Couple's final photos "an echo from the grave"
Seattle Times staff reporter
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RSSChristian Pilet of North Bend could not have known the power of his discovery: the last photos taken by a couple who lost their lives in the Dec. 26 tsunami and the closure the photo diary would bring to a grieving family half a world away in British Columbia.
Taken in sequence, the photographs tell a gripping story: John and Jackie Knill arriving at a Khao Lak resort, happily enjoying Christmas dinner with a large group of friends and then basking in a brilliant tropical sunset.
 COURTESY OF KNILL FAMILY 8:26 a.m. Tourists stroll unaware of an ominous dark line; the tsunami rolling toward them from the horizon. |
The next day, the couple is seen hugging, smiling; radiant on the beach. Then the story turns ominous: people stroll the beach under a clear blue sky, apparently oblivious to the large wave that has formed a line across the horizon.
The wave gets closer, its power more evident as it kicks up sand and mud and finally crashes onto the beach.
"We were stunned; just out of the blue, an echo from the grave," Pilet said. "What we saw in these pictures were the last five minutes of these people's lives."
 COURTESY OF KNILL FAMILY 8:28 a.m. The tsunami crashes onto the beach, dwarfing a person trying to run across the sand to safety. |
Pilet knew nothing about the man and woman in these photos. But through the power of the Internet and dogged determination, he would find their family not in Germany or Sweden as he'd originally suspected, but virtually in his own back yard.
The Knills of North Vancouver, B.C., had been on a four-month vacation in Thailand when they were caught in the deadly tsunami.
The disaster killed more than 170,000 people, including about a dozen Canadians.
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