Confused suspect bathers tourists danger and try to run towards a safer location further up the beach.
Photo: AFP
The first wave is about to wrap over the beach Hat Rai Lay Beach, near Krabi in southern Thailand. Bewildered tourists trying to get to safety.
Photo: AFP
The three-meter high wall in front of the hotel were crushed and the water gushed against him . The hotel opposite was cut in half. Balconies and walls collapsed in the garden. People rushed around in the devastation. Andreas Landgren shouted to his mother:
– Now go to hell!
Every morning for two weeks Andreas had been on the beach in Phuket but now he was about to pack for the trip home. In the distance he heard a rumble that grew in intensity. People started screaming, and suddenly opened all the doors at the neighboring hotel.
Andrew and his mother Raija ran for his life. In ten seconds he lost eye contact with her, but as she appeared. Together they ran as fast as they could on Tri Trang road, east, away from the sea.
– I was most afraid when I saw mom. At most, we had water to the waist, but it became easier the farther away we arrived.
Where the road bends towards Karon and Kata beach, they continued straight up the mountain. (Read Andreas Landgren’s the whole story here)
The tsunami came from the southwest and hit probably Phuket between ten minutes and half an hour before reaching Khao Lak.
In Khao Lak, the sun was shining from a clear blue sky this morning and as usual it was over 30 degrees Celsius. Vacationing Swedes picked herself with breakfast buffets, was on his way to massage or had already parked with the children on the beach when the water receded.
A coral reef 300 yards out stack up suddenly like a sugar loaf. Instead of seeing it as a warning went people out on the drained seabed. The chefs brought fish and tourists shells.
The clock struck 10:26, the first, almost ten meters high waves, in with devastating force on Khao Lak beaches. Just a few hours later had more than 5 000 people lost their lives in the area. Tourist Paradise with the shallow bays and the flat land area was hit very hard. The hotels were close to the beach and the simple constructions were devastating.
There were three or four big waves, the second of which was perceived as the greatest and most aggressive. The water reached just over a kilometer inland. In some places three times as long.
Åke Ivar Lund had overslept and there was no springtur along the waterfront with her daughter Ulrika this morning. He went directly to the hotel’s massage room instead.
The wife Karin and Ulrika was at the pool that was 50 meters from the beach, while his son John and daughter Sophia picked shells and photographed the “phenomenon” of the sea driven back.
– Eleven minutes later, I found a clock that stopped at 11 minutes and 51 seconds of 10, became our paradise into a hell. A white wave of foam, followed by a huge mass of water, pulled in with unimaginable speed. The first warning signal was that the people at the far end started to run, then they disappeared in the waves.
Sofia Iwar thrown in through a glass porch. Despite the cuts of the broken glass, she managed to get through the ceiling into the attic and roof. Johan Ivar caught up in another house which quickly filled with water. An air pocket on one decimeter closest to the ceiling saved his life. Karin and Ulrika ran for their lives away from the beach along with other tourists. It would prove fatal. (Read Ake Iwars the whole story here)
Patrick and Lena Brundin had married December 17 in Khao Lak and decided to stay over weekends. Now ran and climbed, with the scales seconds behind, up the slope where their hotel Merlin Resort low.
– I tried to warn some tourists who have gone out to the undrained reefs. Just a few seconds later a ten-meter-high wall of water rushing towards the beach. The panic was complete.
Lena and Patrick lost each other. It would take more than a day before they got to experience his life’s happiest moments. (Read the pair Brundin whole story here)
At the main quake released colossal amounts of energy that spread over the soil surface and are estimated to have lived up to the power of more than 1,500 Hiroshima bombs. Most earthquakes last only a few seconds. The giant quake December 26, 2004 lasted up to ten minutes, longer than any other known earthquake and affected the entire globe. Some islands off the coast of Sumatra moved up to 20 meters. Even the Earth’s rotation and shape are estimated to have affected a little.
Aceh in northern Indonesia was hit hardest. Around 170 000 people died and half a million made homeless. Sweden and Germany were the countries in Europe that lost the most lives in the disaster. National Criminal list of missing and identified the deceased is at 543 Swedes, of which 122 are children under 15 years. Most have been identified and the remains brought home, but 15 Swedes, including 10 children missing. Total lost 225,000 to 300,000 lives in Southeast Asia, and more than 5 million are estimated to have been completely homeless or forced to flee.
Malin Wesén and her children Vibeke, 21, Philip, 17, and Emma, 14, woke up in his bungalow on Bhandari Resort at half past eight this morning, December 26.
– I had been to Thailand before, but Khao Lak was absolutely beautiful. It was paradise, says Malin Wesén.
Everything was as usual when they went to eat breakfast in the dining room. Many new guests had arrived in the morning. It was crowded and hard to find a table. After they had eaten, they went back to his bungalow to get ready for the beach.
– We had had brunast contest. Emma was brunast, she had olive-colored skin. The Thais thought she was so beautiful. They took her all the time. Now we would squeeze we would go home a few days later.
Malin and her daughters had to wait for Philip who fixed her hair in the bathroom.
– He was so handsome and incredibly vain. He had the Dolce & amp; Gabbana swimwear with underwear underneath.
Malin Wesén lost three children in the tsunami: Vibeke, 21, Philip, 17, and Emma; 14.
Photo: Sandra Henningsson
Suddenly they heard a group of employees shouting outside. By jalusifönstret saw Malin how four women and three men came running with her eyes wide with terror.
– Then I hear a diabolical sound, like an airplane rushing their engines. The brain is booming. Is it war, terrorists? Then all of a few seconds. I see the sun shining down into the pool’s turquoise waters while a black wall of water coming from the right and take with them throughout the reception. I yell, “Run for your lives!”
Everyone tried to escape the tsunami. But in front of them, they had a little over two meters high wall. Malin took over through a well.
– The last I see of the children is Philip who turns around and looks at me. I see the fear in his face. He wants to get me to say what he should do. I say: “You can not save anyone, save your own life.”
She threw her arms around a palm tree to try to hold on to.
– Then it hits me in the back and I head off. I hyperventilating. It feels like I’m a very long time under water. I have water in my nose and in the mouth. Then I wedged firmly in lumber and accept direct me to die.
– But just then I got up and gets a single breath before I pressed again. Now I have not far to go, I think. But then pushed me back up. Then the survival instinct. I’m on the surface and keep on going with the water out when I see rubble between two palm trees. I decide that I have survived this, I will not die now.
Malin climbed above the waterline and takes eventually the company of a German woman. (Read Malin Weséns the whole story here)
At home in Sweden had no attached themselves all that much when there had been an earthquake in Asia during the night. No one knew yet that it had followed something that most people have never heard of: a tsunami.
This Monday, December 26, 2004, it was therefore quite sleepy in many places. Prime Minister Göran Persson celebrated Christmas at Harpsund and top executives of departments were scattered in different parts of the weekend celebration. It would help to delay the rescue work several days. The first indications also got many in Sweden to believe that it was a matter for the UN because people in faraway lands affected. But soon it would appear that 20,000 to 30,000 Swedes vacationed in Thailand.
The clock 05:40 call the first families of the State Department officer. The tsunami had thundered in with the death and devastation at 01:58:50 Swedish time.
The time 5:42 came TT the flash that made many newspaper executives on the feet. Now I knew the press that tourists missing after a natural disaster in Phuket. There was talk of a number of fatalities but it did not reveal if there were Swedes. 06.00 announced echo on the radio that several strong earthquakes and subsequent tsunami had hit Southeast Asia.
The forty eight buttoned Prime Minister Göran Persson on the TV in a julinbäddat Harpsund. He saw the news on Sky News about tsunamis. The State Secretary Lars Danielsson rang, but what they say and why Persson stops at Harpsund will never be known.
On the SRSA began to understand that there were big problems but waited for reassurance from the Foreign Ministry. At 10.15 was the Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds informed but chose to stay home.
At Leisure Travel happened communications director Lottie Knutson myself have shelter. Without really clear answers chose Leisure Travel sending aid to its travelers in Thailand already in the middle of another day.
Fifteen hours after the disaster in Thailand Persson still on Harpsund and declined to comment. In the evening went Laila Freivalds theater in Stockholm.
Andreas Landgren on HIF’s home Olympia.
Photo: Göran Stenberg
Andras Landgren hopes high in a training match against Lyngby, Denmark.
Image: Britt-Mari Olsson
Andreas Landgren stood on a mountain above Phuket and texted home to friends that he and his mother Raija was okay and that the water calmed down. They remained on the hill at five o’clock in the afternoon. Lots of rumors were started on the next wave would come.
– We had seats on the flight to Bangkok the same evening. So we went to the hotel and started looking for our things.
Furniture, clothes and suitcases had been washed out in the garden. The beds were on the balcony. They quickly picked up what they could. Looters were already on the move.
Sofia Iwar was drive you from Khao Lak to a small infirmary to get the cuts rescheduled. Åke and Johan Ivar stayed in the hotel area and helped carry away wounded and dead.
– We lifted people down from the ceiling, bar those who had cut himself and those who are not alive. A dead man is incredibly heavy – we wore some of them to a restaurant and laid them on the floor there. Then we took over.
The Hour of waiting followed and the hope petered out slowly.
– Thousands of people flocked there, everyone sat and waited on their own. It was a difficult experience that Karin and Ulrika did not come, incredibly painful.
Right after the first wave was Patrik Brundin back on the beach in Khao Lak and was looking for his Lena.
– That was shocked, injured and killed people everywhere. I did not think Lena fared. It was not realistic.
25 hours were both Lena and Patrick convinced that the other had died in the wave. But through a phone call to relatives in Sweden, Patrik know that Lena lived.
– It was the happiest moment of my life.
On Monday morning, 27 understood Jan Edling, at home in Helsingborg that the situation was serious. All night he had lain on the couch and watched newscasts. His daughter Linn had traveled with Jan’s former wife, Lotta Göransson, and her seven year old son Hugo to Fritidsresors Blue Village on Khao Lak beach in Thailand.
– We called all the numbers, Linn, to her mother , to the hotel, the hotels on the sidelines, but no answer, not even the signals went up. And the web had no answer.
Since he was informed that her daughter enrolled in a support centers in Phuket, but a few days later, she was among the missing.
– There was so much wrong in reporting the first time, but I blame no one, it is human to err.
Linn had phoned home to Jan on Christmas morning and a postcard DAMP also down before Christmas.
– She told me about the fun things she would do – ride the elephant, scuba dive and go shopping.
Linn, Hugo and mother Lotta would have come back to Copenhagen on 28th December.
– We were told that they could be on any of the planes landing at Sturup Kastrup Airport or Landvetter. So I went to Sturup and Copenhagen. Hugo’s father Nicklas drove to Gothenburg, where he met Hugo.
But neither Linn and her mother was on something of the plan. (Read the January Edling’s story here)
Prime Minister Göran Persson had spent the Christmas holidays at Harpsund and refrained initially from comments.
Photo: Kent Hult
Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds chose to stay home when the Foreign Ministry issued a cautious statement.
Photo: Thierry Charlier / AP
On the afternoon of 27 gave Persson and Freivalds the first press conference. Persson said that the government was willing to make a bet on travel companies considered to have the primary responsibility approached him. It was then known that other countries were in full swing to save their countrymen. Leisure Travel rendered new demands for help.
Meanwhile, on the Thai beach resorts, slipped Thais, Swedes and other tourists around in the blood and dirt among the dead and the survivors in the temple that has become collection points. The criticism of politicians and senior officials in Sweden would later become fierce. The confusion, rådlösheten and lack of imagination and empathy was great among those who would start character to the relief effort.
On this day traveled psychologist Pia Sointios children home from Thailand to Helsingborg as planned but with a horror experience under my belt. Pia Soinitio who worked as a consultant for SOS International completed the holiday and joined his colleagues at the Pearl Hotel in Phuket since she told the principal that she was there.
– We could not get into a regular routine and I felt many times helpless. It was very convenient that did not work and it took a long time before everything got started.
– The children received the most attention. It made great efforts to find their parents. Otherwise, we saw that they were connected with any adult who would at the same airport and in the same plane home.
Linda Wollkert now lives in Oslo.
Relatives took care of the two boys when the flight landed at Kastrup December 28, 2004.
Photo: Göran Stenberg
Linda Wollkert and Bears Lund had ended up on a hill along with other Scandinavians and Thais. And a little boy named Johan. When darkness fell they lit a bonfire and John turned to the couple
– It was totally quiet. All we had were our swimsuits, a small backpack with some water and my wallet, remember Linda Wollkert.
In the darkness of the morning came servicemen in pickup trucks and took Westerners. Via a list of survivors was found John’s younger brother, seven-year old Martin.
– Johan comforted his little brother: “This goes well, we will find mom and dad. And now we’re together.”
The little company came with Thai Airways plane at Don Mueang Airport in Bangkok. Dressed in a bikini and sarong convinced Linda SAS staff with the words: “Hey, here I am. Now we and these boys with. “
– They saw the way we looked, in swimwear with two small children. They realized that we were not kidding.
After twelve hours of flight landed SAS machine at Kastrup just before seven o’clock in the morning, December 28.
John and Martin were picked up by aunt, grandmother and her husband. The children’s parents had died. (Read the full Linda Wollkerts story here)
Rescue Services Agency’s effort distracted by the Foreign Ministry’s late reaction. Two days went by the Agency Director General notified the Department of Defense that you could go until the government offices managed to give an answer to the Director-General could make decisions. Tuesday afternoon, December 28, Jan Tapanis bag packed after a call in the morning. Together with a group of eighteen people, he flew to Phuket from London.
Jan Tapani and four colleagues went journey directly proceed in a Volkswagen bus to Krabi.
– The mistake, if you can call it that, was that we were not clear about our job or our mandate. There had not been any discussion about how long we would stay. All just wanted out and do something. The adrenaline was pumping.
– We soon learned that there was a collection point for dead at a temple. There were about 400 bodies and it came always new. Ships came from Phi Phi Islands and unloaded the bodies were transported on to the temple. The stench was unbearable. The Thai doctors were shocked and difficult to make contact with.
For several days, Jan Tapani and his five co-workers as the only Swedes in addition to the volunteers at the site.
– We were six days in Krabi. Since it was decided that we would leave. We had been too much. We had worked seventeen-eighteen hours a day. (Read the January Tapanis story here)
Volunteers in Thailand had quickly started making lists of missing persons. Many took themselves to Bangkok, without clothes or money, and hoped for the help that was not there.
Two Swedish doctors on holiday pleaded in Expressen: Help us!
It was Patrick and Lena Brundin, who ran for their lives in front of the death wave and now, happy to have regained each other, rolled up their sleeves in an unimaginable mess of physical and mental suffering.
In two days, the two doctors go around in the hospital and tried to support other sufferers. No Swedish help arrived, and on Tuesday, December 28th emailed to the Swedish media about the enormous and urgent need for help.
In the evening, December 28 went Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds to Phuket. With the plane was the priest Per-Anders Josenby from Barsebäck, now vicar of the parish Ringsjö.
Per-Anders Josenby’s chaplain and used to crisis management under extremely difficult conditions. In the first half of 2004, he served in the Peace Swedish UN force in Liberia.
After a short briefing at Arlanda stepped Josenby on one of Apollo’s Boeing aircraft.
The first week he visited hospital and was looking for Swedes, but also other northerners.
– We even tried to “catch” volunteers, instructors and guides who voluntarily worked under great mental pressure for many days.
Jorgen Björnsen with daughter Tilde awaiting repatriation from Phuket. The airport’s waiting room is many injured.
Photo: Leif Å Andersson
A Hearse carrying injured to the ambulance aircraft at Phuket Airport.
Photo: Leif Å Andersson
On 29 December, Leisure Travel news conference and appealed to the authorities for further action. ReseBolaget found evacuations were “too petty.”
– When the authorities have evacuated Khao Lak and other affected areas, including hospitals have all been sent directly to the airport. There are now thousands of travelers with open wounds, bleeding and in shock. The need is so urgent that it required many hundreds of places on bårflygtransporter too badly damaged travelers like ourselves can not take care of our evacuation flights. This has been conveyed to the government, we as a tour operator can not do more, ‘said Lottie Knutson TT and continued:
– There is a very real risk that people lie and die at the airport in Phuket.
Malin Wesén had then been at Phuket International Hospital for three days and also got to spend a night at the home of a Thai couple along with another injured tourist.
She wanted to go home – do not lie down and die.
Her three children were still missing.
– I realized that in my condition, I could not do anything for the kids.
An English couple who worked for an NGO helped her to arrange and pay for a taxi to the airport. In the departure hall there was chaos. Eventually slide was said she was sick hangar on a luggage trolley.
A Swedish foreign ministry official made sure she was the night came with a night plane to Sturup.
The home was met Malin Wesén and fellow passengers of a priest and a psychologist. Then she had still only T-shirt, shorts and flip flops in itself.
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Helsingborg Artist Nilla Nielsen survived tsumanin with her mother Carla estate. After the experience Nilla Nielsen composed the song “” Heaven must have missed his angel. “
Photo: Göran Stenberg
The day before New Year’s Eve lifted Volvo and Ericsson’s plan against Thailand with stretchers. It was then shuttled by a voluntary medical team from including Lund. Now also stepped up the UD help. The same day came Nilla Nielsen from Helsingborg finally home to Malmo with her mother Carla estate. They were survivors of the Phi Phi Islands.
The water wall at Long Beach who rushed toward Nilla and her mother were estimated to have been nearly seven feet high.
– I was just thinking the mother, but I had no chance to help her.
– It just bang.
The waters sent Nilla Nielsen 30 meters backwards on a construction site and in under a bamboo porch.
– I swallowed no water. But I could only wait and hold your breath. My left leg got stuck and for a moment I thought it would wear off – it was awful.
In the end, she was lying, with a piece of wood run under the knee of the left leg.
– What guardian angel, I “missed” lots of big machines on the construction site.
Nilla Nielsen broke up, but did not see his mother, who had been thrown against a tree and into among the shattered bungalows. (Read the full Nilla Nielsen’s story and hear her singing “Heaven must have missed his angel” here)
Memorial Ceremony at the airport in Phuket before the coffins loaded on the plane to Sweden.
Photo: Lars Dareberg
One killed in Swedish carried on board the plane home after the memorial ceremony at Phuket Airport.
Photo: Lars Dareberg
The wolf hours on January 5, waited Prime Minister Göran Persson, Princess Madeleine and Crown Princess Victoria, Prince Carl Philip, King, Queen Silvia and the Speaker Bjorn von Sydow and Archbishop KG Hammar at the airport to the darkness and biting wind meet the first victims of the disaster in Thailand. There were six simple coffins wrapped in the Swedish flag in a Hercules aircraft that taxied in.
Forensic Engineer Mats Hägg stood while in the midst of death, chaos, in the heat and stench, and wondered what the folks back home know. On the temple grounds where he was was still corpses in plastic packaging and body bags. The identification process was in full swing but under very primitive conditions. The pressure was great from the outside world and the locals wanted to meet foreigners. Mats Hägg and his colleagues began a systematic approach with respect and utmost accuracy requirements, the massive mortuary Site 2, a few kilometers from the airport in Phuket. Here was identified tsunami victims of the right techniques, forensic doctors and dentists from all over the world.
– There was no room for error. When the bodies are in very poor condition, studies are needed in an orderly manner. But it tried to kneel in the dirt and make identifications. It also went around some relatives among rows of bodies.
The handling of the bodies was difficult. Every body was washed thoroughly, as clothing and jewelry that could have inscriptions with Swedish text.
– There’s little children as it said something about Bamse Club and then realized that it could be my neighbor. The closer it got more difficult it was.
– They were there for vacation and joy. But this was such a misery misery and they were so many. All those that are only a meter long. It’s not like you’re kidding about anything in quite a while ago. With kids, it’s always something special.
After an initial chaotic time in the temple area was changed nature of the operation. Refrigerated containers came on the scene and the Norwegian government donated a field hospital and it was created two autopsy courses under roof. It went from chaos to order. (Read and hear Mats Hägg’s tale of identification work here)
This was such a misery misery and they were so many. All those that are only a meter long.
Damaged, fatalities and shocked Swedes came home in a steady stream around the New Year. Ake, John and Sophia Iwar was flown home on New Year’s Eve. Two people in their company missing.
In February it was announced that Karin Iwars body had been identified and would be sent home in April came Ulrika’s Iwars body. Ake Iwar is 62 years now remarried and lives in Helsingborg. He still works as a crisis psychologist in his own company with the reception. Ake Iwars wife Karin, who was a school nurse in Lund, and the daughter Ulrika died in the tsunami. The son John and daughter Sophia survived.
Barely two years after the tsunami debuted Andreas Landgren HIF’s A-team. After a few years as a pro in Italy, Holland and Norway, he came home to Sweden and Halmstad BK. On January 22, 2014 returned Andreas Landgren to Helsingborgs IF and became part of the first team. Andreas has returned to Phuket on two occasions after the tsunami.
Patrick and Lena Brundin has four children ages one to eight years.
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