Asian Tsunami - a Personal Perspective Pt.2

<< Return to Pt.1 At one point, some loud shouts came from one of the school classrooms directly opposite our hotel on the other side of the road, some 150 metres from the beach – another body had been found, this time a Sri Lankan man by the name of Hussein who was part of a family group from Kandy who had been staying in our hotel and who had been dining at the next table to ours on the previous evening. He was a large man, some 20 stone, and his body had been carried by the water to its final resting place. When I got there, hoping to God it wasn’t Esther that they had found, this poor man’s body had jammed in one of the doorways to the classroom and was heavily entangled with debris. Having pulled away much of the stuff that was on top of him, we had to try and move his immense frame, now bloated with gallons of water out of the room and onto a makeshift stretcher (an old bed frame) so as to carry him the 100 metres or so to a nearby vehicle. It took eight of us to lift him and carry him to the truck to join other bodies already piled up inside. Once completed, it was back to the task of finding my own loved one. However, within 10 minutes of this latest gruesome discovery, at about 1pm – some 3 ½ hours after the wave struck - I was approached by one of the Directors of the Hotel who informed me that a young lad, aged about 20 years old, had told another lad of the same age that he had rescued a young girl and that she was now with her mother at the tea plantation. This story was beyond belief and I must admit to having been extremely cynical as to its truth. How could Esther have suddenly appeared from out of nowhere and rejoined her mother when I had seen for myself all of my family leave for the tea plantation some one hour previously in a truck? However, some hope was better than none at this point and I, together with one of the Directors returned to the house where we had originally gathered after escaping the tidal wave to try and verify this story by meeting the young lad who had apparently been the one to save her. After ten minutes or so we arrived at the house and were confronted by this excitable youth who through my colleague’s interpretation was indeed positive that he had rescued a young girl with white hair by the name of Esther wearing a dark blue top and shorts. It was her! His story was that he was employed as a masseur at Club Lanka and had been working early that day at the hotel. On hearing the tumult and noise of the onrushing waves and the increasingly panicky shouts, he'd emerged from his clinic door next to the reception area, seen Esther in the same area (she had just been to the toilet nearby), saw the waves approaching and grabbed her under his arm and ran for all he was worth out of the hotel, across the road, through the school, across the railway line and up the embankment to relative safety. There they stayed with the local villagers, safe from the ravages of the waves a few hundred metres away.

Thousands flee on the main Colombo Road

After a while, he had taken the sensible decision to cut across to the hospital, located on the only road going north into the interior (and indeed the only route now open into and out of Ahangama) in the hope that if he sat there long enough with her by the side of the road, some of the tourists escaping from the carnage of the beach front might recognise her and claim her. This is exactly what happened.

Apparently, as Anne and the family, aboard the open top truck were climbing out of the coastal area of Ahangama, Hermione spotted what she thought was Esther at the side of the road with two young lads and shouted to the driver to stop. One of the young lads duly handed Esther over to them amongst much tears and jubilation by the entire truck-full of hotel guests. On delivering our daughter to her grateful family, the two lads returned to the village let us know.

The moment at which Esther was found.

Esther and the family travel with other guests.

Once I had verified their story and knew in my own mind that she was safe, I decided to stay at the seafront and help the brothers in collecting all of the guests' belongings (or what remained of them) from the stricken hotel. We packed and cleared 30 rooms' worth of cases and loaded them onto a lorry which by now had managed to get through a freshly cleared area of road to park outside what remained of the hotel. It was simply fortunate for us that we had booked rooms on the first floor as the water had not risen to this level and our belongings were largely left intact.

For most of the other guests in the hotel, there was a feeling of sheer elation in survival. There were three large family parties – the Owners, the Kandy-based Sri Lankan family and ourselves. The rest of the 10 or so guests were made up of Dutch, American, French, New Zealand and English couples. Of these, only two died – Hussein from Kandy and their driver, who had been trapped in one of the downstairs bedrooms and drowned immediately. We all stayed the night at the tea estate 2 bedroom bungalow with the owners providing all of the guests with some makeshift curry dinner and breakfast the following day. The following day we boarded a bus for the eight hour journey into the interior of the island and then back down to our home in Colombo.

The gardens of the hotel after the water had subsided.

Fever set in with five of the children over the next day or so with Esther being hit hardest and having to be admitted to hospital. Tests have now been done on her and it appears that they have all contracted some form of viral infection from the water in which most of us spent some time on that Boxing Day morning. But by New Years Eve all was well with us and we were able to go out to a Chinese Restaurant as a family for the first time for five days. New Year’s Eve was the culmination of an official 5 days of mourning so celebrations were almost non-existent. Our daughters, Fleur and Hermione, return to the US and Cornwall retrospectively on the 7th January and we are now desperately trying to salvage some form of normal family holiday from the events of the last few days. We hope to go up into the interior for a 2 or 3 day break to give them some positive memories of this holiday time together.

Thanks to William Recktenwald for use of images, read his account here 

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