a full-blown global crisis

Survivors tell their tales

December 30, 2004

Guardian Unlimited

The web is being filled with survivors' stories, of which a few were highlighted in today's paper.

They are all different, and from any number of angles; many write of the horror of the waves striking, of the huge problems facing those who managed to escape the waters, or simply of their bewilderment at their very survival...

Rick Von Feldt was in Phuket, Thailand when the waves hit, and has emailed to point us in the direction of his weblog documenting events since, along with a picture gallery showing the aftermath.

His site also pointed me in the direction of Kevin Sites' weblog. This is one you may remember from last month, when Sites took that disturbing footage of a US Marine shooting dead a badly injured Iraqi, and then posted an emotional account of the circumstances surrounding the film which was subsequently reprinted in the Guardian. Sites has now relocated to Thailand, and has filed a dispatch from there, illustrated with his own photographs.

Terry Collins, an expat living in Indonesia, is also keeping watch, and is reflecting a little of the anger at the faintly low-key response from the US and UK governments, and absurdity of some of the media reaction. "Whilst the red and white flies at half mast throughout Indonesia there is indifference, if not downright callousness elsewhere," he writes on Jakartass.

But perhaps the saddest site I've visited today is javajive, written by another expat who has been waiting on news of friends in Phuket. At the time of writing this post he's still waiting, although a commenter on his blog tells of their heartbreak at losing a number of their family to the disaster.

Perhaps the most heart-rending aspect of the site is the pictures of playing children he's posted, taken only a couple of days before disaster struck. The question one is left asking after seeing them is barely worth repeating. An image grabbed from local TV further down his front page (with caution - it may upset some readers) tempts you to fear the very worst.

Finally, over the last few days there's been some thought-provoking analysis over at Worldchanging.com, a green weblog where they're already looking to the future; what (if anything) can be done to prevent such a disaster happening again, and most interestingly, what changes could be made for the good in the aftermath. Alex Steffen sums the site's attitude up when he writes:

"This might not seem like the time to look ahead. The situation all around the Indian Ocean is grim: the bulldozers are digging mass-graves for as many as 100,000 bodies; at least a million people are homeless, hungry and utterly destitute; clean water and sanitation facilities don't exist; disease is beginning to break out; and relief is still far off for too, too many people. This is a full-blown global crisis. But this is exactly the right time for foresight.

Posted by Neil McIntosh at December 30, 2004 07:05 PM