Tsunami and Earthquake in Phuket, a Connection Story

 

The temperature reached around 31 degress Celsius outside when I visited to Phuket Aquarium in South Thailand. My tour guide—a black-hair cheerful Thai man with a name that difficult to pronounce and remember even now—was explaining to us about a black starfish life cycle. After allowed us to touched the black starfish, we walked to another room with bigger aquarium on our right, and information booth on our left.

Instead of told us what kind of sea creature inside big aquarium in right, he prefered to paused on booth information in left. The information booth displayed to remember one of the biggest and deadliest disaster in recorded history. His expression turned flat while staring straight at the photo on booth. “This is the photo of Kamala Beach, before and after that day” he continued, “All around me shaking for a few minutes. It was clear that was an earthquake but I thought it was just small local quakes. Never crossed my mind about what was coming afterwards”

His eyes moved to information table filled by list of countries with its number of victims.

“Quickly after there were large wave heading to the shoreline, wiped out all the buildings in front of it. Tsunami attacked very quick, I heard a cry for help and shouting of pain, we were surrounded by fear at that time” He smiled bitterly as he thought about it, “It was the worst day of my entire life”

An undersea earthquake on 2004 with magnitude of 9.1 centered in the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia generated tsunami that hit Thailand, and other 13 countries with estimated 225,000 people killed. Heard the stories made my heart broke into the pieces. I feel connected because his story recalled all the memories at that day. I was in Tangerang, a thousand miles far from tragedy of location but I remember all the news on television, radio, and newspaper told about the similar stories with him. May God bless all the tsunami victims and family.