Danger Signs

Does Wisthnuth ask himself why he has caught so many fish, so easily? Not directly, no. There are other, better, more rewarding things to do than question one’s good fortune; and the time for reflection and analysis is still to come, after the catch is secure and they are safely back on shore. They will end this frantic day by catching an astonishing amount of fish—boatload after boatload. No one in the village had ever heard of such a thing, not even the grandfathers whose job it is to remember everything important that has happened to their people before them.

Unlike Wisthnuth, his younger brother Choite, thirty-four, speaks idiomatic English with an Australian accent, acquired as a part-time tour guide with a Thai travel agency. Wiry, fun-loving, and quick-witted, Choite is popular with his many friends and workmates. On Wednesday, December 23, 2004, he left his office in Phuket Town to attend a party at a nearby restaurant. It was “a terrific party, good fun,” he recalls. Afterwards, he packed his bags and drove his 100-cc motorcycle two hours north to Bang Niang, to be home in time for Christmas, dodging the heavy coastal traffic of diesel trucks and passenger buses all the way. The Bang Niang villagers are mostly Theravada Buddhist, some Muslim, but it is hard to ignore Christmas when up to 10,000 foreigners are celebrating it all around you. It’s a good time to be home, marking the end of the old year and making ready for the new one.

On the early morning of Sunday, December 26, at about 8 a.m., Choite was in his parents’ house—the temporary one, not the new one under construction. The night before, he had attended a dinner with family members and an Austrian couple, and they had had a great night, recounting wonderful stories, singing, telling risqué jokes, and the next morning he was remembering the laughter when his cellphone rang. It was his brother Wisthnuth.

He was on Bang Niang Beach, a kilometre away. Something strange was happening. The tide was supposed to be coming in; instead the water was going out, fast, though hardly anybody on the beach was paying attention. As the beach got bigger, the wet sand was exposed as far as the eye could see. “How far?” Choite asked. Maybe half a kilometre, and it was still receding, Wisthnuth replied. Maybe the sea was going dry?, his brother continued, half-seriously. “Okay, okay!” Choite cut him off. “I’ll call World Travel in Phuket Town. Maybe they know something.”

The company manager told him there had been an earthquake off Sumatra, a big one, an hour before. Patong, just two hours south of Bang Niang by motorcycle, was levelled at that moment. “Okay, okay,” Choite cut off the manager. He rang his brother back and told him that an earthquake’s after-effects had flattened Patong—and that Bang Niang Beach, where Wisthnuth was standing, would be next.

“It was lucky for me I went to school,” Choite recalls, “because I learned what happens when the sea goes dry.” “Tell people to leave the beach!” Choite cried out to his brother. “Right now!” Wisthnuth duly started telling people around him, and Choite could hear the words clearly through the cellphone. “Tell them to go the hills quickly!” he added frantically.

Wisthnuth handed his cellphone to a district policeman strolling along the shore, and to his relief Choite heard the policeman loudly repeat the message to bystanders, brusquely ordering them to move quickly off the beach.

Choite cut the line and got on his motorcycle and headed straight down to the water, thinking, “I have to go see this thing myself.” Just as he left, he told his sister to pray and light some incense sticks for their brother-in-law, who was out alone on a fishing boat near Phra Thong Island, up the coast. Then he roared off down to the sand. The water off Bang Niang Beach was now one kilometre away and fishing boats were sitting in the wet sand. And in the distance he could see it: the wave, about a kilometre or so away. It was twisted and black, and moving very, very fast. It came to the first of the marooned long-tail boats and turned the twelve-metre vessel around on its stern and ate it. The boat completely disappeared and then the black wave ate each boat in turn. As they all disappeared, many foreigners stood there, watching, amazed by the sight, and Choite began shouting, still sitting on his bike, “Run back to the hill! Run, run!”

Choite knew he could pick up two people on his motorcycle, and might live with this knowledge for the rest of his days, but what he felt was the need to save his family, his brothers and sisters, his wife and children. He raced back to the temporary house, zigzagging his bike up through the sand, pushing off with his legs when he had to, going around obstacles, an abandoned truck full of cement bags, a load of wooden pallets. The traffic was growing as people ran to their cars. People were leaving the area; others were standing, looking out, mesmerized.

He made it across the coastal road and reached the temporary house, a kilometre up the gentle slope. Wisthnuth, his sister, his younger brother, and his own two children were already on motorcycles, ready to leave for the hills. All but his father and mother. His mother was praying at a Buddhist temple two kilometres north along the beach; but his father was right there, in the house, refusing to leave.