Family barely outran wave of destruction
Were it not for a worker in the beachfront Starbucks, a Whitworth College student is certain she and her parents would have been counted among the staggering death toll from Sunday’s killer tsunami.
Rachea Allert, 23, says the woman’s warning shout gave her family the critical seconds they needed to outrun the first giant wave that rolled over Patong Beach on Thailand’s Phuket Island, claiming hundreds of lives and crushing everything in its path.
“It kills your heart,” says Rachea.
Rachea sent me an e-mail Monday, detailing her family’s harrowing escape. She called me Wednesday morning from her Bangkok hotel room to add more information.
Her first priority in telling her story is to let all of her friends and loved ones back home know that she and her parents – Les and Dianne – are still a bit shaken up, but OK. She also wants to express her gratitude to that Starbucks employee, whose fate is still unknown to her.
“If not for the young girl seeing the wave, we would not be alive right now.”
The latest Phuket Gazette’s count puts the death toll for this popular island resort at 233 dead and 1,268 injured. Another 1,580 have been reported missing.
It’s a small slice of a truly horrific picture. At least 77,000 people have died since a monster undersea earthquake set off giant waves that slammed the coasts and islands of a dozen countries in South Asia. Many more deaths will come from disease and privations in the wake of this disaster.
“It’s amazing what a wall of water will do,” says Rachea. “Cars were turned upside down. Literally hundreds of shops were turned upside down.” The shop owners, “their lives are literally gone.”
College work took Rachea to Thailand earlier this month. A student enrolled in Whitworth’s master’s in teaching program, Rachea still intends to spend most of January teaching at a Bangkok private school.
Her parents, who live in Ione, Wash., came along for a bit of vacation. They plan to head back home Friday.
Les owns two Perfection Tire stores, one in Spokane on North Division and another in Newport. Dianne is the guidance counselor and alternative school coordinator at Selkirk High School in Metaline Falls. A standout athlete, Rachea played basketball for North Idaho College. She coaches Whitworth’s junior varsity women’s basketball team and for the Spokane Stars.
The day on Patong Beach was picture-perfect before destruction washed in. Patong Beach, states the promotional literature, is “an astonishing combination of breathtakingly beautiful white sand beach edged by the glittering Andaman Sea.” The resort community offers enough shops, nightclubs and restaurants to satisfy any tourist.
The morning after Christmas found the Allerts in an all-glass-enclosed Starbucks, just 75 feet away from the breakwater barrier.
An hour and a half earlier, the Allerts had felt what they thought was a small earthquake. “It lasted approximately one minute – which seemed like five minutes.”
Then at 10 a.m., the employee yelled “Tsunami!” The Allerts seized the moment and ran. “At first I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know if it was a bomb. Somehow we did outrun it. It was just crazy.”
Looking back at the beach, they saw a roiling rage of water pushing its way to land. The magnitude of it gave the scene a surreal, slow-motion quality, she says. In reality, there was nothing at all slow about it. The massive water wall was coming at them. And fast.
The Allerts made it to a rooftop, some 35 feet above ground. The water behind them was 3 feet deep and rising.
“Shortly after the first wave, a second wave came. Cars, buildings and mopeds started piling up on top of one another.”
By noon, the family had made it to their own hotel, a Holiday Inn. From the roof “we saw dead bodies being discovered, many injured people being rushed out and people frantically looking for lost loved ones.”
After the invading waters had retreated, the Allerts retraced their steps, scarcely believing their eyes.
The glass Starbucks they had been sitting in had imploded from the force of the water. Had they stayed, says Rachea, “we’d have been cut up and drowned.”
Now safely in Bangkok, the family is slowly assimilating an experience most of us will never know.
“The smell was horrible, dead people and fish!” Rachea writes. “I cannot imagine what it is like now after a few days in the sun…
“For me this was so scary and I hope people around the world can understand the devastation.”