World - Reuters

Tsunami Wipes Entire Thai Village Off Map
1 hour, 22 minutes ago

By Mark Bendeich

    BAN NAMKHEM, Thailand (Reuters) - This fishing village just north of Thailand's Khao Lak beach does not exist any more and Maitri Sayput, 47, thinks that after Sunday's tsunami she is one of its few survivors.

    The giant waves that wrought destruction around the shores of the Indian Ocean, killing more than 120,000 people, left only the two-story school building standing in Ban Namkhem, which occupied a shallow depression behind the beach.

    The wooden houses that were home to an estimated 1,700 families -- perhaps 5,000 people or more -- are gone. All that remains is a sea of mud. Pigs were rooting through it on Friday, weaving their way around big fishing boats carried deep inland.

    The tsunami struck at the worst time: the fishermen were at home, waiting for the tide to turn, and school was out, leaving the only safe haven empty and children playing in the streets.

    "The water took my baby away," Maitri said Friday, recalling how she made her escape by bike, hauling aboard her three daughters, aged 7, 12 and 18, before speeding inland as fast as she could.

    The tsunami overtook her, tore the 7-year-old and the eldest daughter away and finally deposited her and the 12-year-old 1 km (1,000 yards) inland.

    Maitri said she had no news of her husband or the two missing daughters. She and other villagers feared that thousands lay beneath the mud that was once a busy, self-sufficient community, which also relied on a small prawn farm.

    Heavy equipment to dig through the mud to retrieve bodies has only just started work in earnest, some villagers said, in contrast to Khao Lak 30 km (20 miles) away where all kinds of mechanical equipment were clearing debris as early as Wednesday.

    More than 3,100 bodies have been retrieved from Khao Lak's beach and its crumpled luxury hotels, nearly 2,000 of them foreigners. Some villagers felt that up to 2,000 could be buried beneath the baking mud of Ban Namkhem.

    "At the time, the men were not out fishing. It was low tide," said Sunit Ketpia, a water carter who bundled his wife, 11-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son into a car and sped to safety.

    "There aren't enough machines to work here, they have to work many more days to finish everything," he said.