My Story (pt.1)

Bearing witness to and surviving a catastrophic event of this magnitude has the potential to make a believer out of the most adamant atheist as well as crushing the beliefs of the most devoted devotee.

“How did I survive this?”
“Why did I survive this?”
“Who helped me to survive this?”

“My God, how could this happen?”
“My God how could you let this happen?”
“Why did so many others not survive this?”
“What god would let this happen?”

Although right now I’m tending to identify more with the former personae, these are all questions that will weigh upon my mind and soul for the rest of this lifetime. The following is my personal account of what I experienced the morning of December 26th, 2004 and the days following.

I laid in bed awake, the blazing Sri Lankan sun streaming through the window prematurely ending my post Christmas slumber. Radka, however, was not awake. She lay next to me on the shady side of the bed still sleeping deeply. I arose from the bed to venture out in search of the time as our clock had stopped working somewhere back in India. Behind our guest house a couple had settled down for breakfast on the beach while one of the staff swept up around them. “Machang…time?”, I enquired. “8:30,” came the response. I thought about going for a swim but opted instead to return to bed. (One of a million decisions I would latter replay in my head, which could have led to a different out come for myself as well as Radka)

Welligama is situated on a bay that consistently produces some world class waves…one of the reasons we found ourselves staying there as opposed to Unawatuna, our original destination and a harder hit area. Our guesthouse being meters from the sea, I loved to lie in bed listening to the surf roll in. This time it was different. The waves became thunderous. (This next part I will try to describe probably took place in the span of 30 seconds although, for us, time had stood still) One eye opened. Curious, I sat up wondering which surfers were lucky enough to be out there for this freak swell. Then came the screams….seemingly from all directions. Then the shattering of glass and the explosive sound of timber splintering. My sleepy mind was still scrambling for comprehension. Brown water began to seep under the door and I attempted to awaken Radka as I simultaneously tried to scoop my mini disc player and new speakers (a gift from Radka) off the floor. A water tank must have burst I remember thinking, my mind still unable to assimilate this information with the further shattering of glass and crashing sounds I was hearing. I still could not begin to fathom the levity or scope of the situation that was taking shape around us. And then… BOOM! Our door to our room was blown off the top hinge dropping it perpendicular to its former frame creating a barrier and the water rushed in over top. Not like a flood or a freak high tide but as in… instantly we were up to our necks in it. The force of it pulverized the furniture in the room and blew out our street facing windows. I was panic stricken and began to scream a guttural scream like I never have before. {Why was the sea suddenly in our room? Has the island broken off into the sea? Has the full moon produced a tidal swell?} Radka at this point was still hazy from the rude awakening and was grasping for her clothes floating around her. I was grasping at the iron bars on our window, violently trying to shake them free. Scared to death to venture out into what was the common room, I realized it was our only option. From the view of our door all I could see was water and floating debris….big chunks of debris….wood, metal and everything in between but the scene in our room was no better and worsening every second. It was then I saw the stairs down the hall that had previously been hidden by a sliding metal door that was now folded in thirds blocking the hallway.

The main building of our guesthouse (the part in which we were housed) consisted of two bedrooms, a common room and a kitchen. Out back, perpendicular to and reaching out towards the sea were six other rooms divided between two floors. Entering from the beach side of our building you found yourself in the common room with one bedroom immediately to the left with ours situated behind it, accessible via a narrow hallway. At the end of this hallway, past our bedroom door, was the front door. The door that, among other factors, potentially saved our lives.

I remember grabbing Radka by the arm, screaming at her “Let’s go! Let’s go!”, as we attempted to navigate the sea of debris and head for the stairs. At this point there was no rushing current….just water and said debris. Later we were to realize this was because the front door had miraculously not given out. Our bedroom door being the weaker of the two, gave first, releasing the pressure of the immeasurable volume of water now inside the house. This bit of good fortune in a moment of extreme bad fortune enabled us to swim towards the stairs. Reaching the stairs, we scrambled up them to safety and headed towards the balcony. I looked out to the street, mouth agape, to see busses and cars rushing past smashing into anything in their path. It was all a frantic blur but I remember alternating looking out to the street and screaming with terror and running to look down stairs each time we heard more shattering of wood and glass (the front door blowing out finally was among the noises, no doubt). Water was now flowing freely through the house from the sea and out to the street taking everything with it. Radka and I were in shock and just hugging each other to calm the shaking. Thank God we had each other. It almost wasn’t that way.

Two days before, we had met a nice Sinhalese guy on the beach and struck up a conversation. This turned into a visit to his family home and an invitation to attend Poya festivities with him at the local Buddhist temple. The 26th was the most sacred day of the year to Sri Lankan Buddhists, celebrating the day a piece of the bodi tree that the Buddha was sitting under as he attained enlightenment was carried from India to Sri Lanka and replanted. Why do tragedies such as these always seem to be compounded by their horrible timing (as if there is a good time for a tsunami)? Radka wanted to sleep in and I was contemplating heading off on my own to Mirisa to meet all of them. Like I said, I’m not sure what we would have done had we not had each other. Or if we had awoken earlier to eat breakfast on the beach. Or if Radka had awoken earlier and gone off by herself for a swim like she had done at exactly the same time the day before. There are an infinite number of more “what if’s?” that are still popping into my mind but as it worked out, we were together.

From the balcony I noticed a family on the roof of the building next to me and I ran over screaming, “What do we do?” (as if this happened to them everyday) “PRAY, MAN, PRAY!”, came the response from one of them. Not feeling any better by this answer I began to pray just the same. “God, protect us and save us.” “Granddad and Pop Pop protect us and save us.” “Buddha, protect us and save us.” “Krishna, protect us and save us.” “Whome ever might be listening right now, protect us and save us. Slowly the water began to subside and I began to take notice of others around me. A bloody face appeared clinging to the roof of the adjoining guesthouses and flung him self over the balcony to safety. Later I would learn his name was Jan from Germany. Others began to appear, having escaped their own watery graves, and took refuge on our second floor shelter. We began exchanging looks and then words to confirm we were all (relatively) ok. Except for Jan, most people seemed to have escaped with mere cuts and scratches. Those that lived I should say. There did not seem to be any in between. You either made it out untouched or you were dead. I still don’t think at this point anyone had comprehended the number of or even possibility of fatalities. Certainly no one could comprehend the number throughout South East Asia. That would take days. We began to group together, bandaging each other up and discussing what the hell could have just happened. Nick, an Englishman of maybe thirty, had with him a young girl…..an eight year old girl I remembered seeing playing cards with her family the night before. He said that he was on the beach when he first noticed all the water in the bay being sucked out approximately three kilometers. He stood watching in awe as it regrouped into the tsunami that was soon change everything and all of us. He and a mate began running for their lives towards the river on the far side of town. Stopping to catch their breath once they thought they had run a safe distance he said they turned to see it continuing to rush towards them, enveloping all around. They continued running towards the river, eventually scaling a tree and making it on to a roof top in time to see the wave travel all the way to meet the river. After it subsided enough they climbed down and made their way back to the guesthouse. It was then they found the little girl standing alone in the street, bleeding badly from a massive gash in her arm but not saying a word. By the time I saw her they had already patched her up and had stopped the bleeding. Where were her brothers? There were three of them I remembered. Later we spotted them walking through the streets, in shock, looking for the rest of their family. It was a teary reunion for all involved, including us. Sadly, I would hear latter that both parents had perished in the disaster. Thank God they at least have each other.

At some point a phone began to ring and I made a mad dash to discover its location. Miraculously (again) the phone line was still open but the person on the other end was speaking Sinhalese. No help. I hung up and began furiously trying to get through to my folks in the States, knowing the horror of waking up the day after Christmas to hear on the news that Sri Lanka had been rocked by an unprecedented tsunami. Eventually I got through and, attempting to hold it together as much as possible, informed them I was alive and tried to explain what had happened. I said I would call back if I could with names and numbers of the families of those we were with so that they could relay similar messages. After that I attempted to ring the US embassy in Colombo. Don’t ever count on you embassy for anything but a dentist recommendation. I’ll leave it at that. This call, I would later find out, drew the ire of Jan who was in the next room complaining about the stupid American that was trying to call in the marines while he waited to phone home. Fair enough. Eventually everyone got through and we started to work on a plan to get out of hell and head to higher ground. (More to come)