Posted on 12/28/2004 5:10:05 AM PST by jimbo123
Jet-setting supermodel Petra Nemcova survived the terrifying Asian tsunami by clinging to the top of a palm tree for eight hours - wincing through the pain of a broken pelvis and haunted by the sight of her boyfriend being swept out to sea.
"This huge wave just pulled us out of the house," Nemcova, 25, told the Daily News last night from her hospital bed in Thailand. "It was so powerful I couldn't get up. I couldn't get out of it."
"People were screaming and kids were screaming all over the place, screaming, 'Help, help.' And after a few minutes, you didn't hear the kids anymore."
Nemcova and her fashion photographer boyfriend Simon Atlee, 33, were spending the holidays in a beachfront bungalow at the Thai resort of Khao Lak when Sunday's catastrophe struck.
"I heard people screaming and I looked out the window and people were jumping out of the way, jumping into the pool," said Nemcova, who lives in New York and London and was on the cover of Sports Illustrated's 2003 swimsuit issue.
"I was screaming, 'On the roof! On the roof!' I tried to go on the roof but I got sucked away," Nemcova said.
Before she and Atlee could react, a wall of water shredded their wooden bungalow and sent them sprawling into a churning sea of debris that swallowed Atlee without a trace.
She kept her head above the floodwaters and was able to grasp a palm tree before she could be swept out to sea - but had to clutch it for eight hours, watching bodies float past in a scene of unimaginable devastation.
"I just tried to survive and tried to think positive," Nemcova said.
She gripped the tree in excruciating pain under the burning tropical sun until rescuers found her at sunset and carried her to an overwhelmed local hospital on a makeshift stretcher.
"I was so broken, I couldn't walk," Nemcova said. "There were so many people with horrible injuries, with blood everywhere. It was like a war movie."
Nemcova was airlifted to an inland hospital, where doctors found she had a broken pelvis and serious internal injuries.
"There might be pieces of bone stuck to my organs," said Nemcova, who was medicated with morphine but still agonized at her boyfriend's disappearance.
"I can't find Simon," she said. "It was horrible. I'm very lucky, but I can't find Simon."
In New York, her sister Olga Nemcova, 23, and friend Jamison Ernest, a fashion designer, knew only that Nemcova and Atlee were vacationing somewhere near the exotic island of Phuket.
Using credit card records, Internet searches and international cell phone calls, they launched a marathon search that eventually tracked down Nemcova in the hospital.
After a tearful conversation yesterday morning, they got back to work trying to arrange medical-evacuation flights to get Nemcova to the U.S., or perhaps her native Czech Republic.
"I'm just happy that she's okay," Olga Nemcova said. "Now we're praying for Simon."
They frantically E-mailed pictures of Atlee to hospitals and rescue organizations in Thailand, hoping someone would recognize the tall, handsome Englishman with the piercing blue eyes.
"Thank God that Petra is alive," Ernest said. "The biggest concern is to find Simon. He vanished without a trace."
Nemcova and Atlee began dating about two years ago, becoming a dashing, witty couple in the international fashion scene. They were comfortable on glamorous beaches: He shot all the pictures for her 2005 calendar, many of them as they waded together in the warm waters off the south of France.
"They were planning on being in Thailand for two or three weeks - just to be there and go scuba diving, relax on the beach, take a break from their schedules," Ernest said.
Nemcova booked the trip as a surprise for Atlee, so his family in England had no way to find him yesterday until they got a grim call from Ernest.
"We know nothing," Atlee's sister Jodi Hansard said from London, where she waited in agony for any word from British officials. "We knew that they were in Thailand, but we didn't even know where they were."
No, it was months ago that I saw her on F&F.
True. I hate to use the quote by Stalin that one death is a tragedy 1 million deaths a statistic but it applies. On 9/11 3000 dead is beyond most of us to comprehend but when it became known that two Freepers (Barbara Olsen and John Moran)were among the dead it home to many here.
this appears like a story for New York about one of their models who lives there....I assume London is talking about Atlee.
i don't think it has anything to do with race or ethnicity or "brown people" or "impoverished people".
there were plenty of tourists as well who died in these resort coastal areas who were not brown or impoverished.
my family fears a wealthy gem dealer we know in Sri Lanka whose office was built right on the SW coast on a pier may be one of them.
there are many facets to this tragedy.
the children's plight is of course without a doubt the worst but celebrities do get noticed.
if it were Tyra Banks or Naomi Campbell, they would get the same notice...maybe more since they are slightly higher up the name-recognition chain.
why so many freepers must always take a sanctimonious self righteous morally superior posture over any slight instance that may involve one speck of the issue of race is ridiculous to me. they sound like pandering Dems.
If this is the future of conservatism, then we are screwed. Race, Race, Race, Race, Race......I feel good about myself...Validate me....Please....I feel yer race...it's my fault...blah, blah, blah, schmlah.
The left has won on this one.
what I find the biggest story is that in some cases, we knew around the world for 2-5 hours that this quake had occured and no warnings were issued for tsunamis which were likely inevitable.
maybe some geo-astute here can enlighten me.
Start here for information about this tsunami and others as well.
If it was me, I'd not need any warning *LOL*
So, you are suggesting this event was a contemporary Sodom & Gommorah? Interesting.
TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 002
PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER/NOAA/NWS
ISSUED AT 0204Z 26 DEC 2004
THIS BULLETIN IS FOR ALL AREAS OF THE PACIFIC BASIN EXCEPT ALASKA - BRITISH COLUMBIA - WASHINGTON - OREGON - CALIFORNIA.
.................. TSUNAMI INFORMATION BULLETIN ..................
ATTENTION: NOTE REVISED MAGNITUDE.
THIS MESSAGE IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY. THERE IS NO TSUNAMI WARNING OR WATCH IN EFFECT.
AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS
ORIGIN TIME - 0059Z 26 DEC 2004
COORDINATES - 3.4 NORTH 95.7 EAST
LOCATION - OFF W COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATERA
MAGNITUDE - 8.5
EVALUATION
REVISED MAGNITUDE BASED ON ANALYSIS OF MANTLE WAVES. THIS EARTHQUAKE IS LOCATED OUTSIDE THE PACIFIC. NO DESTRUCTIVE TSUNAMI THREAT EXISTS FOR THE PACIFIC BASIN BASED ON HISTORICAL EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI DATA.
THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF A TSUNAMI NEAR THE EPICENTER.
THIS WILL BE THE ONLY BULLETIN ISSUED FOR THIS EVENT UNLESS ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE.
THE WEST COAST/ALASKA TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER WILL ISSUE BULLETINS FOR ALASKA - BRITISH COLUMBIA - WASHINGTON - OREGON - CALIFORNIA.
I was listening to the radio this morning & the death toll has risen to over 60,000. It is really difficult to wrap my mind around that huge of a number.
People don't realize just how big these numbers really are... You're absolutely right. You can't "wrap your mind around" something like this. You hear the number, but it doesn't quite register.
I was recently working at one of the largest coal fired powerplants in the US, and when I was walking near a "pulverizer," I noticed a display that was alternating between 61 and 62. It indicated that the pulverizer was processing between 61 and 62 tons of coal an hour. When I asked if that supplied one or both furnaces, the fuel operator started laughing... Each furnace has 7 pulverizers feeding it, and they use approximately 10,000 tons of coal every 24 hours! While I could understand 1 ton, or 65 tons, or even the 135 or so tons that a single coal carrier holds, looking at a 1 ton pile of coal, and then associating that with the number 10,000 is one damn big pile of rock!
The thought of 60,000 (and far more) dead people, each one with a life, a story, and with people who love them, being lost in an instant is a sobering thought.
Mark
The toll of this tragedy on supermodels and hot swedish chicks is more than I can bear...
Very well said. It's disheartening to see so many freepers display outrage over the story.
the children's plight is of course without a doubt the worstIn the Indian Times coverage of the event, there is a story of a woman who lost all 7 of her children. Another women lost all 4 of her children and her husband.
Lived happy, died probably not so happy.
awful....
Did you see the video clip on Fox that showed a story about a train being hit by a wave in Shrilanka? Just awful. About 1500 killed instantly. Didn't have a chance.
Worst natural disaster of the century. So far.
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