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Account of Tsunami

Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 4:37 PM
Hi, A firsthand tsunami report. —–Original Message—–
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2005 10:43 AM
Subject: Account of Tsunami
I went to highschool with Vei Chi – she barely escaped the tsunami in Sri
Lanka.
>
>Dear all,
>
>sorry for the impersonal email, some of you might not know and some
>do, but just wanted to let you know that we are back to Hong Kong
>safely from Sri Lanka.
>
>We were in an area called Yala in Sri Lanka (it’s in the southern
>coast of Sri Lanka and one of the worst affected areas) when the
>tsunami hit. We were caught in the middle of it but managed to escape.
>Luckily we were in Yala Safari National park when it happened, but the
>tsunami also hit inside the park. The 7 of us had to climb on top of
>our jeep and as the water rushed into about 8 feet the jeep was
>immersed and started to buckle, at this point we though we were about
>to get dragged away by the current but then the water began to recede.
>At this point we had no idea what had happened and were being told of
>possible sand dune’s bursting or melting icebergs. The Jeep couldn’t
>be started and we began to walk we started joking about it when the
>driver and guide began to pick up all the fish that had been thrown
>onto the road to cook for their families that night. At this point a
>second wave began to come in and we were told to run as fast as we
>could to higher ground, we managed to avoid getting caught up in this
>one but when we got there were a number of locals and tourists who
>were also there and a number of people who were badly injured. Getting
>any accurate info at this point was impossible and communication with
>the locals, who don’t speak much English, was difficult. We did know
>however that the whole area we were in was surrounded by water and
>there was no way out at this point, we started to get really worried
>when the locals began climbing trees for fear of another wave.
>
>After about an hour there we were told to get in the back of a van and
>were taken to a large rock, were we stayed for another couple of
>hours, we could see the majority of the surrounding coastline being
>battered by huge waves. There were a number of injured people there
>also including one Japanese woman whose head had been cracked open and
>who was missing her 3 year old son (who we later found out died).
>Seeing the waves batter into the coastline and all these injured
>people with their stories of being washed into, what is effectively
>jungle land, and missing friends and family made it very very scary,
>We still had no idea at this point the scale of the thing. We were
>then bundled into a 6 seater van with about 16 other people and driven
>for 90 minutes to a small town inland called Tissa and the house of
>one of the staff of the hotel. We were told that the hotel we were
>staying at was completely flattened and wiped out and 75% of people in
>the hotel were dead. This place is a Safari hotel on the beach and
>basically anybody who didn’t go on safari that day died. At this point
>I want to say how amazing these people are, there were men, women and
>children screaming and crying having heard there family members and
>friends had died and there were about 50 people in this little shanty
>house and they kept coming to us with tea and biscuits and telling us
>they would get us to safety. The courage and generosity of these and
>many other people we met over the next 4 days will stay with me for a
>long time.
>
>We were crowding around a tiny tv set listening to the Sri Lankan news
>and one of our local heroes Kumel, was translating, we soon realised
>the scale and magnitude of the devastation, not only in Sri Lanka but
>across the SE Asia region. The enormity of what happened was beginning
>to dawn on us, as was our situation, we had lost our luggage, clothes,
>tickets, passports and most of our money, we had two phones between us
>and about 100 quid in US or Sri Lanka Rupees, we had credit cards but
>as you quickly find out these things aren’t much use when all the
>phone lines are down.
>
>We were then taken to a little guest house that evening and started to
>try and get in touch with our embassies, work, families and friends on
>the two mobiles we had, connections were difficult and we had no
>mobile chargers. We were told by the corporate security people at
>Merrill Lynch’s and by the British Embassy to get to Colombo as
>quickly as possible. After spending 8 hours trying to get a car to
>drive us the some 350Km to Colombo from the south coast through inland
>mountain roads, we finally made it to Colombo on the 28th. Colombo
>wasn’t that badly affected but there was obviously a sense of panic
>and alarm there too, as the whole country was in a state of national
>emergency. We then had to get to our relevant embassies to get travel
>documents. Merrill’s had made sure that we had our flight booking
>secured for the 29th and they also managed to get us into a hotel.
>Just as we were starting to calm down, we got a message that the
>driver who was with us for the first 4 days, who was this beautiful
>Sri Lankan man called Christianthan, who we laughed and joked with,
>was found dead. I had asked him to come and meet us in our hotel in
>Yala, as we flew down. He was driving down the coast when it happened.
>He was married with two children.
>
>We just got home about an hour ago and the whole experience was so
>surreal, frightening, horrific and sad. I cannot begin to tell you how
>lucky we are to have got out of this tragedy unharmed.
>
>So all in all we are ok.
>
>But, we have just left a country that has been devastated by this with
>the death toll in Sri Lanka alone at 25,000 and the numbers expected
>to rise to over 100,000 in the region. Once all the bodies are found
>the next problem the are likely to face is the diseases that can come
>with such a large number of dead who cannot be buried and homeless who
>have no access to clean water. The WHO is already saying the death
>toll could double due to this alone.
>
>We are trying to contact the family of our driver and to see if we can
>do anything to help, we plan to send money and anything else we can.
>
>If there’s one thing I can ask you all, at the start of this new year
>is to PLEASE PLEASE send whatever you can to any of the charity or aid
>organizations that are trying to help, I am sure there are a number of
>hotlines were money can be donated. We have seen things that we never
>thought we would see and it was awful, truly awful, we managed to get
>out. Tens of thousands of people didn’t. Many more are still suffering
>and will continue to do so. Please do what you can.
>
>Take Care all of you. Have a Happy New Year.
>
>love,
>Veh Chi
>

Posted on

New Mexico

Enough of the Rio Grande Valley. It’s as far south as we can go, and it’s
the warmest part of Texas, but it’s not our favorite place to be. The
birding is unparalleled and that’s why we go there. Otherwise, it’s a
little on the crummy side. We went north, back to Port Aransas for a few days to take care of some
business and one last visit to the beach. Port Aransas. Mustang Island.
It’s still mostly undeveloped and undiscovered. It’s not crummy at all. From there we drove all day to Ft Stockton, five hundred miles. Still in
Texas, but now it’s West Texas. We’re not here for anything. Just passing
through. Someday we’ll take the side-trip south from here to visit Big Bend
National Park. We still haven’t been there. We hear they have scaled
quail. After an overnight stop, we drove through the rest of West Texas and
into New Mexico. New Mexico. We mean to work here someday…., if we can
get Arkansas out of the picture. We drove through most of New Mexico and
stopped in Lordsburg for the night. Haven’t done anything but drive the
last couple days. Found some killdeer in the field last night. White
winged doves. Meadowlarks. Cactus wrens. Yellow rumped warblers. Tonight. Nothing. No birds. Nice quiet campground. Met a few people.
Met a lady walking her cat. When we saw a lady with a martini glass in her
hand, walking a cat on a leash, in the campground tonight, we thought it
might be the same lady we saw in last night’s campground with a martini
glass in her hand, walking a cat. Know what? We were right! It’s the same
lady. Imagine that. She’s headed the same direction we are. West. Tomorrow? West again. Arizona.

Posted on

Trip12

The cat is such a help. We’re so glad to have him along. He helps us make the bed every morning. He saves a place for us on the seat every time we get up. He greets us at the door when we get home. Every morning when I stretch on the floor, he is right there to help, or show off. It gives me something to aspire to. I think I might have a problem. I get haircuts regularly at home. I didn’t time them very well, before I left though. I was supposed to get another just before I left, but didn’t manage to fit it in. Now, not only am I way past due, but we’re on a trip. You know what that means. Trip hair! Just wanted to warn you. If the email goes suddenly silent, it means I’ve been spotted by the hair police and they’ve got me. Drove around. Looked around. Signed up for several more days. Spotted the first Lazy Daze of the trip. I’ve been thinking about birds. And the bird list. It’s hard to find new birds now. And I know why it’s hard to find new birds. We go to the same bird habitats every year and look at the same ones over and over. We bird the Texas coast. We bird the Florida coast. We bird the Texas coast again. Maybe we’re destined to peak at 285. Better that than quit going to the places we love to go. We have a propane crisis. It’s not about the gauge. The gauge is correct. We still have half a tank. It’s about getting propane to the appliances and the furnaces. It quit last night. We were sitting around and noticed that the furnace fans were cycling on and off, but they were never blowing warm. We pushed the indicator on the dash and it wouldn’t light up. The propane leak detector was still lit. It said everything was just fine. It didn’t matter for hot water that we didn’t have propane. We’re plugged in and have an electric hot water heater. The refrigerator runs on electricity when we’re plugged in to shore power. We have a gas grill to cook on. It only mattered for the furnaces, and that didn’t really matter much. It’s not so cold at night that we can’t sleep without the furnace. It was a little chilly in the morning, but we have an electric space heater, so we got to take the chill off with that. Something quit working somewhere and disabled the propane system. Fuse we figured. Know what? There are a lot of fuses in this motorhome. We spent an hour finding fuses and checking them. There is a nice fuse panel in the back where you can find the fuse you need. Except for all the other fuses scattered around the rig. There is a master propane shutoff on the outside, back where you fill the tank. There are fuses in the battery control box in the outside cabinet on the other side. There are fuses up in front by where the engine would be if the engine were in front like in most vehicles. There are fuses in a box under the dash behind the accelerator pedal. No luck. It got better this morning. Judy found Jim, the mobile RV guy. He came out this afternoon and spent two hours crawling around under and through our Bounder. He had a cell phone. He called for help. Nothing helped. There are no bad fuses. Everything works. Except the propane. Finally, he bypassed all the power and fuses from the battery, and hooked up his own power to the back of the switch panel. That worked. The systems all work. They just won’t all work at the same time. Jim went home to think about it. He’s going to call the factory tomorrow and have a chat with them. When he gets it figured out, he’ll come back and fix it. In the meantime, he jury-rigged power to the propane from a live outlet on the dash board. All systems are good to go until the real solution arrives.