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."
Your post is hilarious.
I saw her on Fox and Friends one morning.
She seemed genuinely "nice," and not a diva like most models.
This story does really impress me for some reason. One of the most beautiful women in the world clinging for her life on a tree during what was supposed to be a calm, wonderful vacation. Losing her boyfriend, the man who captured her beauty for the world.
What better example can you find for the impermanence of beauty and the fragility of life?
You're in a beach bungalow with one of the most beautiful women in the world, thinking that life just couldn't get any better, when WHAM! The ocean literally rises up and sweeps you away. Something Biblical about that! I would venture to say that the boyfriend died happy.
Something about "No free lunch" or maybe "Pay the Piper"?
Yeah that does suck.
LOL
Not in any junior high school I ever heard of.
44,000 persons perish and we almost lost the "services" of some skinny pinup gal?
Yeah ... I never realized either. ;)
Or it could just teach us that these overseas 'paradises' are not all they are cracked up to be...
Well, it is only a tragedy if it effects the beautiful people.
LOL
You guys don't understand modern journalism. It's not about news - it's about selling ad space. And to sell ad space you have to be read. And to get read you have to generate a buzz.
What better way to generate a buzz than to put "supermodel" in your headline and then link to FR. I don't know how many posts this thread will get, but I bet it gets over 10,000 hits today.
How many hits will all the stories about 40,000 dead get together on FR?
The author is a genius.
Shalom.
good point
" Actually, the "h" is silent, so you say "Pooh Ket"."
I heard a BBC reporter pronounce it "Foo Ket".
Either way, you have to dance around the phonetics.
Wow are we getting PC around here. Not allowed to notice anything other than the central story --- the death of all those poor folks who also happened to be economically impoverished. If in the hundreds of such stories you also notice that the event touched someone from NY, and someone with star quality, and you talk about it --- oh my god! you are breaking the rules!
Get a grip, people. This story has local interest for New Yorkers and was published in a New York paper along with a multitude of other stories about the larger, sadder event.
And if we are supposed to follow a set of rules on what's ok to talk about after a tragedy, please list them here, in detail. Please share your version of PC with the rest of us. In detail. We're all dying to know.
Or "Too good to be true!"
Her story of survival is just as interesting as the one from the Washington Post reporter who was on an island in Sri Lanka. In many ways more harrowing.
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