THAILAND: The Sofitel Magic Lagoon Resort and Spa was last night silent but for the distant thud of the waves on the beach and the occasional scratch of a cicada. A full moon hung in a sky streaked with thin cloud. A sickly stench of saltwater and corpses filled the air.
Yesterday, Khao Lak offered up its dead. At least 200 bodies were recovered from the hotel's rooms, 400 bodies were taken off the beaches, and hundreds of others were still missing, many swept out to sea or buried in the piles of rubble and mud which coat much of the resort. A rescue operation should be in full swing, but the scale of the disaster has overwhelmed all human effort.
The only light was from the moon and the torches held by the half-dozen officers escorting the police chief of the neighbouring province through the wreckage.
He had come to view the devastation. On first sight, it is stunning. Telegraph poles are rammed through walls. Entire rooms, their walls smashed aside, are filled with wreckage.
Jean-Marc Espalioux, president of leading European hotelier Accor, said that 151 guests had been found safe and he expected that about 50 more had survived the disaster. "For the others, unfortunately, the situation is without hope for the overwhelming majority, except for individual miracles."
Earlier in the day, the police chief visited a hospital in Surat Thani, a city on the untouched eastern coast of the peninsula to which many of the estimated 8,000 who were injured by the waves had been evacuated. "I spoke to a German man. He told me he had been standing in this lobby with his wife and two children when the wave struck. The last he saw of the kids was them running around this lobby."
In Phuket, 60 miles to the south, stunned survivors lay on stretchers at the airport. "I lost my girlfriend. We saw the wave coming. It was so huge we had no time to run," said Karl Kalteka, from Munich, Germany, who was at the beach in front of the Sofitel when the first wave struck. "I saw many kids perish. I saw parents trying to hold them, but it was impossible. It was hell."
Many of those feared dead were diving or swimming when the wave struck. The Swedish tour operator Fritidsresor said that 600 Swedes who had been on holiday in Khao Lak, a 50km stretch of beach backed by forest and mountain, were not accounted for.
The discovery of the bodies has trebled the suspected death toll in Thailand. Up to 1,000 are feared dead in Khao Lak alone. With 400 bodies recovered from Koh Phi Phi yesterday, the toll for Thailand stood at 1,516, with 1,500 missing. It is expected to rise.
The dead are laid out at three Buddhist temples near the beaches. Cheap coffins are stacked around them, too small for the larger bodies of the foreigners, according to Bobby Lunkorn, the 22-year-old naval officer in charge of the makeshift morgue. "Yesterday we had 200 bodies come in. Today we have lost count," he said. - (Guardian Service)