Divers at epicentre of killer quake tell of epic journey to safety

HONG KONG (AFP) - When the catastrophic earthquake struck, British tourist Al Howard and his French girlfriend Sophie Pasquier were among the closest people on the planet to its tumultuous epicentre.

Two days later -- after an epic journey across seas littered with floating corpses and mangled cars, then crawling over a wasteland of flattened houses and bloodied bodies -- the tourists remarkably emerged alive to tell the tale.

The couple's story of survival, recounted to AFP after they successfully fled Indonesia Tuesday, is one of the first to emerge from witnesses closest to the centre of the disaster which left more than 55,000 dead across Asia.

Howard, a 33-year-old former soldier, and Pasquier, 34, were on a diving trip on Indonesia's most northwestern island of Pulau Weh, just 130 kilometres (85 miles) from Sunday's seabed eruption, when the earth shook.

The couple, who live in Hong Kong, were woken at 8am Sunday when their holiday bungalow shook for 30 minutes, Howard said. Within minutes giant waves roared in and reduced the holiday idyll to ruins, with water rising almost as high as their hut, which fortunately was 50 feet (15 metres) up in the highlands behind on Gapang Beach.

From their balcony they watched as the waters receded to leave a scene of devastation, with huts destroyed and debris flung far and wide. Yet so remote is the island that the couple had no idea of the scale of unfolding disaster they had been among the first to witness.

"We were totally cut off," said Howard, a sales director with European aviation giant Airbus. "We had no idea anyone else was affected because communications were wiped out."

It was only after they hired a fishing boat to ferry them to mainland Sumatra that the carnage wrought by Asia's biggest earthquake in 40 years became terrifyingly real.

Arriving in what had been Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province, they were confronted with visions of hell.

"Everything was flattened. It was like a nuclear bomb had hit the place," said Howard, a former officer with the 6th Gurkha Rifles. "I've seen bodies before but nothing by like this. We lost count. The destruction was of Biblical proportions."

"It was indescribable. I'm just glad we made it out. I feel so lucky," said the public relations executive after they arrived back in Singapore

Banda Aceh had taken the full force of the ocean's fury Sunday, accounting for an estimated 27,000 victims of the quake and tsunami disaster that killed indiscriminately and swallowed entire towns around south and southeast Asian coastlines.

The night before the quake struck the couple had been celebrating Christmas with two friends, Briton Sean Patterson -- an ex-Gurkha comrade of Howard's and also a former peace negotiator between Indonesian authorities and separatists in conflict-scarred Aceh -- and his Japanese girlfriend Akiko Tada.

They dined with 25 others, mostly Western tourists, at the Lumba Lumba Dive Centre, a resort set up nine years ago on Palau Weh by Dutch couple Ton and Marjan Edberg. The centre had only this year reopened to tourists after martial law was lifted in troubled Aceh.

"When the bungalow shook I thought it might be a volcanic eruption, that it was Krakatoa erupting, but then I realised it was an earthquake," Howard said.

Had they not been sleeping off the effects of the previous night's party they would have been on the beach with other tourists when the raging waters rushed in, he said.

Instead Pasquier was stood outside the bungalow and shouted "come out now!" as the tsunami roared inland at terrifying speed.

"I got up and water was suddenly 10 feet away from the hut having surged right through the dive centre," said Howard. "We had no idea what was happening. We couldn't get to the beach because of the water. We were 50ft above sea level and it came with 10 feet.

"The water receded after a few minutes, but then a new wave rushed back up again almost to where we were standing."

When the waves finally retreated to the shoreline Howard and Pasquier walked down to the resort. "Nothing was left. Huts had been destroyed. Concrete benches uprooted and hurled 30 metres. The dive centre's engine room wall was made of thick concrete and it looked like it had been punched through," Howard said.

Several aftershocks rocked the island Sunday as the four friends joined other tourists gathering up wreckage strewn along the beach and patching up the wounded.

"There were rumours people had been swept away, but we didn't know. There were no bodies on the beach. Some people had been lacerated by the debris and everyone brought medical supplies to bandage them," Howard said.

"Local children were left with just the clothes on their back and the beach toys tourists had given them for Christmas.

"We started taking photographs because we thought no-one, especially insurance companies, would ever believe what had happened when we got back home."

The next day the Howard and this three friends decided to leave the stricken village.

They drove over the island to the more protected eastern shore but found Bulohan village had also been demolished. Driving on to Sabang village they managed to hire a fishing boat to take them to Banda Aceh on the mainland.

Halfway through the three-and-a-half hour voyage, the group sailed into so much detritus which clogged the propeller that they feared they would not make it to land.

"As we got within a mile (1.6 kilometres) of the coast we saw bodies, cars, even snakes floating in the water ... there was debris everywhere," said Howard.

When they reached Banda Aceh the ferry pier had been destroyed, so they pulled up next to another fishing boat and clambered ashore to a scene of utter carnage.

"Oh My God - a child," Pasquier gasped as they walked past the first of hundreds of dead bodies they would have to clamber past and over as they made their way through the ruins of the city.

"From then on we walked for two to three hours in total silence," Howard said. "There was no road left. We had to pick our own way through the destruction, right past the dead.

"Walking through the carnage was awful. At some points we had to crawl through the rubble with smashed faces of the dead inches from our own.

"The city was levelled with just a few damaged buildings still standing. There was oil over the road where petrol stations had been shattered. Everything was covered in oil."

"I saw child on a bonnet of a car. A mother with three children laid together. Some corpses had tarpaulin over them, others didn't. There were so many bodies I gave up counting.

After a gruelling six kilometre stumble through the twisted wreckage, the four tourists eventually found a road. A makeshift morgue nearby was stacked with hundreds of bodies, Howard said.

"People were standing around shocked, holding their heads in despair. What could they do? They had lost their lives."

"There were Indonesian soldiers in armoured cars and police sitting on corners, smoking and watching everything. They were doing nothing to help people," said Howard.

After almost three hours waiting at the roadside, the four hitched a ride on a truck to Banda Aceh airport 40 minutes away.

Howard said that their luck was in - a Garuda airlines plane was on the runway. Even though the airport was partly flooded the exhausted survivors managed to get on board and an hour later the plane took off for north Sumatra's main international airport of Medan.

In Medan their mobile phones began to pick up signals and they were able to call worried friends and relatives.

It was then they realised that they had not just been at the centre of a local disaster but at the epicentre one of the world's biggest ever earthquakes.

"We are worried about the people we left behind," said Howard. "Everything has been destroyed. While there is still food available on Palau Weh, there maybe a shortage of bottled water. And who knows when they will get help or new supplies."

Here's another couple survival stories from Yahoo.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cpress/20041230/ca_pr_on_wo/tsunami_cda_survivors&cid=2149&ncid=2149

Canadian survivors recall tsunami horror on Thai tourist island

1 hour, 55 minutes ago

DEDDEDA STEMLER

PHUKET, Thailand (CP) - After being tossed around underwater like a rag doll for what seemed like an eternity, Rachel Gobeil was finally thrown to the surface and gasped for air. As she inhaled a life-saving breath and looked into the bewildered eyes of the French woman she had just met, they were suddenly pulled under again.

"I thought, 'That's it, we will both die,' " the 27-year-old from Les Escoumins, Que., recalled Wednesday as she lay on a thin mattress on the floor of Bangkok Phuket Hospital, bandaged and unable to walk. Next to her was injured boyfriend Jean-Francois Joly, 35, a marine engineer for the Canadian Coast Guard.

The couple had travelled to the popular tourist island of Koh Phi Phi three weeks ago where Gobeil hoped to fulfil her dream of becoming a scuba instructor. They were preparing to board a dive boat with eight others when, without warning, the first wave hit. The couple was swept off the floating pier and became separated.

"The water at the pier is 18 metres deep, so there was no warning," she said. "The wave just came up. It was 10 metres high. My boyfriend yelled to run, but I froze and could not run."

Gobeil said she managed to hold on to the railing of the pier until the metal broke loose in her hands. Thankful she was wearing a backpack that offered some initial protection, it wasn't long before it was ripped to shreds.

"I saw a long tail boat (traditional-style wooden Thai boat) jump over the wave above me. Then all the long tail boats came at me. One of the boats passed over me and the propeller cut my hip."

Pulled to the surface three times while in the wave, she said the force of the water pushed her onto one side of a mountain and through a bamboo hut full of people that were washed away alongside her.

"I landed on the roof of the compression room in the dive shop 120 metres away," Gobeil said. "Then I fell off the roof and landed on a dead body. I had electric cables wrapped around my wrist and I could not walk."

Joly, her boyfriend, nearly drowned and is suffering from a lung infection from inhaling water. He suffered severe cuts after he was flung through debris of trees, furniture and construction on the side of another mountain.

"He landed next to many dead Thai children in a schoolyard," Gobeil said.

Gobeil and Joly were separately assisted to higher ground in the jungle by local people and, for five hours, didn't know whether the other was dead or alive. Eventually, a Thai boy Joly had befriended found Gobeil and the couple was reunited and spent the night in the jungle.

"The Thai people who survived helped everybody, even though I know many of them lost their own family members," said Gobeil. Twenty-four hours later, they were airlifted by helicopter to Phuket.

Expressing mild disappointment that the Canadian government had not sent planes as other countries had to transport injured people home for medical attention, Gobeil said they are on a list compiled by the Canadian Embassy for transfer to a hospital in Bangkok for treatment.

"We don't have a flight home to Canada and we have to get some money," she said. "We need proper treatment as Jean has a bad lung infection and I have problems with my spine and hips.

"The other problem is that our visas expire tomorrow (Thursday)."

Nevertheless, Gobeil is grateful to be alive.

"The miracle is that we are alive and together," said Gobeil, glancing over at Joly and producing a weak smile.

Another lucky fellow is John Austin, who arrived in Thailand on Dec. 22 for a vacation from his cleaning and maintenance business in Montreal. He was dozing in front of the TV early Boxing Day after a night of partying. He heard a rumble and looked outside the window of his main-floor hotel room on Patong Beach to see water rushing over the swimming pool.

"Next thing I know, the bloody patio window doors were blown into my room!" Austin recalled Wednesday from his hospital bed, attached to an intravenous drip with scrapes and bruises covering his body and a bandage wrapped around his right ankle. "I knew right away it was a tidal wave."

Austin prides himself in being water savvy.

"I've been around boats and water my whole life. I'm a diver. I've been in hurricanes. I've survived severe storms. I've seen it all! Or so I thought."

Austin said that as he headed for the door, the room filled with water to the ceiling within three seconds.

"The TV, bureau and cabinets were floating and the bed was coming down the corridor toward me. The sheer force of the water and the furniture pinned me against the door instantly. I was under water for two or three minutes when the door suddenly burst open! My body left its impression in the plywood as I was forced out into the hall."

As Austin flew out of his room like a torpedo, he said he slammed into the concrete siding of a walkway 20 metres away.

"I had debris, furniture, you name it, and the pressure of the water pounding against me until both of my arms got pinned. Then the second wave hit and I was underwater once again."

Austin said his lungs began to fill with water and he thought his life was over.

"I began to think about death and people finding my body trapped here. Then my killer instinct came in and I had to give one more try to live. I pulled and turned my body until I freed my arms and legs. Then I shot up to the surface to get air."

He said he managed to grab hold of and straddle some railing until the water receded. Another man was also holding on to the railing for his life.

"He was completely butt-naked and was in shock," explains Austin. "He probably wondered where I came from."

While Austin was fighting for his life, John Macdonald of Collingwood, Ont., who turns 68 on New Year's Day, stood enjoying the sunshine and the view of crystal-clear turquoise water from the waterfront deck of a hotel restaurant on Nai Harn Beach. Before he knew it, a wave rushed in and lifted the entire deck structure.

Sitting in his hospital bed at Vachira Hospital, he supports his right leg, which is bandaged at the thigh, and smiles at his only son, David, who flew in Tuesday from Kuala Lumpur.

"I was forced under the hotel into a basement of rock and cement," he recalled Wednesday. "I was turning and tossing with 2x4s, trees and debris. I couldn't get air. The basement filled to the ceiling with water."

When the water finally receded, he said he managed to touch the bottom and search for an escape route.

"I was completely exhausted by this time, but found a small window to climb out of. I saw another man crawl through the window and called for him to help me, but he didn't come back."

After crawling through the window, Macdonald said he found himself next to the hotel reception desk, completely naked. He asked some staff who had survived the wave for some clothing and the only piece they could find was a chef's apron.

Macdonald, who came to Phuket to teach English, said he received approximately 75 stitches in his leg with no anesthetic at the hospital.

"That was very traumatic for me, but the painkillers work wonders. I check out tomorrow (Thursday)!"

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