Tsunami / Tailand 2004 – Kaleidoscope of an event
From an email to a friend, dated 29th December, 2004, about the events of
26th December, 2004 on an Island close to Phuket / Thailand
“The previous evening I had cancelled my diving trip, because I was too tired. I spent the
night on the beach in my tent and was awoken by the earth tremors. Then, as I fell back
to sleep, I remember thinking, “Hopefully there won’t be a tsunami” (I was familiar with
the subject from Hawaii). Stupidly, I did not force myself to wake up there and then and
get myself to safety. The next time I was awoken, this time by loud voices from outside,
I looked out of the tent, saw the wave approaching and luckily reacted instinctively,
like a machine. I sprinted straight over to the nearby shower building, a solid edifice surrounded
and protected by strong, old trees, where I climbed right up to the roof-timbers
and clung on. Immediately, the wave shot past beneath me, half taking hold of me, together
with my tent and other people’s tents, some of which were still occupied. Many people
just ran back towards the flat interior of the island, which proved to be fatal. The water was
quicker. After the first wave, I managed to leave my refuge and reach a rocky hill, situated
off to the side, which offered me protection.
Then the wave came, drawing breath again and again, and in between, receding so far that
the coral banks were exposed, then returning and attacking once again, chaotically sandy
and bubbling earthy brown. It was total horror. How many people are missing, dragged into
the sea on this morning, noone will ever know for sure …
… Then, after one-and-a-half very, very anxious days, the navy came with a troop ship and
got us out. The broad strip of uprooted trees, houses, furniture, rubbish and bodies, swimming
on the water off the coast, was monstrous. And everywhere above the water, the
acrid, sickly smell of decomposing bodies, brought on so early by the great heat …”
Email from 30th December, 2004
“… Phuket looks like an island in the aftermath of war. At night, I walked through the dark
expanses of rubble of Patong Beach, to try and comprehend the incomprehensible. Darkness
and death, where all was once bursting with life. Kafkaesque scenarios, electricity
cables in the darkness, torn and yet still connected, eerily spraying sparks as they toss back
and forth, and everywhere the dreadful stench of decomposition. The distant appearance
in the middle of the misty, heavily steaming darkness of the odd light, laboriously generated.
Caught in these lights, rescue teams acting determinedly and yet appearing helpless, pulling
bodies from the rubble …”
Diary, beginning of January, 2005
“… What the news channels transmit via the two-dimensional screen has little to do with
the actual experience, as lived through the senses. Death assumes a face only when the
dead person is given a face, a personality, a smell, their own curriculum vitae of pain and
suffering, love and desire, which has suddenly been paralysed with horror …
… The surreal thing about it was that death broke into a perfect morning, full of bird song
and cloudless blue, powerfully and totally without any warning or sign of its approach …
… How undignified, this dying. People disfigured and bloated beyond all recognition,
gnawed at and thrown away like a bag of rubbish; people often at the very start of their life
or torn from its midst, without the chance to say goodbye. And how awful for their loved
ones who, despite continuing to hope, must recognise that there will be no return, but
without having any real certainty and without having a place to mourn …
… At the beginning the psyche is still in a position to suppress and one has the gift of
being able to react in a functional and “proper” manner. But then the sights and smells take
control, more and more, especially at night …
… I have had two birthdays since then, and it will take some time before that which I have
experienced is covered up by a new layer of life. So I look forward to a time when I can
once again become annoyed by banal, pointless everyday trifles. It will show me that I have
returned to “normal” life …”
Frank Roedel 2005