REBLOG: Boxing Day 2004: remembering the tsunami
Leave a commentFriday 26 December, 2014 by Uncle Spike
As festivities continue unabated for many, with heaps more food and yet more purchases as New Year sales begin early, let us perhaps take a couple of minutes to remember the monstrous events of 10 years ago.
On Boxing Day 2004 I was in the south of France with friends. The first we heard about the tsunami was text messages from friends who wondered if we’d had en exotic destination for the holidays and were concerned.
We’d been out diving all day and had no idea what was going on.
When we turned on the news it was very unclear what had happened and the full extent of the disaster wasn’t known.
250,000 people lost their lives. 80,000 in Thailand.
Two years afterwards we sat on a beach in Phuket.
Tsunami evacuation notices now fringed the beaches.
Water dominated areas where floating villages and mosques rely on the sea, had directions and signs with pathways that seemed so fragile in the shadow of the ocean.
During our trip we visited a number of sites that had been badly hit.
On Ko Phi Phi Island a simple notice…
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