bodies but it's not easy to do much else. We don't have people to move them, and once they are moved, the bodies are just put in rows in the sun," he said.
Paramedics transported to the island by the Royal Thai Navy expressed frustration at the rescue efforts and said there was little they could do to save lives.
Wallop Jirasiriwatana, 39, said his emergency medical team felt helpless despite arriving on nearby Phuket Island hours after tsunamis hit the area on Sunday.
"My job is to rescue injured people but that's not what we're doing. We're just finding bodies," he said.
"It looks bad for the Government but there is no coordination. We need a master plan."
Bomb site
Most fear the death toll will climb with an unknown number of people still missing on the popular resort haven, which was full to capacity during the holiday season.The tropical island now looks more like a bomb site with collapsed buildings, torn up footpaths and concrete rubble stretching for kilometres.
Luggage and personal items from tourists are scattered around the small town and the once pristine beach is littered with debris.
British rescue volunteer, Philip Thomas Coghlan, 50, said these conditions were hampering the work of authorities.
Mr Coghlan, a former team leader for the British International Search and Rescue Team, volunteered the services of his sniffer dog, Skip, after watching the disaster unfold from his home in Bangkok.
After experience in major disasters, such as the earthquakes in Turkey in 1992 and India in 2001, Mr Coghlan said the giant waves that smashed into southern Thailand presented unique problems.
"This disaster is different because it's so spread out. There's not just one particular area where you can concentrate your efforts. So many places are affected and they all need help now," he said.
Mr Coghlan said he expected the death toll for foreigners to rise on the island after personally recovering three foreign bodies trapped under collapsed buildings in one afternoon.
Many locals returned for the first time to their homes to assess the damage and find what remained of their belongings.
Tour operator Let Munkhunkoncowriap, 44, sat in tears behind his flattened home as a Muslim neighbour sang an evening prayer facing the Islamic holy city of Mecca.
He had fled to the hills with his family when the waves first washed over the island and had returned only on Tuesday morning to see what was left.
"We have nothing. There is nothing left but what we are wearing. I have this much money in the world," he said pulling out 2,000 baht ($US51) from his pocket.
"But my wife is OK, my nine-year-old daughter is OK. That's all I care about. I'm lucky."
-Reuters
Attenborough's granddaughter killed in quake
Updated
The 14-year-old granddaughter of British actor and
film director Richard Attenborough has died in the Asian tsunami
disaster, while his daughter and her mother-in-law are missing,
according to a family friend.
Granddaughter Lucy was among a
family group staying at the Thai beach resort of Phuket, which was hit
by a tsunami following Sunday's massive undersea earthquake, said Diana
Hawkins, a colleague and friend of the Attenborough family.Two more of Mr Attenborough's grandchildren, Alice and Sam, were safe.
"Lord Attenborough and his wife, Sheila, have lost three members of their immediate family in the tidal wave disaster that hit the beaches of Thailand on Boxing Day morning," a statement from Ms Hawkins said.
"Their elder daughter, Jane, is missing, as is her mother-in-law, Jane Holland.
"The Attenboroughs' granddaughter, Lucy, 14, died at the scene. Another granddaughter, Alice, 17, is now being treated in hospital.
"Two members of the family group survived unscathed. They are the Attenboroughs' son-in-law, Michael Holland, and eldest grandson, Sam."
Mr Attenborough and his family had requested that they be given privacy "at this terrible time", the statement added.
The 81-year-old is one of the most successful actors and directors Britain has ever produced, first finding fame appearing in films such as Brighton Rock and The Great Escape.
As a director, his biggest triumph was Ghandi, which won eight Oscars, in 1983 including best film and best director.
Mr Attenborough has continued acting, starring in 1993 smash hit Jurassic Park as well as its 1997 follow-up, The Lost World.
-AFP
www.abc.net.au
Tsunami survivors face disease, starvation
December 29, 2004 - 8:21PM
Acehnese carry their belongings through the debris in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh.
Photo: AP
Related
WHO, the UN health agency, warned that disease in the aftermath of the disaster could double the toll yet again as the world launches what could be its biggest disaster relief operation.
"There is certainly a chance that we could have as many dying from communicable diseases as from the tsunami," Dr David Nabarro, head of crisis operations for WHO, told reporters in Geneva.
The catastrophe spans five time zones, 12 countries, three civil wars and thousands of kilometres of ocean - and there are fears that help won't get to those who need it most quickly enough.
Millions of people whose homes were swept away or wrecked by raging walls of water are struggling to find shelter, water and food and locate loved ones.
The death toll was rising by the hour, with staggering figures feared because of the huge number of people still missing and the inability of relief teams to get to many areas, including dozens of isolated islands.
An exact fix on how many have died has been impossible to determine because of the immensity of the catastrophe.
Reuters put the overall toll at more than 68,000 dead. Other news agencies said the figure at around 59,000. Unconfirmed estimates of the dead ranged up beyond 76,000, AP reported.
Media, government and aid sources all warned the numbers would rise because thousands of people remained missing - many swept out to sea. Others were lost in so far inaccessible areas.
Most victims were poor villagers. But thousands of foreign tourists were also dead or missing. Eight Australians were confirmed dead and eight were unaccounted for, feared dead.
The death toll in Indonesia's Aceh province is estimated to be as high as 40,000, Vice President Yusuf Kalla told reporters today.
"The estimate to this day, those who died in Aceh, number more or less 30 to 40,000," Kalla said.
Indonesia's social affairs ministry earlier put the toll so far from the quake at 30,057, but officials have warned it was expected to increase as contact was made with isolated areas.
Sri Lanka listed almost 22,000 people dead, India 4,400 and Thailand 1,500. All expect their tolls to rise.
A total of more than 300 were killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, Tanzania, the Seychelles and Kenya.
Aid groups struggled to mount what they described as the largest relief operation the world has ever seen, and to head off the threat of cholera and malaria epidemics that could break out where water supplies are polluted with bodies and debris.
Dr David Nabarro, head of crisis operations for the World Health Organisation, warned that disease could take as many lives as Sunday's devastation.
"The initial terror associated with the tsunamis and the earthquake itself may be dwarfed by the longer-term suffering of the affected communities," he told reporters at the UN agency's offices in Geneva.
Along India's southeastern coast, hospital teams stood by to help the injured.
But three days after the disaster struck, many spent most of their time tabulating the dead as ambulances hauled in more bodies.
"The enormity of the disaster is unbelievable," said Bekele Geleta, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in South-East Asia.
One of the most dramatic illustrations of nature's force came to light when reporters reached the scene of a Sri Lankan train that was swept into a marsh by a wall of water, killing at least 802.
Eight rust-coloured cars lay in deep pools of water in a ravaged palm grove, with torn-off wheels and baggage scattered among the twisted rails.
The train was called "Sea Queen".
Of the overall death toll so far of 59,186, Indonesia has suffered the biggest number of victims, with its Health Ministry reporting 27,174 dead while Sri Lanka reported around 19,000.
India's toll of 11,500 included at least 7,000 on one archipelago, the Andamans and Nicobar. On one island, the surge of water killed two-thirds of the population.
Hundreds of others died in the Maldives, Burma and Malaysia. The arc of water struck as far as Somalia and Kenya. Fishing villages, ports and resorts were devastated, power and communications cut and homes destroyed. The United Nations said the cost of the damage will reach billions of dollars.
The tremor, the biggest in 40 years, tore a chasm in the sea bed which launched the tsunami, which appeared to be the deadliest in more than 200 years.
A tsunami at Krakatoa in 1883 killed 36,000 and one in the south China Sea in 1782 40,000, according to the National Geophysical Data Centre in the United States.
In northern Indonesia's remote Aceh region, closest to the epicentre, bodies littered the streets. About 1000 people lay on a sports field where they were killed when the three-storey-high wall of water struck.
"My son is crying for his mother," said Bejkhajorn Saithong, 39, searching for his wife at a wrecked hotel on the beach. Body parts jutted from the wreckage.
"I think this is her," he said. "I recognise her hand, but I'm not sure."
At the Thai holiday resort of Phuket, foreign tourists pored over names on hospital lists and peered at 80 hospital photos of swollen, unidentified bodies.
"My father was not there," said German yacht skipper Jerzy Chojnowski, who was looking for his 83-year-old father, missing since the tsunami struck. "My father was not a good swimmer."
Many of the bodies were already decomposing in the heat, underlining the growing health risk.
Relief teams and rescuers flew into the region from around the globe to help in what the United Nations said will be the biggest and costliest relief effort in its history.
Gerhard Berz, a top risk researcher at Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurer, estimated the economic cost of the devastation at over $US13 billion ($16.97 billion).
More than 20 countries have pledged emergency aid worth more than $US60 million ($78.32 million). Several Asian nations have sent naval ships carrying supplies and doctors to devastated areas.
In Geneva, the WHO's Dr David Nabarro said it was vital to rush medicine and fresh water to the worst-hit countries to prevent further catastrophe.
"There is certainly a chance that we could have as many dying from communicable diseases as from the tsunami," Nabarro told a news conference.
There was a serious risk of an explosion of malaria and dengue fever, already endemic in South-East Asia, he said.
Around the ring of devastation, Sweden reported 1500 citizens missing, the Czech Republic almost 400, Finland 200 and Italy and Germany 100.
Jan Egeland, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said:
"We cannot fathom the cost of these poor societies and the nameless fishermen and fishing villages ... that have just been wiped out. Hundreds of thousands of livelihoods have gone."
Around Sri Lanka's southern coasts about 1.5 million people - or one in 12 of the population - were homeless, many sheltering in Buddhist temples and schools.
In Aceh, Lieutenant-Colonel Budi Santoso said: "Many bodies are still lying on the streets. There just aren't enough body bags."
On the island of Chowra in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, rescuers found only 500 survivors from 1500 residents. A hundred air force officers and their families vanished from one island base.
Authorities said at least 7000 people were confirmed or presumed dead in the group of more than 550 islands.
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Out of Phuket, a tour of death
The bodies are lined up on the silt-covered grass, ready for collection at the Baan Krating Resort in Khao Lak. One man still clings to a pole, arms and legs wrapped around it too tightly for the rescue workers to prise it free.By Connie Levett, Herald Correspondent In Khao Lak, Thailand
December 29, 2004
Disaster officials said last night that they had recovered 770 bodies, of foreigners and Thais, along Khao Lak beach, north of Thailand's Phuket resort island.
The scene at the resort at the south end of the beach is devastated at its lower levels; but the mid-level swimming pool and restaurants remain untouched. The tomato-sauce bottles are on the counter, tables are set with cane mats and cutlery for the lunch crowd that never came.
Yesterday emergency workers finally cut their way through the fallen trees, cars and housing debris to clear a path into the town. In places the road was a corridor between walls of debris 1.5 metres deep.
A navy patrol boat was flung against a tree 500 metres inland from the beach.
With the access came the grim reality of how many died here. Everywhere you stop on this stretch of coast, 90 minutes north of Phuket, there are bodies lined up, most uncovered, many bloated and bruised in the sun.
Here an overweight Western tourist in swimmers, there a one-year-old child, outstretched hand fixed in death. Locals say the death toll in the villages around Khao Lak alone will be greater than the Government's current count of 980 for Thailand.
Khao Lak was a booming tourist destination, with Meridien and Sofitel recently adding their names to the string of resorts on this stretch of coast. Over Christmas it was crowded. The town is not as densely built up as Phuket, and the land behind the beach is flat. The coconut palms did nothing to slow the wave.
Latdah Kutlahchan stands on the flattened earth that three days ago housed Khao Lak's central market. She has driven from Chumphon to search for her daughter, Penpark, who sold children's toys in one of the 40 stalls. She has not heard from her since the tsunami.
"I have some information that my daughter was in a car, she saw the wave coming, the car was thrown across the road into a tree," she said.
Volunteers at temples are doing their best to update lists of the injured and dead but are overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster. At Wat Lamkaen, the temple designated for survivors, more than 40 bodies are laid out in grotesque poses of appeal. Workers could not say whether the five new Australian names on their list were injured or dead.
Ruthai Nualnun is still looking for her brother. He went to the beach on Sunday morning to sell soft drinks. "I went to the temple [for the dead] to look for him but I didn't find him. I found my cousin instead," she said.
Her small shop in Pakarang village, three kilometres from the beach, escaped the tsunami, but there has been no power or water since Sunday. Now she and her mother, managing a small outdoor kitchen, offer free food and drinks to survivors, Thai and foreign, who have nothing but the clothes they are wearing.
Without power, water or proper shelter a new threat is emerging. "The main problems are spread of disease, sanitation, respiratory and skin diseases, hygiene for the people dealing with the bodies," said Vichai Tian Thavorn, the Government's senior public health official. He was in Khao Lak on a six-province, one-day tour to assess the damage.
While Western tourists struggle to leave the district, locals must find a way to rebuild their lives. "People who stay here will have many problems, some psychological. We will send a team of psychologists to every province," Mr Vichai said.
"It went boom, boom, boom," said Gund Supani, a 21-year-old Thai woman who lives in Khao Lak. She shakes with fear as she talks about the wall of water, still three metres high when it hit her shop 1.5 kilometres inland from the beach.
Many bodies were found in the rooms of the devastated Sofitel hotel at Khao Lak, where hundreds of French tourists had been staying.
At the Ban Khao Lak Hotel, Bejkhajorn Saithong, 39, who was searching for the body of his wife, thought he had located her. "My son is crying for his mother," he said. "I think this is her. I recognise her hand, but I'm not sure."
Chantima Saengli, owner of the Blue Village Pagarang hotel, told a radio station she knew about 60 of her Scandinavian guests were safe.
She feared the other 340 were dead, their bodies swept into the rainforest covering the hills behind the beach.The sound of roaring thunder
By Alexa Moses
December 29, 2004The sound of roaring thunder ... then screamingThai troops carry away the body of a dead Western tourist at the Sofital hotel along the shoreline of Khao Lak, a province above the Thai tourist heaven of Phuket.
Photo: AFP
A tsunami, when it approaches, is silent. A brown mass of water billowing towards the bedroom where I and my partner, Robert, were sitting on the bed in Khao Lak, in Phang Nga province just north of Phuket in Thailand.
We were staying in a hotel on the beach called the Seaview Resort, where Swedish, German and Austrian families raced to the deckchairs on the sand each morning to roast themselves.
It was Boxing Day. We were about to gather our things to go down to the beach.
It was just after 10.30am when Robert jumped off the bed and said quietly, "There's a tidal wave coming." I turned and saw a brown mass of water swallowing the self-contained bungalows near the sand. They dissolved like balsa wood.
I still didn't comprehend. I said "No" and then Robert repeated it. Then I asked, "Are we going to die?" as the wave hit the concrete building where we were staying on the third, and top, floor.
"I don't know," he replied and the noise began.
It sounded like an aeroplane taking off. A roaring that swelled and dipped, completely surrounding us.
The building under us began to wrench and creak. Glass was shattering, but we couldn't hear anything human. It was as if we were alone.
The water rose ankle-deep in our room and it seemed to be slowing, although the horrible thundering continued.
We ran to the door, terrified that when we opened it water would rush in. The hall was also ankle-deep in water.
When we ran up to the roof we couldn't see the ocean, but the thundering had stopped. The wave was sucking back out again.
We stood up on the roof alone, shaking, with the red corrugated iron slope of the roof shielding us from the water.
Suddenly we heard car horns, people screaming "help" in Thai, German, Swedish, banging on walls, sobbing.
Robert scrambled to the top of the roof and saw that the ocean had moved. We were in it. But the water was 10 metres higher, brown and clogged with floating timber, cars upside down, houses in pieces.
A Japanese couple arrived, terrified, on the roof, also from the third floor. Robert called to a German couple, the wife half drowned and blue-lipped, gurgling water with every breath. The six of us waited together on the roof and the German man began to pray.
We were waiting for a second wave, we could hear the thundering again. Would it be higher? Were we all about to die? We were silent, quivering and straining to hear. We stayed up on the roof like that for an hour.
The water seemed to drop at midday. So we went back to our room, grabbed our passports, small backpacks and water bottles, put on our sneakers and made the decision. We weren't waiting here for the next wave. We had to get out, and fast.
We clambered down through our destroyed building over stacks of wood, glass and doors, electric wires, bathroom fittings - it was completely silent. We climbed over bodies in sarongs, swimming costumes and thongs crushed under the rubble.
The reception area was missing so we climbed down into deep water and carefully walked the 400 metres up to the main road.
We picked our way over cars, timber, bodies and roofs through a demolished building site, past people injured and screaming, giving them extra bottles of water that we had taken from our room.
On the other side, the main road was immaculate. A stall with exotic fruit was intact but the normally bustling roadside was almost empty.
We hurried up the mountain on automatic pilot to a half-built resort where people seemed to be heading. And then the waiting, and the stories, began. Parents without children, husbands without wives, children without parents, a blond two-year-old boy wandering around without anyone.
A few hours later rumours were spreading - India was hit, Sri Lanka was hit, we heard that Phuket had been razed.
There were also rumours of another tsunami. Tourists and Thais with energy left headed up the mountain for the night.
A small group of 17 tourists and 10 Thais camped out on palm leaves at the top of the mountain as the full moon rose. People had broken arms - some of them were in pain.
We waited the night, hoping that the next night we could come down. We heard that the streets were filled with bodies.
The next morning we picked our way halfway down the mountain and waited with the Thais, who gave us rice, bananas and bread.
Suddenly, at 1pm, people seemed to start moving down. Rumour had it there were no more tsunamis and we should get out while we could before diseases like cholera set in. We left on a local truck and found our way to Phuket Airport.
Our resort had about 250 tourists staying in it and perhaps 60 Thai staff. We had watched the tourists dance and eat and drink at the Christmas Eve party on the beach.
We don't think more than 20 people, tourists or Thai, in our hotel survived and that was on a beach crammed with seaside resorts like ours.
But the thought that stayed with us most was of one nine-year-old Swedish girl we had smiled at before the tsunami struck.
She had thick glasses and long brown hair and was always reading a book, even as she walked to the beach in her red swimming costume.
Later, we found her parents halfway up the mountain. They had found one of their three children but the little girl and her six-year-old brother had vanished.
The father, a strong Swedish man, was shaking and broken. He was carrying the youngest child who was almost mute.
Aussie survivor: I was slammed into ceiling
An Australian man told how he was smashed into the ceiling of his bathroom in an instant as the Indian Ocean tsunami struck his Phuket hotel.December 29, 2004 - 7:25PM
At the same time, his wife and daughter were racing the rising water uphill through arcing power lines and collapsing buildings.
Such was the Thai holiday experience for the Pickering family of Netley in Adelaide.
A badly bruised and cut Trevor Pickering told his story as he, his wife Sandra and adult children Darren and Sheri queued at Phuket airport to return to Australia.
"I was slammed up into the ceiling, on the ground floor," Mr Pickering said.
"In our bathroom they had a roof with a gable above the bath, with a skylight.
"I punched that out, just smashed it out with my fists, and put my head up through there to be able to get air."
When the water subsided, he went out onto the street and saw his son Darren on the roof of the next door unit in the Phuket Cabana hotel at Patong Beach.
"He was trying to get me up on the roof which was impossible," Mr Pickering said.
"The next wave came in and just swooshed me away again and slammed me into the corner."
The water subsided again and an exhausted Mr Pickering latched on to floating debris.
"I was totally exhausted by this time because I had been hit with everything - refrigerators, beds, logs - and I pulled myself up onto the roof, using the roof tiles."
Mr Pickering finally struggled down to the road when the crisis subsided and was led away bleeding by a Thai youth who took him to a Phuket hospital.
Meanwhile, wife Sandra and daughter Sheri were shopping when they heard screams and whistles and saw fear in the faces of local people.
"Instinctively we bolted into the hills," she said.
"We went down a dark alleyway which fortunately led us up three flights of stairs to a bar area.
"We felt it was a bomb but with the water, we were very confused.
"There was a lot of electricity arcing around us which was very concerning.
"We saw people up three floors falling through roofs so we thought we'd better sit tight and stay away from anything metal."
Mrs Pickering said eventually she and her daughter were able to head to safety through many badly injured people.
"There were people without shoes, cut by debris, and an elderly woman who looked as though she'd had heart problems. We stopped to help her."
Jan Lark of Melbourne, and her two sons Joel Dwyer, 16, and Vincent Dwyer, 10, were in a boat on the way to the resort island of Phi Phi when the tsunami passed underneath them.
"We went into the bay on Phi Phi to land but then the boat captain realised there was something amiss because there was rubbish in the water and we could see the wreckage on land - boats up on rocks and things like that," she said.
"The water was quite currenty (currenty), swirling and bubbling. I was very scared."
Sydney couple Delique Genech, 33, and John Margaritis, 33, were on the ground floor of the Patong Merlin Hotel when the first wave struck with a loud bang.
"We thought it was a terrorist attack immediately," Ms Genech said.
"I saw people holding onto trees as the wave was coming."
The couple escaped unharmed, but saw the good and the bad in people in the aftermath.
Mr Margaritis said the pair returned to their wrecked hotel the day after and found many rooms had been looted, including their own.
"Looters in a situation like that... I don't know," he said.
However, he also saw fellow tourists helping the stricken including one South African friend.
"He was trying to rescue this poor lady that was stuck under some rubble," he said.
"He could see the next wave coming so he had to run and leave her there and he doesn't know what happened to her."
All three groups were cutting short their Phuket holidays and returning to Australia on Wednesday.
AAP
Home from the horror
December 29, 2004 - 9:50AMAn Australian woman today described how a family reunion in Sri Lanka was transformed into hell when several loved ones were killed by the tsunami which lashed the country's coast.Survivors arrive back from South-East Asia after escaping the tsunami.
Seeli Packianathan, her husband and their three daughters had made their first visit to their homeland in a decade for a "joyful reunion".
But at the end of their trip, 10 minutes after the Canberra family had set off for the airport from their village on the east coast of the northern province, the tsunami struck.
Their relatives' coastal home was hit by the full force of the tidal wave and several family members were killed.
Arriving at Sydney Airport today, Mrs Packianathan wept as she recalled the devastation.
"It hit our home full on," she said.
"Dead - they are dead, my cousins, their children, many of my husband's family."
Mrs Packianathan said her husband chose to remain in Sri Lanka to help the recovery effort and to bury the dead.
"There are too many funerals, he has to stay to help them," she said.
"Ten minutes (earlier) and it would have been us too - me, my girls, my husband."
Mrs Packianathan said she was overwhelmed by the devastation but had been warned to take her flight home regardless.
"We might have been stuck there otherwise," she said.
"It's not safe. With the disease and everything, we wanted home."
Another Australian woman told of how she escaped death after the tsunami flung a car on top of her as she walked along a Thai beach.
Sydneysiders Dianne and Les Boardman had been taking one of their first strolls along Patong Beach in the Thai resort of Phuket when the tsunami struck on Sunday.
"Then the wave came down and we were just lifted out," Mr Boardman said as he arrived at Sydney Airport today.
"She (Dianne) went under a car, it just went over the top of her.
"I just got picked up and chucked against a wall.
"I was a lucky one - we cheated death."
Mr Boardman said he had been holding onto a stranger's arm but the man was swept away.
"I lost him, I couldn't hold him, he drowned," he said.
"There were bodies everywhere, you can't describe it."
The Boardmans were among planeloads of distraught Australian survivors of the tsunami disaster coming home from the popular tourist island today.
Some nursed bruises and broken limbs while others obviously grieved the death or disappearance of loved ones.
Almost all were unable to contemplate what had happened.
AAP
Supermodel clung to tree for eight hours
December 29, 2004 - 6:30PMA German statesman, a Czech supermodel and a Swedish Olympic ski champion were among the holidaymakers whose search for peace and sun in tropical Asia was shattered by the tsunamis that spared neither rich nor poor.Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova was injured and her boyfriend Simon Atlee is missing after they were caught in the tsunami while vacationing in Phuket, Thailand.
Photo: AFP
Petra Nemcova - who appeared on the cover of the 2003 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue - was carried away with her boyfriend, fashion photographer Simon Atlee, after a huge wave ploughed into southern Thailand on Sunday.
Nemcova's New York spokesman, Rob Shuter, said the model and her boyfriend were vacationing in the resort of Phuket when waves overwhelmed their beach hut.
Nemcova, 25, clung to a tree for eight hours as the water swirled around her. She was recovering in a Thai hospital today with broken bones, possibly including a broken pelvis, and unspecified internal injuries.
Atlee, 33, was swallowed by the raging waters and was still missing today.
"I've spoken to Petra several times and she's in pretty bad shape," Shuter said. "She's on pain medication. She probably doesn't realise yet the magnitude of the disaster."
Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was on holiday in Sri Lanka's south - one of the areas most devastated by tsunamis.
Kohl and his entourage were evacuated from a hotel by the Sri Lankan air force yesterday.
"The helicopter went and we managed to bring him back with six others," Commander Air Marshal Donald Perera told The Associated Press.
British science fiction author Arthur C Clarke, who lives in Sri Lanka, lost his diving school in Sunday's deadly tsunami.
The loss echoes a plotline from his first book about the island.
Clarke - who predicted the establishment of communication satellites and shot to fame with the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey - said his diving school at Hikkaduwa, 100km south of the capital Colombo, was destroyed.
"Among those affected are my staff based at our diving station and holiday bungalow, both beach-front properties located in areas worst hit," Clarke said in a statement.
"We still don't know the full extent of damage as both roads and phones have been damaged. Early reports indicate that we have lost most of our diving equipment and boats. Not all our staff members are accounted for yet."
Clarke, confined to a wheelchair after suffering from post-polio syndrome, was not in the area at the time.
His first book on Sri Lanka had a chapter on tidal waves hitting the southern port of Galle, he said.
Swedish skiing great Ingemar Stenmark was sunbathing in Thailand when he saw an immense wave roaring to shore and ran for his life.
Stenmark - who won two gold medals at the 1980 Olympics and 86 World Cup races - was with friends in Khok Kloi, about 50km from Phuket.Actor Jet Li injured his foot while carrying�his�daughter to safety in a Maldives hotel.
Photo:AP
"The water from the first wave disappeared, but then it came back with terrifying speed," Stenmark told Swedish media. He and his girlfriend were not injured.
Another athlete wasn't so lucky. Troy Broadbridge, an Australian Rules football player, was on his honeymoon in Phuket when he and his bride were swamped as they strolled along a beach. Trisha Broadbridge was safe, but Troy was still missing today.
Several Italian soccer players - including AC Milan striker Filippo Inzaghi, Milan captain Paolo Maldini, and Juventus defender Gianluca Zambrotta - were caught in the maelstrom in the Maldives but were unhurt.
Thailand's royal family are also among the grieving. The Thai-American grandson of King Bhumipol Adulyadej, Poom Jensen, 21, was reportedly jet-skiing when the tidal wave struck Phuket. His body was found later.
Hollywood actor-director Richard Attenborough's family also suffered tragedy. His granddaughter Lucy, 14, perished and his daughter Jane and her mother-in-law are missing in Phuket. Another granddaughter, Alice, 17, was being treated in a hospital today.
Attenborough's directorial credits include Cry Freedom, Chaplin and the Oscar-winning Gandhi. He has appeared in scores of films including The Great Escape, Elizabeth and Jurassic Park.
On Thailand's Phi Phi island, where The Beach (starring Leonardo DiCaprio) was filmed, 200 bungalows at two resorts were swept out to sea, and resort officials said many foreign tourists were among the missing.
Designer Nate Berkus, a regular contributor on The Oprah Winfrey Show, was carried away with a friend by a tsunami after it ripped off the roof of their hut in Sri Lanka.
They briefly clung to a telephone pole, but a second wave ripped them away. Berkus climbed to safety on the roof of a submerged home but his friend disappeared into the raging sea.
In the Maldives, holidaying action star Jet Li injured his foot as he protected his daughter from tsunami waves that flooded his hotel.
Li, who starred in the recent box-office hit Hero and movies such as Romeo Must Die and Lethal Weapon 4, was with his daughter in the hotel's lobby on Sunday when huge waves gushed into the hotel, Hong Kong's Apple Daily reported, quoting a friend on holiday with Li.
The martial arts star injured his foot while picking up his daughter, the report said.
Ming Pao Daily News reported that Li struck his foot against a floating piece of furniture.
AP/AFP
Thousands stranded beyond hope
The survivors have blank stares and do not speak. We walk together among black and bloated bodies still lying in the streets of Banda Aceh three days after the 25 minutes of terror that struck on Boxing Day morning.By Lindsay Murdoch in Banda Aceh and Sean Nicholls
December 29, 2004
"We thought it was the end of the world," says Sofyan Halim, who lost 15 members of his family.
Banda Aceh's 40,000 people have suffered greatly over the years, caught in a bitter fight between the Indonesian military and rebels struggling for independence from Jakarta. But nothing like this; never before such death and utter devastation.
Nobody here is talking about recovery, just survival.
This is just a slice of the devastation wreaked across 11 nations by an earthquake and resulting tsunami. The rescue mission here is painfully slow, just as it is in most of the stricken areas.
Only a 16-hour boat ride away, close to the epicentre of the earthquake, is an island of 100,000 people - all of them unaccounted for and beyond the reach of Indonesia's limited resources.
"We just don't know about them," a government official, Djoko Sumaryono, says of Simeulue. "No contact makes us fearful. We're trying to send helicopters there."
An Australian trying to reach Simeulue yesterday with vital aid and a satellite phone also fears the worst. "There will be people there with nothing, no fuel, no food, no water, nothing at all. The whole place is washed away I'd say," Brian Williams says.
Among the ruins of what used to be Banda Aceh's thriving market, shocked men and boys pick through the rubble, ignoring dozens, perhaps hundreds, of rotting bodies.
When the stink becomes unbearable, they cover their faces and continue their search for anything that will keep their families alive. Food is desperately short, so much so that people stand for hours in the sun outside the few shops untouched by the devastation in the hope they will open and sell them food.
Looting and lawlessness are other problems plaguing the region, but there are by no means the worst. The head of Banda Aceh's military hospital, Taufiq Urahman, says there are grave fears of an outbreak of cholera and typhoid. "Banda Aceh is paralysed," he says. "This is a very grim situation."
Survivors say the city was shaken first by two earthquakes, five minutes apart. Three tsunamis came 25 minutes later.
"The water was as high as a coconut palm," says Sofyan Halim. "All the debris came with it. People were screaming. Some got away, many didn't. The water went 15 kilometres inland in some places. It was all over in 25 minutes. That's all. How can that be ... such devastation."
It is difficult to imagine how Banda Aceh can rebuild itself. Trees, uprooted and dumped kilometres away, litter the streets, as do the twisted shells of cars. Layers of stinking mud cover everything and several of the biggest shopping centres have collapsed. Even the symbol of Aceh, the Baiturrahman mosque, has been badly damaged.
One of the many ruins, the three-storey Doctor Zainal Abidin Hospital, tells a particularly grim tale. "Children in emergency wards were killed [when the water hit]," says a nurse, Citra Nurhayat. "Soldier patients suffering from malaria helped to evacuate other patients."
Families sit in shock in the street or in the grounds of mosques. Only the children seem to cry; the parents seem numb with disbelief.
A 34-year-old mother, Nurhayati, says she has only had bananas to feed her three-month-old baby since Sunday. "I need baby food as well ... no aid has come to us yet."
Scores of badly injured people lie in the corridors and on verandahs of the only operating hospital in Banda Aceh. Patients have no water to drink and have only dry packed noodles to eat.
Saripah, 60, who could not hang on to her six-year-old granddaughter in the tsunami, came to the hospital yesterday for medicine. She was turned away. Outside was a 16-year-old girl who lost an entire family. She had been told there was nowhere to treat her leg wound. Nurses say there are thousands like them.
Survivors and rescue workers bring the dead to Lambaro, a village a few kilometres outside the city, and lay them under plastic sheets near a roundabout in the hope that relatives will come and identify them.
But the threat of disease and Muslim tradition that the dead be buried within 24 hours have prompted mass burials.
About 1500 victims, many of them children, were buried after a funeral on Monday night. There are so many bodies - officials say the death toll in Banda Aceh alone may be as high as 10,000 - that an excavator is digging graves on a two-hectare plot of land near the village.
Indonesian officials fear that communities and islands off the west coast of Sumatra may have been even harder hit.
Shortages of food, water and medicines in Banda Aceh are already causing anger among the Acehnese. Indra Utama, a community leader in the city, says the military must provide more urgent aid. "Where is the military?" he asks. "They're just taking care of their families. There is no war in Aceh now, why don't they help pick up the bodies in the street?"
However, the Indonesian military has started flying medical crews and badly needed emergency supplies into the area in Hercules and any other available aircraft from Medan. It admits much more is needed. At an emergency aid centre at the Banda Aceh parliament only biscuits and drinking water had arrived yesterday afternoon.
Brian Williams, who has lived on Simeulue since 2002, yesterday flew into Medan from Sydney with his wife, Dewi.
He is desperate to contact the island, where he runs a surfing and fishing tour business, but communications are down.
He believes the main town, Sinabang, has been "wiped out".
Mr Williams plans to make the 16-hour trip to Simeulue on a boat laden with Australian aid. "I just want to make sure they're all right and get them some help."
Australian medical team and supplies arrive
By Mark Metherell, Cynthia Banham and Aban Contractor
December 29, 2004Australia has stepped up its emergency assistance effort for the tsunami-hit countries, sending five military aircraft loaded with supplies to Sumatra and providing a 60-strong medical team to the battered region.Relief effort ... an Australian C130 Hercules arrives at Medan carrying medical officers heading for Banda Aceh.
Photo: Nick Moir
"Tragically this is one of the great human disasters of modern times ... it is so widespread," the Prime Minister, John Howard, said last night.
Mr Howard said he was "particularly concerned about our near neighbour" Indonesia and said it was not surprising there would be a high death toll on Sumatra given its proximity to the epicentre of Sunday's undersea earthquake.
Australia will today have available four specialist medical teams of about 15, each including surgeons, physicians, nurses and trauma counsellors, to be sent anywhere in the region.
Mr Howard said by tomorrow there would be five C130 military transport aircraft, including one from New Zealand, in Sumatra, carrying medical supplies and water purification equipment.
The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said the $10 million in aid the Federal Government has already pledged would be substantially enhanced, with details of a new package to be released today.
"We'll be looking at a considerably larger second round of assistance and that will be focusing on Indonesia and to some extent Thailand and it may be that we can help a little in Sri Lanka and India as well," he said.
The Australian Federal Police dispatched two 12-person victim identification teams to Thailand.
The teams include specialist pathologists, dental pathologists, forensic experts and morticians. A police spokeswoman said where the team was deployed would be up to Thai authorities.
A Virgin Blue aircraft also departed Canberra last night bound for the ravaged Thailand resort island of Phuket after the Government accepted the airline's offer to transport home, at its own cost, stranded Australians.
The Virgin Blue aircraft will return home with about 175 Australian tourists.
Mr Downer announced the agreement with the airline while defending the Government against criticism that not enough had been done to help nationals get home from the devastation in Thailand.
Australians arriving back in the country from Phuket yesterday spoke of having been left for 48 hours after the tsunami hit without receiving any support from Australian officials.
But Mr Downer said the Government was "doing everything we can", and that extra flights had not been needed to rescue Australians because people had been managing to get on commercial flights.
Mr Howard said that Australian Foreign Affairs staff had "done a fantastic job in a totally chaotic situation".
Australian officials received no requests for medical evacuations from the area, he said.
Mr Downer said a hundred personnel from Foreign Affairs and Defence had cancelled their holiday leave to return to work.
An Immigration Department official has also been dispatched to the Phuket airport to help Australians who have lost passports to obtain new travel documents to let them travel home.
The Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Bruce Billson, also rejected criticisms that evacuation flights had not been arranged earlier.
Ten extra consular staff had been sent to Phuket to help Australians who were in trouble, Mr Billson said.
In Sri Lanka, consular staff had chartered a helicopter to pick up Australians stranded in the south of the island and provided a four-wheel-drive vehicle to get people from remote areas to Colombo.
As well, the Government had engaged the funeral services company Kenyon International to provide a morgue in Phuket.
Airports at three of the big trouble spots, Colombo, Phuket and the Maldives, were operating normally.
Hours after news of the Virgin Blue offer became public, the Department of Foreign Affairs said Qantas had followed up with a similar offer of one of its aircraft, though a spokeswoman for Qantas denied that any such offer had been made.
With AAP
Australia trebles aid;
hopes fade for missing 8
Three days after a huge earthquake sent walls of water crashing into 11 countries, nine Australians are confirmed dead and another eight remain missing, feared dead.December 29, 2004 - 9:55PM
They include Cairns teacher Kim Walsh and Melbourne AFL player Troy Broadbridge - their families left waiting and hoping for miracles.
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) tonight confirmed a ninth Australian had died.
Magdalena Balachandra of Canberra died in Sri Lanka when the van her family in was washed off the road by a tsunami wave.
Her daughter, Canberra lawyer Asha Balachandra, survived. The family had been in Sri Lanka for Christmas with relatives.
"She didn't deserve to die like this, I can't believe that something like this can happen to someone so beautiful," Ms Balachandra told Channel Nine.
As the international death toll climbed above 68,000, a team of Australian specialists, including doctors and pathologists, landed on Thailand's holiday island of Phuket to begin identifying thousands of victims.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer tried to prepare the nation for further Australian fatalities, warning more pain was on the way.
But there were celebrations too today as shocked survivors returned home for emotional reunions with their families and friends.
Australia, the United States and other developed countries today began discussing how best to aid the recovery of economies hardest hit by Sunday's catastrophe.
Mr Downer today increased Australia's initial aid pledge of $10 million to $35 million, and said the figure was likely to climb further still.
Of the $35 million, $10 million will go to Indonesia to help it deliver aid into the devastated region of Aceh.
"So far we've committee $35 million and I think in the end we will have to commit considerably more than that, particularly helping the rehabilitation of some of these communities that have been utterly devastated," Mr Downer told reporters.
Four Australian Hercules, plus one from New Zealand, are now being used to ferry aid to Aceh where there are fears the entire population of the province's west coast could have been wiped out.
In Phuket, new Australian ambassador to Thailand Bill Paterson arrived to lead the team of medical specialists and consular staff now on the ground there.
Mr Paterson said his greatest fear was for the Khao Lak area where up to 1000 foreigners were believed to have perished.
"So far we've had no reports of any Australians there but we have a team doing a reconnaissance," he told reporters.
"At this stage it seems to be more heavily European than Australian but I wouldn't want to go further than that."
In Melbourne, tearful relatives, desperate to hold loved ones, greeted survivors in emotional reunions this afternoon.
Many of the survivors seemed reluctant to talk about their experiences, but Melbourne man John Haikalis described seeing dead bodies floating in the aftermath of the devastating tsunami that hit Phuket.
"People were dying," he said. "We saw bodies lying around and we didn't know what to do.
"The staff just took off and left the tourists there and we didn't know what to do."
In Brisbane, relatives of Brian Clayton - who died when the tsunami hit Phuket - paid tribute to a man described as a down-to-earth Australian.
Mr Clayton was holidaying with his wife Patsy, 57, on the island resort when the deadly wave struck Patong Beach.
The couple's son-in-law, David Duncan, told of the family's despair at losing a man who was devoted to his family - especially his three grandchildren, Clayton, 15, Todd, aged nine, and Courtney, seven.
"He was a down-to-earth bloke, he was a very outgoing, very social sort of a bloke," Mr Duncan said.
But Gold Coast man Stephen Carroll, 18, is planning a "tsunami party" in a Surfers Paradise nightclub to celebrate being alive after arriving home today.
Three days earlier, Mr Carroll was with his friends at the Holiday Inn at Patong Beach on Phuket when the tsunami struck.
He said he was asleep when the deadly waves crashed ashore. "I got woken up and chased up a mountain," Mr Carroll said.
Mr Downer said he had spoken with outgoing US Secretary of State Colin Powell about providing financial help to the devastated countries.
It now appears Australia will join with the US, Japan and India in working on a plan to help countries such as Indonesia, whose economies have been devastated.
"As Colin Powell and I were discussing this morning, a lot of economies of these affected countries are going to be destroyed and this is going to require a great deal of rebuilding and investment," Mr Downer said.
The government today announced it would help with the reasonable costs not covered by insurance associated with death or serious injuries, including funeral expenses and out-of-pocket medical costs for affected Australians.
Donations to the Red Cross Australia appeal have reached $3 million, while a special appeal set up by the National Australia Bank has raised almost $490,000 in its first day of operation.
States also offered support today with the Queensland, Tasmanian, Western Australian and South Australian governments today pledging a total of $4 million to help tsunami victims.
AAP
Brace for higher figure, says Downer
Seven Australians have been killed across coastal Asia and the Federal Government holds grave fears for at least a further 11 missing in Thailand, Sri Lanka and India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands.By Alex Smith and Cynthia Banham
December 29, 2004
The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, warned yesterday that the Australian death toll from the tsunami disaster could rise to a "much higher figure than is currently the case".
"I feel concern that the number of Australian casualties could be substantially higher than the figures that we've got at the moment and people should prepare for that, " Mr Downer said.
Late yesterday the Government confirmed the deaths of six-month-old Melina Heppell; 16-year-old Victorian Paul Giardina; a 52-year-old Queensland businessman; a 54-year-old Queensland man; a three-year-old NSW girl and an 81-year-old female permanent Thai resident, originally from Western Australia.
A 49-year-old with dual Sri Lankan and Australian citizenship was also killed in Sri Lanka, but the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade could not confirm the person's sex or whether he or she resided in Australia.
Another of the dead was Barry Anstee, from Springwood in Queensland, who was swept away from his wife, Susan, by the flooding waters in Phuket. His wife survived. Mr Anstee's body was found later.
Mr Anstee's sons flew to Thailand from Britain and the US to comfort their mother.
The AFL player Troy Broadbridge, who plays for the Melbourne club and was honeymooning with his wife, Trisha, on Phi Phi Island, is also confirmed missing.
The club issued a statement saying Trisha was safe but that her 24-year-old husband was unaccounted for.
Also believed missing are Ann and Jim Sparrow, from Maddington, near Perth, who were holidaying in Patong, and 61-year-old Magdeline Balachandra, from Canberra, who was spending Christmas with her family in Colombo.
The parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs, Bruce Billson, said as many as 7,000 Australians were known to be in South and South-East Asia.
Mr Billson urged any Australians who managed to contact friends and family in the affected areas to pass on information to authorities as soon as possible.
Mr Downer, warned Australians yesterday to brace themselves for a much higher death toll. He said the Government was "very concerned in particular in the case of Thailand at the death toll of Australians [which] could be quite high but we are also concerned about Sri Lanka as well".
Of the 11 missing, seven were in Thailand, one in Sri Lanka, and three in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has received more than 48,000 calls from concerned relatives of Australians travelling in the affected region to its 1800 number.
It has established that up to 7000 Australians would have been travelling in the region at the time of the disaster, although the Foreign Minister said the actual figure was "likely to be much higher than that".
The department said that at least 19 Australians were in hospital, 18 in Thailand and one in Sri Lanka.
Foreign Affairs has set up two makeshift consular offices in the Thai island resort area of Phuket: one in the Hilton hotel and another in a local city hall.
In the Maldives, which was also ravaged by tidal waves, the department said the British Government had agreed to help assist any Australians who were affected by the disaster.
Few survivors as packed train thrown off tracks
December 29, 2004The Queen of the Sea chugged slowly up the sandy, palm-fringed coast of eastern Sri Lanka, carrying hundreds of residents from the capital to visit relatives or enjoy a day at the sunny resorts near the town of Galle.People search for their relatives among debris and a damaged train coach at Telwatte, Sri Lanka.
Photo: AP
The train had almost reached its destination on Sunday when the tsunami struck - a wall of water some 10 metres high, enveloping the Queen and lifting its carriages off the track into a thick marsh, killing at least 802 people.
In the utter wasteland around this once-picturesque area, the train stands out - both as a testament to the force of nature which tossed it off the tracks and as the largest single loss of life on an island which suffered at least 18,706 dead.
Police said the train had stopped at Telwatta, a village on the way to Galle, just before it was struck. Many of the dead were local villagers who tried to escape the waves by climbing onto the top of the train with the help of the passengers.
Yesterday, the Queen and the surrounding area were little more than debris. Eight rust-coloured carriages which lay in deep pools of water amid fallen palm trees. The force of the waves had torn the wheels off some, and the train tracks twisted like a loop on a roller coaster.
Baggage from the train was strewn along the tracks, and some of the clothing and other items looked new, possibly New Year's gifts for family or friends.
The bodies of about 150 people, many of them victims of the train disaster, were buried in a mass grave, with Buddhist monks performing traditional funeral rites. They chanted and poured water on the grave to symbolise the giving of merits of the living to the dead.
Venerable Baddegama Samitha, a Buddhist monk and former parliamentarian who presided over the ritual, said he realised some of the dead were of other faiths, and a moment's silence was held to honour them.
"This was the only thing we could do," he said. "It was a desperate solution. The bodies were rotting. We gave them a decent burial."
Authorities took fingerprints of the dead so that they could be identified later if possible, he said, but there seemed little possibility anyone would find the time to try.
At a nearby police station, officers laid out about 100 identification and credit cards, as well as drivers' licences and bank books found at the train site.
Apparent victims included an electricity board secretary, an assistant lecturer at a state research institute of social development, and a student from the University of Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka.
Some relatives of missing people sifted through the documents. Among them was Premasiri Jayasinghe, who was searching for three missing relatives.
"Police told us to come and have a look at this collection of ID cards," he said. His search was in vain.
At the train site, a young man wept in the arms of friends as the body of his girlfriend was buried. The distraught man spoke out to his lost sweetheart.
"We met in university. Is this the fate that we hoped for?" he sobbed. "My darling, you were the only hope for me."
For the people of Telwatta, burying the train's dead was part of an attempt to bring back order. The tsunami crushed every building, down to the brick foundations of the houses. Palm trees were snapped into splinters and the site of what was once a school was marked only by twisted metal playground equipment.
The one-lane road through the area was thronged with traffic jams yesterday as trucks tried to bring in aid. They were slowed by funeral processions on the side of the road, and residents carrying away rubble from what had once been their homes.
The military said at least 802 people died aboard the train, but 1000 tickets were sold and it was unclear how many people were actually on board, including whether any were foreigners. Superintendent B P B Ayupala said more people were missing and could be buried in the watery earth beneath the compartments.
"The people in the village ran toward the train and climbed on top of it," he said. "Then the water level went down. Ten minutes later, it came back."
The train had left Colombo at 7.30am and was travelling to Galle, 110km to the southeast. Telwatta is a village about 24km from Galle. Water struck the train about 9.30am, more than two hours after the Indonesian earthquake which unleashed the tidal waves, according to police.
In was unclear how many people survived. Ayupala said the driver of the train had survived, though police under his authority had not spoken to him. Police and local residents said one survivor was a woman who lost three children when the carriages were flooded. She sought refuge in a Buddhist temple before leaving the area.
AP
Disaster compounds Aceh's misery
December 29, 2004Aceh has many problems and all of them will hamper relief efforts, writes Louise Williams.Even before disaster struck, Aceh's grim separatist war, its crumbling public services and endemic corruption were a daunting challenge for Indonesia's reformist President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Now, Aceh is his acid test.
For decades, successive Indonesian governments have sealed the northern province off from international scrutiny, barricading its ugly, grinding conflict, its mass graves and human-rights abuses behind a wall of travel restrictions and media bans. Clearing the red tape cost international relief agencies vital days before access was belatedly granted last night to the devastated province.
"It is very, very slow, too slow" said one aid official yesterday, as dazed survivors told of a fruitless search for help.
Indonesia's parliament conceded its own fears for the relief effort. In an unusual public acknowledgement that the country's own officials might stand in help's way, the House Speaker, Agung Laksono, announced: "We hope the funds allocated for the people won't be lost to corruption."
As many as 25,000 Acehnese may have died, more than twice the death toll in 28 years of civil war. The war, however, casts a very long shadow over rescue and relief efforts.
Officially, Aceh is off limits to foreigners without permits under a state of civil emergency, delaying the deployment of relief teams. But a large part of the challenge local and international aid teams face is that Aceh was already on its knees.
"The information coming out of Aceh was so minimal compared to other areas, it reflects how poorly prepared they are," said Ed Aspinall, an Aceh specialist at Sydney University.
An escalation in fighting since a military offensive was begun last year had not only damaged local infrastructure in many parts of the province, but pushed down all key human indicators. The long-suffering Acehnese were getting poorer, unemployment, infant mortality and malnutrition were rising, and farm and agricultural production had been disrupted. Isolated communities simply have fewer resources with which to cope.
But the guerilla war has also long been used as a smokescreen for something more sinister.
In Jakarta this week, the corruption trial of Aceh's Governor, Abdullah Puteh, opened, the first in Indonesia's new anti-corruption court. A survey by the Indonesian Central Bank last year ranked Aceh the nation's most corrupt province and the prosecution of the wealthy Mr Puteh is a significant move by President Yudhoyono to block the skimming off of government funds.
The conflict was used as an excuse to prevent development projects from being checked, Dr Aspinall said. This means many public facilities, which might have been useful, were never built.
The war in Aceh is, ostensibly, a campaign for an independent Islamic state. But much of the popular sympathy for the separatist forces is directly linked to the wealth drain out of Aceh, as well as persistent human-rights abuses by Indonesian troops. Profits from Aceh's valuable oil, gas and timber resources have not been used to develop the province, despite repeated promises of a fairer deal, and considerable wealth has flowed to Indonesia's military.
Dr Yudhyono's immediate challenge is to get help to survivors, quickly. But that means confronting entrenched vested interests, addressing corruption and managing to direct the powerful Indonesian military to work with the same communities they have been fighting for decades. That is, facing all of Aceh's problems at once.
The ceasefire announced by rebel forces is one positive signal. And Aceh's long history of misery could also be cause for optimism, argues Tom Hansleigh, Indonesian director of Mercy Corps. "The Acehnese know what it is to be displaced, they know how to deal with the destruction of property, they know how to organise and help each other. These are really valuable human resources and they're already there, on the ground."
Over 2,000 Scandinavians missing after tsunami
Updated: 2004-12-29 14:22
![An unidentified Western tourist tries to find loved ones among bodies lined outside a temple in Takuapa, near Phuket December 29, 2004. Western holidaymakers -- especially Scandinavians -- bore the brunt of deadly tidal waves that hit Thailand, officials said Wednesday, as rescuers continued the horrific task of retrieving and identifying corpses. [AFP]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vEhntxdB9B877koL_isdQRhS7QfIvtvFd4Jsw247-sqa61KwS4FPEdwgVsd2DB-cHr8iDhIoWgNrpq1zpxE8Vre_3O-xXH6LPJjRtMi2gSwrtB5PeAeR7h-rC9s3XG86yY1mKXEqGxjakR7HHNvlz9__x7=s0-d) An unidentified Western tourist tries to find loved ones among bodies lined outside a temple in Takuapa, near Phuket December 29, 2004. Western holidaymakers -- especially Scandinavians -- bore the brunt of deadly tidal waves that hit Thailand, officials said Wednesday, as rescuers continued the horrific task of retrieving and identifying corpses. [AFP] |
The missing include at least 1,500 Swedes, 800 Norwegians, 214 Danes and 200 Finns escaping the frigid Nordic winter.
"This might be one of the biggest catastrophes to have struck Norwegians abroad," Foreign Minister Jan Petersen said.
Apart from the Scandinavians, authorities had lost track of more than 200 Czechs, 188 Israelis, 100 Germans and 100 Italians.
Relatives and friends flocked to stricken areas in a desperate search for the missing, but authorities feared the death toll among foreigners would rise as shattered beach hotels began to yield up their dead.
"My father was not there," German yacht skipper Jerzy Chojnowski said in the Thai beach resort of Phuket after poring over pictures of those killed by the massive waves. Chojnowski had spent the day scouring Phuket's Bang Tao beach where he found his 83-year-old father Konrad's mud-covered beach bag.
So far, the confirmed dead included 18 British tourists, 13 each from Norway and Italy, 11 Americans, 14 from France and nine from Japan. Tourists from Australia, Canada, Germany, Poland, South Africa and South Korea were also among the dead.
Amid the chaos, there was some rare good news.
A Swedish toddler was reunited with relatives, including his grandmother, after his picture was posted on the Internet.
Hannes Bergstrom, 14 months old, was found wrapped in blankets on a hill by an American couple on Sunday, hours after a Thai villager had rescued the boy from the raging waters that killed more than 1,500 people in Thailand.
His father survived but his mother remains missing.
"Just to see his grandma in there, you know, I cried," Ron Rubin, who recovered the child, told Reuters as Hannes played in a Phuket hospital room with his grandmother and uncle.
WORST-HIT AREA
Hotel owners in Khao Lak, north of Phuket, said they feared hundreds of foreign guests were dead, their bodies swept into the rainforest covering the hills behind the beach.
More than 300 bodies were found on Thailand's Phi Phi island, made famous by Leonardo DiCaprio's film "The Beach," which was devastated by a series of powerful waves.
Tourists' luggage and personal belongings were scattered around the small town. The once pristine beach was littered with debris.
Dozens of foreigners at Phuket city hall pored over pictures of the missing. The photos, put up by distraught friends and relatives, included pleas for help.
"I will reward you if you can find her," said the message with a photo of a young Asian girl in pigtails who was on Phi Phi island when the tsunami struck.
The 14-year old granddaughter of British actor and film director Richard Attenborough was among the dead, and his daughter and her mother-in-law were missing, a friend said.
Former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, in Sri Lanka on a private holiday, was safe, a spokesman said.
Japan's Foreign Ministry has officially confirmed four Japanese deaths, all in Phuket. Sri Lankan officials have said nine Japanese were thought to have died there.
About 20 relatives of 10 Japanese tourists missing in Sri Lanka left for the island on Wednesday to view seven bodies that have been recovered.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-12/29/content_404345.htm
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