Tsunami Blogs–You Are There!

My Trip Journal provides blogs for travelers, and sent out a release offering blogs to relief workers. We caught this account of a traveler caught on the beach in Thailand on the morning of the Big Wave..This is written by a blogger named Chan from the UK

Dec 26th … I dragged myself out of bed around 10am and was recovering after breakfast when I noticed the sea disappear backwards away from the beach so the rocks and sand were uncovered, then out at sea we saw a huge freakin wave (about 20m – 30m in height) and basically we all stood and watched it pick up this 35ft boat and bring it towards shore. This brought the boat (about 150m out) right along in front of the resort as it was carried on this huge swell of murky water. The water was full of rubbish, tables, chairs, parts of bars etc. then it went along the beach and back out. We were all on the beach trying to grab stuff as tables, chairs, boats floated by then basically another couple of waves came ….

and when I saw one I thought “GET THE FLOCK OUTTA HERE!!” so I grabbed my camera and legged it thru the resort (about 50m to the gate) and up to the road, and when I looked back the water had stopped at the gate but there was boulders, lumps of coral, beer bottles and all sorts of debris floating in the knee-deep water by the gate.It was then that we realised some people had been trapped in the kitchen, restaurant or even in their bungalows. The chef was badly cut in many places and concussed, the owner of the resort was carried out as she had been trapped by the boat in the restaurant, many others had been dragged under the bungalows by the water and received bad cuts from the amount of debris being carried in the water.

I was on the beach up to my knees after the first wave and the force of it pulling you out was incredible!! … all the stuff in the water simply cut you as it hit your legs due to this really strong current…… we had no news about what was happening and no warning .. many people were in their bungalows asleep and if the size of the wave that had hit Phuket had hit us … well …. luckily no if’s eh?! 🙂