EDITOR'S NOTE: A terrifying tsunami set off Sunday, Dec. 26, in the Indian Ocean by a huge earthquake drowned thousands of people in six countries and left thousands more homeless in South-East Asia.
The multiple quakes—at 8.9 on the Richter scale the world's fifth biggest in 100 years—started off the tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island and sent massive waves across the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, killing thousands of people in Sri Lanka and India, and thousands more between the Maldives, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia.
The eyewitness account that follows describes 5-meter waves that swept away thousands of tourists and villagers on Thailand's most popular tourist island, Phuket. Keith and Linda Jones, who offer charter cruises in the Indian Ocean, were anchored in Kata Bay in their 72-foot sailboat, High Aspect. The British couple e-mailed their descriptive account of the tragedy on Wednesday night to Bob Stevens, of Ketchum, almost three days after he began his search to find out if his friends were alive:
Dear Bob:
Thanks for the e-mail and concern. We were in fact in a rather dogdy place at the time of the hit but all is fine and we are all well but badly bruised mentally.
We were anchored in Kata Bay, which is just down from Patong and is a banana-shaped bay with hotels and restaurants on the beach. All along the beach is a 3 or 4 deep row of deck chairs and lilo things (lounge chairs). Hotels and restaurants line the beach top and the road is a mere 20 meters away.
Most of the smaller cruising yachts were in 7-8 meters and as we like to be a little way back we were anchored in 15 meters a bit in the middle. Calm and nice and then suddenly the boat started a very strange rolling and we saw some small waves on the beach. As we watched, the tide dropped about 5-7 meters in 1 to 2 minutes and the wind that this created was sucking the plastic lilos off the beach. By now the yachts anchored in 5 meters were dry and touching bottom and we could see the floor of the bay exposed.
A few minutes later as we watched stunned and unknowing, the first wave struck and this was a long surge more than a wave and the tide rose to full tide in 1 or 2 minutes and more and flooded the beach and the town. The second wave, a few minutes later, was riding on top of the high tide surge and just pushed ashore and restaurants were destroyed and the ground floor of the hotels were wiped out. Staircases gone, balconies crushed and furniture wrecked. Any longtails (motorized taxi boats) on shore were matchwood instantly. These waves are long and powerful and all sorts of rubbish was sucked out of the town, a Range Rover, 2 trucks and most of the wares of the shops, forming terrible debris for any person in the waters.
The next wave hit and we saw the rebound from the shore send a 5-meter wave coming from the shore toward us? Now that's a first!!!! The yachts that were dried out were engulfed and then floating in 5 meters of water. So much debris in the water, fridges, chairs, beds, a reception desk, so it became a nightmare to move and we start dragging. As the wave rescinds it pulls a 7-8 knot current and we drag -- time to go -- right NOW. We moved into deeper water and watched the next waves raise and lower the tide by 5 meters in less than 2 minutes, but all persons ashore had gone by now. We have to go offshore, but navigating through the fields of debris stretching out 5 miles is a slow process.
The carnage is more desperate than can be filmed, and evacuation from these beaches and outer islands is ongoing. Many lives have been lost and, sadly, more are to come.
You must have seen the rest on CNN with hundreds of boats lost, hotels erased and thousands of lives lost and injured.
With continuous warnings of aftershocks, we are forewarned not to close the shores and so landing on any beach is a great risk. It seems we can only wait in shocked silence with our thoughts for those that have been evacuated.
Only 3 days prior we were in the Andaman Islands, which took the biggest hit of all, and if we had still been there it probably would have been all over.
We consider ourselves very lucky.
Our kindest regards,
Keith and Linda
Keith and Linda Jones. Photo by Bob Stevens
