News of tsunamis sparks frantic searches from afar

As South Asia rescuers worked to cope with the death and destruction of devastating tsunamis, Spokane area residents struggled to get in touch with family members and friends 8,000 miles away.

As word of Sunday’s disaster spread, calls came every five minutes to Wanda Reynolds’ office at Gonzaga University.

Reynolds is director of GU’s study-abroad program. Sunday morning, she went to her office to check maps to locate where Gonzaga students were visiting. Students from the Florence, Italy, program were touring Thailand.

They’re fine and traveling about 1,000 miles from the affected sites, Reynolds said.

“This is huge,” Reynolds said. “It’s been since 1899 since anything close to this happened in the world.”

Sri Devi, a 30-year-old Spokane homemaker who came to Spokane from India a year ago, received word from her family that they had survived the waves that crashed ashore in Madras, one of the most devastated cities in India. But Devi, whose husband is a software engineer, said a family friend was swept out to sea while he was walking on the beach. His body was found five miles away.

“Many fishermen, many people who have gone for walks on the beach, they are just gone,” Devi said. “It is terrible.”

Asian papers are reporting that people were observing a holy day in the water, a full-moon day, and were washed away in an instant, said VJ Pavani, a Spokane woman who had worked as a journalist in India.

“I wish I were in India,” Pavani said. “I don’t know what I would be doing there, but I feel homesick when something like this happens.”

Dale Schwartz, a high school teacher from the Spokane Valley, received calls Sunday from people who expected him to be in Thailand.

Schwartz had planned a December trip to help a Thailand orphanage with a group of volunteers from the Mirabeau Church. His group had flights to Bangkok, but they couldn’t secure return flights and had to cancel.

“Everyone, including myself, believes that God had other plans for our group,” Schwartz said. “He didn’t want us to go (yet).”

Now he’s planning on retooling his trip to go where his $13,000 in aid can help the most. He said he’d like to be helping there now, but due to everyone’s work demands, they’ll likely plan another trip in March.

“Our goal is to find out through Bangkok where they can best use us,” Schwartz said.

Officials at Washington State University are preparing a letter for the 133 students from the affected countries, including 83 students from India and 22 from Indonesia. Officials didn’t have any way of knowing how many students had returned home for Christmas break and how many had remained on campus.

The Community Colleges of Spokane has one student from Indonesia and one from Malaysia enrolled in classes in Spokane, but a school spokeswoman said the students’ families were not affected by the flooding.

Washington’s Gov. Gary Locke said the disaster has inspired the state Emergency Management Division to further develop an early warning system should a tsunami head for Washington coasts. However, preparation is easier than predicting such a disaster.

“Nobody can do anything about these natural catastrophes,” Mallur Nandagopal, an engineer for the city of Spokane Water Department, said. “Nobody can predict this.”

Nandagopal, 64, left his home in southern India more than 27 years ago. His hometown of Bangalore was largely spared, he said.

Hindu temples, including Spokane’s Sikh temple, will collect donations for victims. But for many Indians living in the United States, Nandagopal said, “Nothing can be done other than talking to friends.”

The search for friends played out all over Spokane.

“We have friends who may be down in the south area,” said Carl Wilson, owner of Riverview Thai in Spokane, whose wife has family near Bangkok. “We haven’t heard anything from anyone. We haven’t been able to contact them either.”

He has friends from California who were staying in Phuket, Thailand, a hard-hit area.

“I’m sure everyone in the world is calling everyone they know over there,” Wilson said.

Wilson has traveled throughout Thailand and seen the Third World nation become one of the region’s most progressive countries in terms of medicine, police protection and military. But Thailand remains a country where people live to the rhythm of the ocean and sunrises.

“They live on the beaches in bamboo shacks with no communications,” he said.

They’re accustomed to the typhoons that they can see coming. This was different and out of the blue, he said.

“It’s like a giant fly swatter came down and smacked them. There was no escape,” Wilson said.