Every day the news gets worse... What started as a few thousand, has now grown to an official 125,000 people dead because of the Tsunami.

It should have a name by now, don't you think? Something to hate? Soemthing to fear?

In the India Times, the accusations of misreporting the number of dead and missing are forthright. The quote helpless officails who simply do not have any numbers on file, and report what they have though they know it to be a fraction of reality.

The Red Cross is quoted in that article of suggesting that there might be a million souls lost.

In another article, Indonesia is reported of similar misreporting; that they are simply not capable of calculating the numbers.

Many of you know that Fort Lauderdale is one of the yachting capitals of the world; my businesses, my family are well entrenched in the Yachting community. An e-mail was forwarded to me, originating from someone yachting in Thailand at the time. I will share it with you now, with only the names removed.

Horror stories abound here at the moment, so please excuse my apparent callousness in this article.

A telephone call from my friend XXXXXXX in Reback Marina, Langkawi told us of some tragedies in Malaysia. To enter Reback Marina one has to negotiate a rock lined breakwater channel with a dogleg. XXXX had just completed a 15 month restoration of his beautiful 60' Alden yacht and was relaxing in his cockpit in the marina when he noticed the tide receding... .rapidly. The boat bumped the bottom. He heard a roar and saw a gray wall of water, he estimated at 15 foot, come racing around the dogleg towards him. He describes it as an undulating waterfall. It lifted the floating dock off its pilings and along with the 8 yachts tied to it, surfed into the next row of yachts which in turn surfed into the next row. Then the entire contents of the marina raced out of the channel at 15 knots stopped and raced in again. XXXX ended up on the seawall at the far side of the manna. The floating dock he was tied to had inverted and the barnacles had destroyed his topsides, his caprail was gone and all stanchions, he sustained massive damage from other boats but he got her floating and exited the marina where he is anchored. He said the noise was the most significant thing. People screaming boats grinding together, masts coming down, vessels careening into the breakwater at 15 knots and the roar of the water. Reback Marina is a disaster with 49 yachts sunk and the remaining 3 floating but seriously damaged. Telaga Harbour Marina is no longer with 5 boats sunk and all the others damaged. Both marinas we have fond memories of. Here the body count still rises. Another friend of ours was having a house built at Patong beach by 12 workmen. One of them went to the store to purchase a pack of cigarettes and the tide went out. The 11 others ran down to the beach to catch the hundreds of floundering fish and the first wave caught them. They all perished.

Phi Phi Don is two grand cliff faced islands with a narrow spit of sand joining them. The strip is loaded with tourist stuff and backpacker hotels. The wave entered the west bay and removed everything off the spit of land. 600 people were on the island at the time, all perished. An aerial photo showed the sea littered with bodies and debris.

So many lost their lives in Khau Lan, only one mile to the north of the bay we are in, that they are burning them on the beach.

Patong Beach two miles north is indescribable. A number of the beachfront stores had basement shopping centers and all were full of tourists and vendors. All perished when the area flooded. The streets near the ocean are piled high with cars, motorcycles, busses, boats, bits of buildings, uprooted palm trees and store merchandise.

We have been helping clear up the mess here in Nai Ham and every couple of hours a body is dug out of the beach. The mess and carnage is beyond belief, so many people are homeless and a number of Carolyn's students are gone along with their parents. There are hundreds of worse stories. It is all so sad.

I am being inundated with requests by insurance companies to do damage surveys but all understand that what we are doing at the moment is more important. Nevertheless, we will return to Boat Lagoon Marina on Sunday and get to work.

Posted by Michael at December 30, 2004 11:15 PM