January 14, 2005

Tsunami Survivors

Evergreen family returns to U.S. unharmed

By Anila Khan
Times Intern

“Mom, I think it’s a tsunami,” whispered 14-year-old Mila Tremblay to her mom while standing on a beach in Krabi, Thailand, on Dec. 26. Mila’s instinct was right.

(From left) Maxime Tremblay, Pat Phravorachith, Robert Tremblay and Mila Tremblay are now safely in their Evergreen home after a frightening, yet exciting, journey. Good luck and timing saved their lives. Photo by Anila Khan

Three weeks later—with an official death toll of 157,000 and more than 25,000 still missing—the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster has touched every corner of the globe, including Evergreen.

Fortunately, this Evergreen Valley High School student and her family survived to share their personal account of the devastating walls of water that crushed shorelines in Thailand, Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka after the most powerful earthquake recorded in nearly 40 years.

The stories surfacing today range from hope, joy and survival to grief, desperation and death. For Evergreen residents of eight years Pat Phravorachith, Robert Tremblay and their two children, Mila and Maxime, theirs is story of luck and gratitude.

A trip in review
On Dec. 16 the family of four left for a holiday trip of sightseeing and family visits to Asia. Prior to moving to Evergreen, they had lived in Canada, yet Pat still had relatives in Laos.

Starting out in Bangkok, the Tremblays spent two days and a whole lot of money there. They shopped and spent time with the exotic animals of the region.

Moving along on their trip, the family went to Kao Lak for four days, and then traveled to Phuket. After about two hours, they decided to leave the overcrowded Phuket and head to the more serene setting of Krabi, about an hour and a half drive via a rental car.

In Krabi, they spent three days just “being tourists” while they rode elephants and fed monkeys. On Dec. 26, , while they were in Krabi, the tsunami hit.

The day of the disaster
Early in the morning of Dec. 26, an earthquake awakened the Tremblays in their hotel. They felt the rumbling twice in the morning, but assumed that it was a truck passing by both times.

The restaurant where the Tremblays had eaten for two nights prior to the tsunami was destroyed in a matter of seconds. Photo by Robert Tremblay

Their truck theory seemed to be viable when they went down for breakfast and nobody knew of an earthquake occurring. Pat Phravorachith remembers thinking, “Wow, I must have been dreaming, because that shake lasted for more than three minutes.”

That morning they were scheduled to rent a taxi boat for a trip to nearby Phi Phi Island. As luck would have it, they got a late start, and since the boat was supposed to leave at 10:30 a.m., they decided to catch the 12:30 p.m. boat instead.

In the meantime, they began arranging for their tickets to Laos, where relatives anticipated their arrival. When it was time to catch the taxi boat to Phi Phi Island, they checked out of their hotel. It was about noon.
During the process, they heard a lot of commotion outside.

“We were late to check out,” remembered Maxime, a sixth grader at Tom Matsumoto Elementary School. “Suddenly we heard a baby screaming, and noticed that the grass near the restaurant was completely flooded. Someone told us that there would be another wave coming through.”

In the hotel courtyard they saw throngs of people running, yelling and basically looking completely surprised. Knowing that Krabi was situated in a shallow area where they could walk out in the ocean for hundreds of feet and still be only knee-deep in the water, the town typically didn’t see any large waves, much less floods.

“Generally speaking of Krabi, there is a beach, there is a wall and there is a street. The street is higher than in other cities. In other cities the street is level with the beach,” Robert recalled.

People, including the Tremblays, who were still in the courtyard observing the waves and taking pictures, crowded onto the beach again waiting for the next wave to arrive.

“In our area, the waves weren’t as big as they typically are in Phuket. We didn’t feel we were in danger,” added Mila, noting that they had no idea what was happening anywhere else.

Increasingly larger waves began lapping up on the shore, but according to the Tremblays, no one seemed worried.

Why was everyone so anxious to see the waves? Didn’t anyone know that this might turn into a very serious disaster?

The truth is, no one did.

A tsunami was so uncommon in that area, no one even considered it. Pat remembers asking the hotel clerk about the possibility and he replied, “No ma’am, that has never happened before. I’ve been living here for 40 years, such a thing has never happened.”

The Tremblays noticed the tide receding and the sand was visible again. Yet when the waves returned, they were a lot larger—about 10 to 15 feet high and very close to the Tremblays.

That’s when everyone realized it was time to run. Boutique windows were smashed, with broken glass spread out onto the street and fabric swept away. Shattered fishing boats stretched across the shoreline. Uprooted trees were thrown everywhere. The restaurant the Tremblays had eaten in for the past two nights was destroyed.

“The tables were toppled over, and water and sand covered the floor,” explained Mila.

Despite the commotion, there was no major damage. Most of the casualties were people on boats, and most of the injuries to the people on land resulted from falls or cuts from the broken glass on the street.

Most of the deaths in Krabi were people who had been on boats when the tsunami hit. Remains of the boats were scattered along the beaches. Photo by Robert Tremblay

The Tremblays were not harmed, and their family in Laos was not hit by the tsunami. Because they had packed all of their belongings in their car earlier, with plans to visit Phi Phi island, nothing got damaged.

Just one day before the tsunami, the Evergreen family had been kayaking. And the city they had visited just days before, Kao Lak, was completely demolished.

“If we hadn’t woken up later, we would have died,” realized Mila. “We all feel really, really lucky that we did something different [than we originally planned].”

“I feel grateful that we didn’t take the boat that day,” added Maxime.

A story of sorrow
The Tremblays met a Swedish family with a pair of twins in their travels, but never saw them again after the tsunami.

“We met the twins at Kao Lak. We noticed them because they were always crying and always seemed to be where we were,” said Mila.

“We started talking with the family, and they told us about how they were planning to stay in Kao Lak for a few more days and then go to Phi Phi Island for a week. However, on the day of the tsunami, both the people on Phi Phi Island and in Kao Lak were injured, missing or dead because of the tsunami, and we don’t know what happened to them.”

Settling down
The power was out in Krabi from about 2 p.m. until 7 p.m., and it wasn’t until then that the family realized how close to death they had come at least three times in the past week. The checked into a hotel at a higher elevation that night, and then took a boat to Ko Samui, an island on the other side of Thailand that was not hit.

Boarding a boat or even entering the water just one day after the tsunami proved just a bit frightening, but they made it safely to Ko Samui and stayed there for three days before taking a flight to Laos.

After visiting relatives for a few days, on Jan. 5 the Tremblays returned physically just as they had departed, but they will never be the same. A brush with death will do that to a person.

If you or a relative has a personal tsunami story to share with the community to help put a local face on a global tragedy, contact Editor Bea Baechle, (408) 494-7000, ext. 203.