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An otherwise pretty low-key Christmas gave way to an ennervating, borderline surreal Boxing Day as I realised my (de facto) step-sister and her boyfriend were in the midst of the world's biggest earthquake disaster.
To explain: Karen's mum has been living with my dad for near-as-damn-it ten years now. The chances of them getting married are pretty slim but we more or less carry on as though we are 'one family'; in addition to which Karen's brother was in the same year as me at Boroughbridge and Karen herself just a couple of years younger (attending, in fact, the grammar school that D went to and to which I went for 6th form).
We last saw her and her boyfriend Leon the weekend before Christmas as we had Sunday dinner at the farm in lieu of them being around for Christmas Day itself. Needless to say, they were looking forward to ten days of temples and beaches in Thailand - though I have to confess I rehearsed the usual jokes about how they'd miss the drizzle and 'Stenders without very much genuine envy. The Far East hasn't ever really appealed to me as a holiday destination and Christmas in the UK provides too many excellent opportunities for catching up on the various calamities and oddities that have assailed my relations during the course of the year - a field of infinite interest if tackled with sufficient vigour and curiosity.
Anyway. Having spent 'the day itself' at D's folks place (enhanced by a half-inch covering of snow on Christmas morning) we'd returned on Boxing Day to HQ to prepare a roast dinner for my youngest brother, my dad and Di. Around two o' clock we caught a news report about a 'giant wave' accompanied by some pretty vague, unexciting camcorder footage of people wading around, thigh deep in muddy water. Only the length of the list of places affected (India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Sumatra etc) made us suspect something of unusual magnitude might have taken place.
I was steeling myself to grapple with the colossal flank of pig earmarked for the evening meal when D answered the phone upstairs and conducted the 'yes, no, of course' side of a one-sided conversation - in those low, concerned, horrible tones that mean that something, somewhere is badly wrong.
It turned out that Karen and Leon had rung the previous day to wish her mother happy Christmas - and had mentioned they were spending Boxing Day in Koh Phi Phi (featured in Garland/Boyle/DiCrapio abortion The Beach) and that would probably include a morning's scuba diving.
Of course, the meal was off and D and I settled down to an afternoon of Mary Poppins punctuated by increasingly troubling news reports as more and more footage and eyewitness accounts came in. Around 3pm I fired up the internet and one look at the 'your stories' page on BBC News confirmed that this was a disaster on an incredible scale. Much more than the still-scanty images repeated on the tv, these brief, hyper-vivid paragraphs talking about brothers, friends, family and neighbours fleshed out something gigantic and quite ghastly.
I spoke to my brother - who was at the farm - and he confirmed that Di and my dad were sitting by the phone alternately waiting for a call and trying to get through to the FO 'help'line. I decided the ghastly detail I'd picked up from the BBC probably wouldn't help matters and offered only general comments about how it could be very difficult for people out there to get to a phone... with it being as much as days before we heard anything from them - had they been able to grasp what was taking place... and that by no means a certainty.
By that evening the death toll was heading into five-figure territory and the news programmes finally had a proper grasp on the scale of it. My brother came round and we popped out to the Traveller's Rest for a few beers, a couple of whiskies (whiskeies? whiskeys?) and a bottle of red. At half past midnight we spoke to my father and he reported that there was still 'no news'.
Very worried, I reasoned that, had lots of Britons been killed, the headlines would be along the lines of "500 Britons Killed" rather than "Thousands of Britons Stranded". Comforted by this rather naive and unreal conclusion, we drifted in to boozy oblivion.
The morning brought numbers around the 14,000 mark - but good news, so far as we were concerned. Karen had rung at about 4am to say that she and Leon were safe. They were on a rescue ship leaving Koh Phi Phi and had - miraculously - managed to get a signal on her mobile. They had their bags and passports and were going to try to get to Krabi (the capital of the province they were in). She was in a state - but otherwise unharmed.
This was a terrific relief, but we watched with mounting horror as fresh images on the news revealed the force of the wave and the vista of devastation it had created - overturned rolling stock, razed towns, torrents ripping tiny, terrified knots of people apart.
I spoke to Di late in the day to find out if there was anything we could do to help return the house to normality. She sounded shattered but relieved - and announced that the family gathering planned at the farm for Tuesday night was going to go ahead despite all this... as much a celebration of the good news as a festive get-together. A big wind-down, too, after a tense day and a half of phone calls and waiting.
This was a good decision, as it turned out. Karen called again yesterday to say they'd reached Krabi and booked into a five-star hotel. Not being 'priority' it was unlikely they'd be able to get a flight out for several days - they were, at least, safe and in a position to be able to recover from the shock of it all.
Seems they'd been diving when the wave struck and, for several minutes, tossed around as though they were in a washing machine. They'd tried twice to surface before finally succeeding and were greeted by the appalling scenes we'd watched on tv for the past 48 hours. Amazingly, they had been able to get to their hotel, grab bags, passports and mobile, then board a rescue ship to the mainland. The first night sounds like it was horrendous. Pitch darkness; screams; bodies everywhere.
I don't suppose we'll get the full story until the pair of them return, but it sounds like they were incredibly lucky. At the do last night Di was able to acknowledge this, unwind a little and even laugh as my relations did their party thing. Everyone - especially the men - had turned themselves into experts in wave physics in a remarkably short period of time. By the time things wound up, terms like 'tsunami', 'epicentre' and 'aftershock' had been pummelled into banality.
I haven't ever been affected - if only indirectly - by a news story like this before and it's a pretty strange experience. Perhaps most disorienting is how little the people 'on the ground' are aware of the scale of what's going on. I think even once they'd got to Krabi, Karen and Leon were only just starting to grasp what had happened. I was going to ask whether anyone else had encountered this sort of thing and what their observations were - on reflection, though, it's maybe more appropriate to say I hope no one here knows anyone mixed up in all this and - if they do - that they hear good news as swiftly as we did.
posted
My next-door neighbour was killed in the Piper Alpha disaster. I was at school at the time, so it wasn't until I was older that I understood what had happened. It gives me, now, an added dimension to the way I remember the event.
What has happened in the Indian Ocean is off the scale though. I'm struggling to find a suitable response. The male reaction you describe, where scientific knowledge is passed direct from the news reporter to their lips without it passing through the minds of either, is not dissimilar to the standard male response to the 11/09 disaster, where suddenly a whole host of armchair military/security experts came out of the woodwork. The need to explain seems to be a coping mechanism. I don't know how men do it. Personally, I'm bereft of the language, or the understanding, to have anything even remotely intelligent to say about the disaster.
I'm glad your family are safe. Do you know when they'll be coming back to the UK?
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H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
I've still not properly got my head around the size of this disaster - in fact I am trying to recall if during my lifetime such a tradgedy of this scale has occurred.
Reading in the Times this morning some of the horror stories - probably the most unsettling was the way that bodies in some poorer areas are being just buried in mass graves without identification to prevent an epidemic outbreak - no chance for the relatives to have any proper idea if their loved ones have died, and where they are buried - horrible. There was also a poingnant photo on the front of a Swiss businessman in front of a funeral pyre at a Buddhist temple with his wife being cremated - no chance of any of her burial wishes, no chance of a send for all her friends and family, just a quick (though as dignified as could be) cremation.
My girlfriend's boss is in Thailand somewhere, though no word of his wellbeing, and no idea of where he was. Glad yours are ok though Ben.
I've seen the footage but have as yet not heard tell of how high this wave of death was.
Would some form of underwater sea defence have perhaps slowed or even halted the waves progress and destructive power ? Or was it too high and fast to have been stopped by anything ?
-------------------- my own brother a god dam shit sucking vampire!!! you wait till mum finds out buddy!
They're currently holed up in Krabi - the hotel apparently looking pretty much 'like a hospital'; travelling to Bangkok on Saturday and, from there, flying back to the UK.
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quote:Originally posted by Darryn.R: How high was the wave ?
I've seen the footage but have as yet not heard tell of how high this wave of death was.
Would some form of underwater sea defence have perhaps slowed or even halted the waves progress and destructive power ? Or was it too high and fast to have been stopped by anything ?
Although I've seen and heard some eye-witness accounts that tell of an enormous 40 foot wave, the majority of testimony and video evidence suggests that the waves were not much bigger than "normal" rollers. The difference is - apparently - that the engergy of waves is normally dissipated when it crashes onto the beach. The resistance of the beach, combined with undertow and gravity, is enough to stop them. In this case the sheer power driving the waves to shore meant that they did not stop on the slope of the beach or against sea defences, but just kept plowing on over the land, wiping out everything in their path.
There's a great shot we ran this morning of a couple of kids playing on the beach in Malaysia with a calm sea as the backdrop - a few small breakers. Then suddenly one of the breakers crashes up the beach and keeps going, sweeping the little tots off their feet, overturning a car, and ploughing on through the street overlooking the beach. It's weird because, when you rewind it, there's nothing remarkable about the wave... it just keeps on going.
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They're currently holed up in Krabi - the hotel apparently looking pretty much 'like a hospital'; travelling to Bangkok on Saturday and, from there, flying back to the UK.
Sorry to be so opportunistic, but do they have access to a phone? And do they want to be on TV?
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posted
Like us all I have been stunned by the tsunami earthquake and subsequent waves, and the disaster it has precipitated.
I have even rowed, albeit briefly, with my husband about it after he said he thought MY generosity would cover a donation from him to the disaster fund! I love him more than I can express and know him to be a deeply caring and thoughtful man, but in this instance he doesn't seem to be able to get involved with people he doesn't actually know! I will not let this pass. Next week I shall ceremoniously serve him up an empty plate and tell him that I donated the money required to feed him for a week to the disaster fund as HIS, not my, contribution. I will certainly NOT be helping him eat next week!
Don't be too hard on me for it, though. After all, do they not call one's spouse one's BETTER half? So am I not helping him be better in this case?!? (And am I not right on this?! I welcome an honest answer, too... I am sometimes …perhaps…. too black and white.)
I watched the first programmes following the disaster with a sense of stunned disbelief - yet as I watched, I deliberately fought back from feeling anything. Maybe we do, don't we, when we know it is going to be too big? Then a picture of a man holding a dead child in his arms came on screen. The child was the same size as my grandson. I broke down. I saw, in my emotion's-eye, my daughter walking out of the water holding her son; I saw my son walking out of the water holding one of his three beloved step-children - and I broke down.
I am ashamed to say that I have not been able, when they report about the disaster, to face the TV screen square on since.
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quote:Originally posted by Darryn.R: How high was the wave ?
I've seen the footage but have as yet not heard tell of how high this wave of death was.
Would some form of underwater sea defence have perhaps slowed or even halted the waves progress and destructive power ? Or was it too high and fast to have been stopped by anything ?
Like fish said, the devastation caused by this wave was not it’s height – but the fact it kept on going…and going.
Not so great cinema, hence less coverage in terms of disaster predictions – but in terms of real-life and death effects, a major force of nature.
Maybe we ought to be campaigning for more realism in our cinemas, since we take so much of our ‘education’ from it. After all, how influential is cinema in creating a world view for the masses? I think here of that ice-age saga ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ which exaggerate the speed at which events would engulf the world, yet in the end a wave approximately 10 feet on some shores high killed tens of thousands.
But this post opens up the whole question of whether we ought to be fatalistic or dynamic in the face of potential disasters. There is a Guardian article about this. From David Aronovitch at: A terrible warning not to do nothing
Worth reading (if one takes critics seriously). Should we spend billions (which may mean less spent on spurious war/potential so-called terrorist acts) on deflecting predicted disasters - and if e tried, would they actually be effective? Or should we just hope they won’t happen? Is it possible to actually ‘manage’ disasters on these scales, anyway, by pre-planning?
quote:Originally posted by ally: The male reaction you describe, where scientific knowledge is passed direct from the news reporter to their lips without it passing through the minds of either, is not dissimilar to the standard male response to the 11/09 disaster, where suddenly a whole host of armchair military/security experts came out of the woodwork. The need to explain seems to be a coping mechanism.
On the other hand... some of the most emotionally articulate responses to 9/11 that were seen on this forum were written by men.
I suppose there's also something to be said for arming yourself with information about such catastrophes (and how to survive them) in the remote but not entirely impossible event of finding oneself in just such a situation.
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quote:Originally posted by dervish: I am ashamed to say that I have not been able, when they report about the disaster, to face the TV screen square on since.
i dont think this is anything to be ashamed of. i think deliberately turning away from the news is a perfectly human response- in terms of the way this news is being reported to us. to be honest i am finding the 26 british/ 100000 brown people comparison that the news agencies are employing fucking repellent. i dont need to see mass graves, i dont need to see a poor sri lankan holding aloft his dead baby, i just dont need to see it. i think its pornographic. why are the grieving inhabitants of these places not being granted the same level of respect that white tourists are? we hear the white people's stories, we see the brown peoples corpses. its fucking sick.
-------------------- EXETER- movement of Jah people. Posts: 2841
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posted
It's difficult but had the UK channels shown only sanitised images I hardly think the British public would have shelled out as much as it has (£25m?) in only a couple of days. That has to be a positive outcome, hasn't it?
Reporters in the field would want to present as unsparing a picture of the scale of the catastrophe as they decently can - not hoover up images of death and mayhem for the cheap thrills of the folks back home.
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posted
I've seen two separate sky clips where the reporter asks the buddhist monk/priest how he can explain his faith at a time like this. I am not at all religious but WTF kind of question is that to ask people right now? What kind of answer were they looking for? Completely inappropriate. ****s
Big up the British public though, giving more cash than GW Bush! Nice action.
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Probably because we're in the middle of a fortnight of intensive tv watching. Our European cousins are either at work as normal or engrossed in goat-stabbing, goose-stuffing or bull-shredding or whatever other weird national 'sport' they're into rather than tv.
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posted
I am still pretty confused about the media coverage. On the whole it seems relatively restrained to me, considering, and it most certainly has produced an incredible humane response from the British population and forced both the UK and the USA Governments to up their donations.
But I also thought that the pictures of the tourists seemed rather gratuitous in the face of the sheer numbers of suffering local people. I am now wondering though, if those pictures have not helped the people here relate to the disaster better? Perhaps because many could see themselves in the middle of these disasters for once, it has prompted a deeper response?
I keep seeing, mentally of course, pictures of the starving and dying in Africa superimposed upon the pictures of the tsunami aftermath - millions of them there are at risk - and I wonder why their plight has ceased to provoke the sort of response in the West that the tsunami has.
Is it that their deaths seem more inevitable to many here? Or is, I wonder, a mixture of colour and a lack of contact with them and their world that creates an emotional barrier - that we cannot see ourselves in their place? Whereas this disaster HAS affected white westerners more closely through our use of their lands as holiday destinations and the media coverage that showed us that there but for the grace of god, could we be too...
I am struggling to understand here and may not have expressed what I meant well.
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posted
"It is the business's way of saying 'what can we do?'," he said. "Well we can do this and keep the profile going, the awareness going, over a period of time.
Translation:
"It's the business's way of saying 'Have people forgetten about Ronan Keating and Chris Rea already?" He said. "Well, we can do this and keep our profiles going, awareness of us going, over a period of time."
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quote:Originally posted by Roy: "It's the business's way of saying 'Have people forgetten about Ronan Keating and Chris Rea already?" He said. "Well, we can do this and keep our profiles going, awareness of us going, over a period of time."
You're so cynical, Roy. When was the last time you wrote an ever-such-a-sad-song that was (not exactly) about a global tragedy, eh?
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posted
And to all those lost in Phucket We'll send a lovely bouquet?
I've been pondering on why there's been such a huge response to this disaster, whereas recent earthquakes in Iran and floods in Bangladesh, with similar death tolls, hardly registered on the scale, comparatively.
Maybe it's because many of the affected areas are tourist destinations we can imagine ourselves in. And with the trend for escaping Christmas in Britain, we even know people directly involved. When thinking - my friend/relative/acquaintaince could have been swept out to sea/crushed by a bus, it brings home the plight of those who were.
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