The Survivor

The Survivor

‘I remember thinking, this is it, I’m going to die’

'Oh my god, it's massive," said Claire Lester's older brother, Adrian, as he took a final glance out towards the ocean. They would be the last words Claire would hear him utter, as her family clambered inside their seaside bungalow.

Caroline and J.T. Malatesta of Mountain Brook, Ala. survived the killer Asian tsunami while on vacation in Thailand. This mountain top photo was taken December 26, 2004 from about 400 feet above the sea on December 26, 2004. (AP Photo/ J.T. and Caroline Malatesta via Birmingham News) **NO SALES, MAGS OUT**

Only minutes earlier, tourists on the tiny resort island of Phi Phi Don were waking to clear skies and calm seas. As families strolled along beachside walkways or ate languidly in open-air restaurants, ferries arrived at Ton Sai pier with regular morning loads of travellers.

For Claire, conditions were perfect for the boat trip she had organised for that morning. An art teacher living on Phuket, Claire had arrived on Phi Phi two days earlier with her family, who had travelled from the UK to spend Christmas with her.

But as the tsunami surged across the Andaman at speeds of more than 500km/h, the island paradise, some 40km from the mainland, stood exposed and defenceless in its path. At 10.30 that morning, Claire and her boyfriend, Surin Homhuan, running late for the boat trip, were rushing to get ready inside their bungalow. Moments later, an ominous warning came from outside.

"[My family] came running up saying a lady had said some water had washed up to her bungalow," Claire recalled. "As they were saying that, they were on the little balcony out the front [of the bungalow], and the water basically started trickling in — just like the tide coming in, very, very slowly."

That steady trickle quickly became a powerful torrent. Without any high ground nearby, and with no idea of what was happening around them, the family moved inside the bungalow. From inside the room, Claire never saw the water approaching, but recalled a tremendous rumbling sound intensifying rapidly as the powerful surge of water made its way ashore.

"At that point the water filled the room really, really quickly, to the point that I was pushed up onto the ceiling," Claire said. The single-storey bungalow offered little resistance against the 6.5-metre tidal surge that was forcing its way inland.

"All of a sudden, with force you can never ever imagine, [the bungalow] just exploded … and then you can only imagine how fast you're going in the water, under the water. I remember thinking, 'This is it, I'm going to die.' And big, big bits of debris are around you, under the water around you."

As she was tossed around, unable to breathe within the churning mass of water and debris, Claire said her initial fear of death was overpowered by a determination to survive.

"I hadn't taken a breath in a long time, and I remember thinking, 'Any breath that's in me I need to breathe out really slowly.' And then as soon as I thought that, there was loads and loads of light. Like a rocket, I was shot out of the water onto the top of a palm tree and rubble, which was everything that must have been pushed from the sea in."

Like today, much of the tourism development on Phi Phi Don at the time was centred on Ton Sai village, which lies on a small isthmus of sand linking two tall limestone ridges. No area lies higher than two metres above sea level, meaning there was little to slow the progress of the waves as they rolled through. When the waves hit at 10.37am, they came from both sides, meeting in the middle before receding. They left behind a large pile of debris which Claire now found herself atop.

"The first thing that comes to you is that you're in a movie," she said. "Nothing felt real. There was a really eerie silence. And then came the screams and shouting. And I remember shouting for all my family members.

"Your clothes are gone, everything's gone, but you're just thinking, 'What on earth just happened?' "

Claire did not escape unharmed — the churning debris had lacerated her lower leg and severed the tendons to her toes. At the time, though, she was oblivious to the extent of her injuries, which still cause her pain a decade later.

"You don't feel anything," she said. "There was no pain. You don't feel anything for probably three days after." Instead, she described an acute awareness of her surroundings, an almost surreal, heightened sense of reality.

"Everything's very real, in a sense. Everything's very exaggerated, and all you want to do is make sure you get out and survive. Everything is pronounced. Everything is bright; it was really bright," she said. "Nobody really spoke to each other. But there weren't a lot of people in that bit [that the tsunami had swept through] either. People had taken themselves off to buildings, or I think they'd gone up the mountain."

Alone, and with no idea where the rest of her family was, Claire said she was stunned to see Surin call out to her as he climbed the pile of debris. He too had been badly injured in the wave, one side of his face disfigured by debris.

Their thoughts soon turned to finding the rest of the family, as they heard Claire's younger brother, James, and his girlfriend Lucy screaming for help from beneath the rubble. As they struggled to free the pair, panicked shouts rang out from behind them, warning of impending danger: another wave was coming.

Unable to rescue James and Lucy, Claire and Surin were forced to make the gut-wrenching decision to leave them behind and climb to safety.

"At that point, we had to leave them, and so we shouted to them, 'You've got to hold your breath,' " Claire said.

As the wave approached, Claire, now standing on the balcony of a nearby hotel, acted as a lookout for the stranded pair, calling out for them to brace just moments before the water reached them. An anxious wait followed, while the couple's fate was unclear. But Claire's plan had worked; the wave wedged Lucy and James further beneath the rubble, but both had survived.

A stranger, from the nearby island of Koh Yao, eventually helped free Lucy, who ended up being taken to Phuket for treatment. But getting James out proved more challenging; his legs were badly injured, trapped under the weight of a fallen palm tree. Using only an ordinary table knife, Surin managed to cut through the tree and carried James out to the beach, a displaced door acting as a makeshift stretcher.

At this point, Claire said she presumed the rest of her family had been killed. But as Surin sawed away at the tree, a familiar voice rang out across the wasteland: Claire's mother, Barbara, had survived, reaching the safety of a hotel roof.

Around them, similar stories were playing out, as families searched desperately for their loved ones. The narrow stretch of sand that had just hours earlier been home to some of Thailand's most beautiful beach resorts was now a barren wasteland, stripped bare of vegetation and all but the most sturdy concrete structures.

Around the island, the once-turquoise waters were now deep shades of black and grey, a noxious soup of debris, personal belongings, overturned boats and bodies. Figures vary on the total number of people killed on Phi Phi Don, but most sources place it at more than 1,000. Many were swept clear of the island, their bodies later found at sea.

For those still alive, the focus in the hours after the wave struck began to switch from survival to rescue, and some of the injured began to be evacuated by boat. The first helicopter did not arrive for many hours, and carried only a single person back to the mainland.

As Claire and James sat on the beach awaiting rescue, Surin went off in search of the rest of the family. It was late afternoon by the time the second helicopter approached. By sheer luck, it touched down next to Claire and James, making them among first to be airlifted from Phi Phi. Surin made another timely appearance, emerging with Barbara and climbing aboard the helicopter as it was lifting off.

As Claire was taken to Krabi hospital, her father Keith, elder brother Adrian and elder sister Amanda remained missing. Their bodies would not be recovered until several months later. James, who would require skin grafts and months of treatment for his damaged leg, was taken to Phuket to be with Lucy, who had contracted pneumonia. The pair have since married.

As Claire sat in the helicopter bound for Krabi, however, confusion still reigned. "At that point, we still had no idea what it was, no idea what had happened." n

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