Tsunami in Sri Lanka; A Personal Story
n our home town of Melbourne, Boxing Day has a special meaning. Thousands of cricket fans, like us, savour the opportunity to watch Australia’s finest do battle with old rivals such as England, the West Indies or India.
But for us, it is now a day to remember for an entirely different reason.
On Boxing Day 2004, we witnessed the tsunami destroying a village, with lives, buildings and futures swept away. The shock we felt was tempered only by the fact that we escaped physically unharmed.
My wife, Sian, and our children Sam, 12, Rosie, 10, and Matilda, 6, had begun our long-planned and anticipated Sri Lankan holiday several days earlier at Unawatuna near Galle on the south-west coast. On the fateful morning, I was keen for us to travel to the nearby coastal hamlet of Mirissa. I had organised a driver and was waiting for Sian to get ready before we went to breakfast. She had just returned from a run along Unawatuna beach. We were staying at the Sea View hotel where we had an upstairs apartment for the kids and a ground floor flat for us. Our flat was in a garden setting about 50 metres from the beach.
Matilda was compiling a list of her 10 favourite animals and Sam was working on a list of his favourite Australian cricketers. Both were on the upstairs balcony. Rosie had slept downstairs with Sian the previous night because she felt sick, and so I had slept in the upstairs flat. Rosie had had a loose tooth for several days and when it finally came out, she ran upstairs to show me. At that moment, I saw the wave.
I did not think it was a tsunami because the water was only about two or three metres high at first, but as it raced towards our flat I yelled out to Sian and ran down to get her. She noticed the terror in my voice and we just had time to grab a bag each as we ran upstairs to beat the rising, raging water. I suppose we had about 15 seconds to spare from the moment I saw the wave. The water roared through the hotel gardens and our ground floor flat, ripping out our bed, baggage and belongings, tearing down walls and surging on for about 40 metres, creating a lake behind the hotel grounds. The water rose to about five metres, reaching the floor of the balcony of the upstairs flat. Perched there, we just hoped that the water wouldn’t keep rising. We felt helpless and more than a touch panic-stricken and had no idea what would happen next but we had to put on a brave face for the children. We took them to the bathroom vanity – and Rosie climbed on to the roof of the flat with two Spanish boys who were among the first people to arrive on our balcony looking for higher, safer ground. A New Zealander mentioned that he had just received a text message telling of an earthquake in Sumatra, so we soon worked out what had happened. But Sumatra seemed so far away ...
Some of the people who fled to our balcony were injured, including a Dutch woman who had fractured ribs. One of her two boys had a deep cut over his eye and I asked his father if the family was intact. Tearfully, he said no, that they had an 18-month-old baby boy. (It turned out that the water had swept the baby out of his mother’s arms.) It was then that we realised beyond doubt that we were in the middle of a disaster.
From our vantage point we watched buildings collapsing and cars floating in the murky torrent, and heard people yelling for help. It was a surreal, terrifying scene – like something from a horror movie. The village had been torn apart in seconds. The locals were doing everything they could to rescue those in distress. We later learned that some people were able to save themselves by clinging to coconut trees. Others had apparently been trapped in their rooms and dived into the water to try to escape. Some had emerged from the water unscathed; others survived but had been injured by concrete blocks and other debris.
After 15 minutes or so, it was as if the tide turned as the water began to run back out. Our balcony had become a mini-hospital and we were using our own small first aid kit to provide some measure of relief for the injured. Soon after, the call went out for doctors. Apparently there were many injured people who had fled to higher ground elsewhere in Unawatuna. Sian, who is a paediatrician, volunteered immediately and left the Sea View. This was the beginning of more than three days’ work for her – gathering medical supplies from tourists’ first aid kits and patching up hundreds of people’s cuts and other wounds.
About half an hour after the first wave, a second smaller wave passed through the hotel gardens. I was with the three kids wondering whether we should stay put or leave for higher ground. We were worried that the Sea View would collapse, and we were wondering what belongings to take if and when we left. Soon after the second wave, the locals told us to follow them to the Rock House, a guesthouse some five minutes away up a hill. Walking across the beachfront, through the strewn wreckage of a village, was genuinely eerie. The kids and I each of us took an item of baggage because we didn’t know if we would be able to return to the Sea View. We walked through water about one foot deep. We didn’t know if another wave was coming and our journey was littered with everything from broken glass and Christmas decorations to furniture and concrete blocks torn from buildings. Items of clothing were stuck in trees and plants and the first body soon became visible.
As soon as we arrived at the Rock House, there was widespread panic about another wave. This, like many others, proved to be a false alarm but unnerved us further. Sian was there and we got the kids to climb on to a hill. They were reasonably calm under the extreme circumstances, but needed constant reassurance. Rosie especially missed her mother over the next few days.
There were some 30 or 40 people – locals and tourists – in ‘our’ room that night. We had one single mattress between all five of us, and there was no running water, power or sewerage. Food was limited but there was some drinking water. Luckily the kids slept well after eating some noodles. But I found sleep impossible, and spent the night on the balcony talking to a visitor from the Channel Island of Guernsey, who had a badly injured shoulder and some serious cuts from being tossed around by the torrent. He couldn’t move and needed help. We organised a receptacle for his urine and I disposed of it from time to time. He and his wife and daughter had been at breakfast together but were separated when the wave came in. Luckily all survived and they were reunited about 36 hours later.
One of the reasons that sleep was difficult was the din being made by the town’s dogs. Underfed at the best of times, these poor animals were now homeless and without their owners. They were deeply upset – like the rest of us – and in the next few days started to run together like a pack of wolves, howling and working themselves into an increasingly desperate frenzy in their hunt for food, and apparently beginning to feed on corpses. Another reason for sleeplessness was the sound of the water. In our elevated and jittery state, the water sounded very loud and people kept coming to the balcony wondering whether another wave was on its way. The nights seemed terribly long. Watching the fireflies and monkeys helped pass the time, and some of the tourists – mainly British – talked about their travel experiences in Sri Lanka.
The sound of helicopters filled some of us with optimism. Apparently a Sri Lankan politician and his family – along with all their baggage – had been picked up soon after the tsunami hit. This showed that at least choppers could land at Unawatuna and the army knew people were there.
Mobile phones were not working for calls or text messages and batteries were running low. But some of us had nevertheless organised a list of messages back home saying that we were safe. Fortunately, Jake Zarins, a British lad who took on a leadership role as the emergency unfolded, received a call on his mobile later that evening from his stepbrother at home. Jake’s stepbrother very kindly rang my brother, Rob, in Melbourne (along with many other people overseas) with the message that simply said: ‘All OK – Tony’. Rob passed on the message to my parents, who rang Sian’s parents in Wales.
Over the next few days, Sian worked flat out with Thomas Carlin, an expert in Chinese medicine. Thomas, a Norway-based Irishman, was the only other medic at the Rock House. The pair treated hundreds of people at the Rock House, the hills and elsewhere around Unawatuna. Most people either died or escaped with cuts, bruises or fractured ribs. There were few major injuries apart from fractures, and several people who had almost drowned did surprisingly well with antibiotics and some chest physiotherapy. But there were many wounds to treat and a real danger of infection. The tourists’ first aid kits had antiseptic agents and antibiotics as well as painkillers. The children tore up sheets to wrap the wounds and stop the flies and mosquitoes infecting the cuts. A team of people from the Rock House regularly cleaned the area we used as a hospital. Everyone who came to have a wound cleaned and covered had a story to tell. For example, an Australian couple had been lucky to survive – a concrete wall had collapsed on them but the wave had turned at the last moment, releasing the wall.
On the first day there was an urgent call. A beautiful baby boy had been found and was still warm. The baby’s Sri Lankan father thrust him into Sian’s arms as his German mother stood by wailing. The baby already had rigor mortis and it was impossible to inflate his lungs. Sian tried to start his heart – to no avail – and then spent an emotional hour talking to his parents. The grandmother had also died and the family was planning to bury them together. Sian’s dedication and enthusiasm never wavered, even with precious little sleep and a constant queue of patients. Most of the people at the Rock House thought of her as a hero but to me she is always a hero. Once the situation became clear, we had no doubt that she would do exactly what she did because this is the sort of person she is – but selfishly we would have preferred that she spent a little more time with us. For her, moving into work mode, with a lot of emotion thrown in, allowed some escape from the inevitable ‘what if’ and ‘what happens now’ thoughts that were haunting us all (and in many cases still does). Having a specific job to do provided a kind of release.
I had to balance looking after the kids with doing whatever I could to help the overall rescue effort. I was able to help cart the injured through deep mud to a makeshift airstrip, where army helicopters landed on their way to Galle or Colombo. On one occasion, we helped 14 injured people congregate at the airstrip. This was a huge effort, with some people barely able to move and others in severe pain every time they did so. It was a sorry afternoon because after a long wait, the helicopter didn’t arrive and then we had to ferry all the injured back to the Rock House. At least by then the roads were open so we could begin to use vehicles to help us transport the injured. At other times, I helped retrieve luggage from rooms in hotels that had been overwhelmed by the water. I returned to one upstairs room with Jon Walter that was almost defying gravity – all around it had been inundated but the room at The Strand hotel was perfectly dry and we gathered his family’s bags and some drinking water, which we carried to the Rock House.
English couple David and Linda Phillips had three teenage girls, who helped entertain our kids with card and other games. I also returned to their upstairs room at the Sea View to retrieve the girls’ baggage. It was incongruous to be wheeling untouched, full suitcases through the devastation, where some locals were searching for their belognings. On the second night, when we moved to another flat, sharing only with British couple Claire and Jamie Wilkinson, I was able to get a little sleep until the girls woke me up, asking where their mother was. I suggested she might be in the bathroom, but they couldn’t find her. So I got up and, in a stupor, started looking for Sian. I found her working with Jake and others at the makeshift hospital at the front of the Rock House. They were drawing up the evacuation list and later that night, meeting a representative of the British High Commission.
Meanwhile, Rosie was upset again without her mum and Matilda began vomiting. It was strangely humorous to hear Matilda dry-retching violently and minutes later returning to her cheeky self. (Sam, who had the same stomach problem the next night, was sleeping quite well.) About this time – 3.30 in the morning – I grabbed the opportunity of using Jake’s phone, which was somehow working, and left a message with my folks in Melbourne. Apparently they couldn’t hear it above the generator that the locals had installed.
From the time the tsunami struck, Sian and I had only the clothes we were wearing. Sian’s Australian pink and brown sunsuit became her working uniform. For me, having only one pair of jocks presented something of a challenge. I also had only one pair of shoes, which had become soaked on the first morning when we walked from the Sea View to the Rock House. However, that was nothing compared with the mud that was caked on them and my socks after every trip to the airstrip, but there was nothing I could do about it. Also the rooms were extremely humid and attracted plenty of mosquitoes. What with the drone of the generator – which the locals managed to get working each evening so that they could watch television, charge mobile phones and cook – and the howls of the dogs, sleep was at a premium.
Meanwhile, many other bodies were being swiftly identified and buried in mass graves and the Dutch couple were trying to arrange for their baby to be buried in the Rock House garden. It was far from ideal but we managed to organise for the husband to take the body on a chopper to Galle, and the mother remained in the area with her boys. We were able to provide some of our kids’ shoes and other clothing for the boys.
About this time, the media suddenly appeared at the Rock House and Sian was interviewed by Geoff Thompson of ABC Radio for the AM program and by another journalist for The Times. Anyone in Australia who didn’t know we were alive and well soon found out, on national radio. Cars had arrived from Colombo and all those who wanted to go crammed into the official-looking shiny Hillmans for an eight-hour trip to the airport. We would have then had at least a 15-hour flight home. Our decision was clear – stay on and do whatever we could to give our kids and ourselves a better sense of Sri Lanka, and the chance to enjoy some relaxing, recuperative time together. So we were beginning to consider our evacuation plans about then, especially as the stench of death started to infiltrate the Rock House. Sian and Thomas had been told that there were nearby houses where we could rest, clean ourselves up, stay a few days and decide our next move. But when we rang the contact the next morning (Wednesday), we were told that ‘resources were now required elsewhere’.
About this time, a tour leader who had delivered Claire and Jamie Wilkinson to Unawatuna (perhaps he felt guilty?) arrived at the Rock House. It was soon decided that our family, the Wilkinsons and Thomas would leave with him in his van. Sian organised and tidied up all the remaining medical supplies so that everything was in order for some local doctors, who were apparently going to take over at the Rock House. We also had to discard some of our luggage because the van was so full. It was good to leave the Rock House even though it had been our refuge at a very trying time. The owners had been extremely generous, opening their doors for free to hundreds of tourists and locals, supplying all their food and drink. Rice and dhal parcels were provided to all tourists and locals, with no questions asked. As in the rest of Sri Lanka, they treated us like their guests and it is something we will never forget.
We had placed our passports and travellers’ cheques in the safe at the Sea View. After three days, the manager, Deepal, turned up with them. They were wet but still legible. I had assumed that we wouldn’t get them back but Deepal had kept them at his home, not the now devastated hotel office. We finally left early in the afternoon, and had an interesting and long day on the road with regular flare-ups among the passengers, some mechanical difficulties and a lack of clarity about where we should go. We eventually decided to head for Kitulgala, in the hill country not far from Kandy – and well away from the coast. This journey took close to 10 hours with the driver racing down poorly made roads full of potholes, inches behind trucks (at night with his high-beams on), trying desperately to overtake. The only problem was that other vehicles were trying to overtake him at the same time. We had no seatbelts, and were in a jittery state of mind anyway. The last thing we needed was a car crash, I thought as the driver swung around other vans, trucks, cars and tuk-tuks. (Our favourite Sri Lankan English were the stickers on the back of tuk-tuks, which say Inspiring confidence. More like total fear.) I asked whether the driver could ease off a little for us. I was told: ‘No sir, you must understand that being a tour operator is a very responsible business in Sri Lanka and I employ only the best drivers’. It was worth a try, I suppose
… Kitulgala was gorgeous and the kids – believe it or not – went white-water rafting with us the following day. I guess it was a case of getting back on the horse. We had several drinks and dinner with Thomas at the Plantation Hotel there and talked constantly about how we could kick-start the relief effort. What amazed us about the next 10 days we spent inside Sri Lanka was that there seemed to be little awareness of what had happened on the coast. For example, when we went to change a travellers’ cheque at Nuwara Eliya, the clerk complained that it was wet. He said he would have to consult with his manager but eventually cashed it.
We had done an interview for the Melbourne newspaper The Age, which used the headline ‘For swamped village, there was a doctor in the house’ under the rather strange tagline of tagline ‘Samaritan’. After we returned to Australia, we did a further interview on the national television program, 7.30 Report. As a result, a Sri Lankan Australian has offered two acres of land near Unawatuna beach for a community health centre. We’re trying to decide how best to work with the locals and the donor to use this land for the long-term benefit of the ravaged village. And thanks to some generous Australian donors, we have been able to provide some medical equipment for use in the hospital in Galle. Sian has met with Sri Lankan Australian doctors, and is planning other medical relief efforts. We have many other fund-raising ideas, too.
Our first few weeks back in Australia have been hectic – my parents were of course relieved to have us back and especially proud of Sian. Many friends wanted to know exactly what happened to us, and that’s one of the reasons I have written this piece.
The tsunami has changed our lives forever and will never be far from our minds. The lesson we took out of the experience was that no matter what deprivations we were forced to endure, we had each other.
We had the comfort of knowing we had a lovely house, family, friends and jobs to return to. In stark contrast, many lives were lost in Unawatuna, hundreds of homes and other buildings were demolished and the future for so many people was ruined – all in a matter of minutes.