We had returned from a day of running errands, and dinner was almost ready. I decided to sit down for a minute with a book and a cup of iced coffee, but before I could, the phone rang.
It was Khiow. She asked me where I was (she always does). I told her, and asked her where SHE was, which she hates as it interrupts her story and her line of thought.
"I'm in Bang Niang. Have you heard any news about Thap Lamu (our village) ?" She sounded urgent.
"No, I haven't heard anything. What is it?"
She paused.
"You don't see any cars driving around? Are there people there?"
"It's like always. What is it? What is the news?"
"PaDeng (my Thai name), they say there was an earthquake and a tsunami is coming!"
I looked out the back door, and could see a couple of people here and there. One of them on the phone also. But nothing really unusual. She repeated the information and I said alright, I will check on it.
I went and told Mike. We got on the Internet and looked at the email. No messages there (we are subscribed to get earthquake alerts for anywhere in the world). No sirens were going off in the village. No SMS messages on my phone (signed up for alerts there too). It was probably four PM.
I looked around at the houses across the street. I could hear people jabbering here and there, but not much. A few minutes later, maybe ten minutes, the Thai woman across the street drove up in a tizzy. She ran around the truck, opened the gate to their "warehouse" where they keep their dogs and have big coolers to store fish. She was in a panic, getting the workers to grab all her dogs (about six) and put them into the truck. She ran around hollering at them and they all jumped in their truck and drove off. But said nothing to anyone else.
Things started to pick up. Cars and motorcycles started driving by, all heading in one direction--away. The earthquake had occurred at 3:38 PM. It was now about quarter after four. We still had nothing on our email, or on the news, or on my phone.
Then forty-six minutes after the event we got an email from the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System. And shortly there after I got a "red tsunami alert" on my phone. Mike was looking at the information on the website and calculating times and places.
I closed the front door. Pipo and PoEiCho ran up to the house. I asked them what they were doing, they said they were going over to the tsunami building (our new "escape from calamity" tower). But they said, if we were leaving, could they go with us? I said sure!
Then the Thap Lamu Warning Siren went off. This is a siren, and it is loud. After the siren, it says in Thai, and English, and then Burmese, that there has been an earthquake and that a tsunami is coming. It tells us to go to higher ground. None of us want to take our chances on that new calamity tower. Is it tall enough?
We decide to leave. We are locking the kitties in the house. Better in the house than outside in the aftermath of a tsunami, I figure. I would rather they died in the house than whatever else I can imagine if they are outside running loose.
You are supposed to have a bag ready. All I had was my purse (with money and passports). My passport is all I really care about when things are at that point. Mike grabbed a five gallon jug of water. The girls, their mom, and several others came running into the yard with their purses. I opened all the car doors and said "get in, get in!" More people came, and before we drove out of the yard there were Burmese people hanging off the back bumper. We didn't take time to count, but there had to be fifteen people.
There were still many people standing around, or walking down the street. We had no place to put them.
I have never seen so many vehicles on the road in Thap Lamu. Where did they all come from? Are there really that many people in our village?
It is a five kilometer drive from Thap Lamu to the main highway. It is the only road in and out of the village. And it runs parallel to the sea, between the Thai Army and the Thai Navy base. On that road is not really a good place to be if the tsunami comes. And within one kilometer of the main highway, the cars were backed up in traffic. It had been a little over an hour since the earthquake.
We drove to the OBT building. This was the designated place of refuge during our practices of "oh-pah-yop!" (or exodus--departure). But there were only a few people there. Most of the people had gone over to the Buddhist temple which is where community activities often happen.
We dropped off everybody, and told the local man officiating that we were going back for more. As we went to turn onto the road back to Thap Lamu, the soldier tried to stop us. He said, in his meager English, "Sorry! Tsunami!" We told him we knew and we were picking more people up. Another official told him to let us go, and we went.
I was, myself, getting a little nervous. It had been over an hour since the earthquake. We drove down our road, and many Burmese were milling around, looking a little nervous. We picked up everyone there that wanted to go, and got a few more on the main street. This was not everybody. But not everybody wanted to leave, either.
By six PM, we were back at the OBT. Most people we had brought on our first trip had walked the quarter of a kilometer down to the temple (that's where their friends were). So we pretty much lost "control" of those we had picked up along the way. And there were hundreds of people now at the temple.
Mike wanted to go again. I did not. We stopped and talked to our police friend. He said the tsunami is projected to come to Thap Lamu at 640 PM. We decide to wait it out at OBT.
Six-forty PM came and went. The tsunami had not yet hit Patong, where we go on Sunday. And Patong is south of us, and it would get there first. There were no reports of any waves hitting anywhere.
By seven, everyone was getting pretty restless. Nothing was happening. And shortly thereafter, people started going home, or getting on the road. Between 730 and 8 PM they said the warning was lifted "but be careful." We loaded up the people that were still there that had come with us, and drove back to Thap Lamu. I saw Pipo and PoEiCho sitting in the front yard. They had already gotten a ride home.
As we were coming in the house, I got an SMS on my phone, with a warning from the Thai "National Disaster Warning System" telling us to be ready to "oh-pah-yop" because there had been an earthquake and they were expecting a tsunami. Not a new one. This was a warning for the earthquake that had occurred some four hours earlier. I didn't laugh.
The cats couldn't figure out what all had gone on. But they were nervous. It was a windy night. Nobody was that interested in dinner, even us. In bed by ten PM, we slept really good. If there were aftershocks, you couldn't prove it by us.
I know this has been a long story. But back to the young girl getting off the motorcycle at six the next morning. As we kept walking on our walk, it occurred to me. She might have been one of the ones we took down there, that then walked over to the temple. There was a whole truck load of people somewhere that either got their own ride back (like Pipo's family) or they were still there? A "truck taxi" drove by us with a load of people. He comes to town every morning while we are out walking, but he is usually empty. Did these people have to pay too? I wondered. They had been trying to escape calamity. Was someone making a little extra money off them rather than helping them out?
I asked Mike if we maybe should go see if more people needed a ride (most Burmese have no vehicles--if they have anything, it is a bicycle). I kept walked down the road, and Mike walked home and got the truck. He picked me up and we drove the road to the highway. When we got almost to the highway, there were three ladies--and one little boy and one baby. One lady was carrying a heavy bag of things for her child. They were just starting the walk-- five kilometers.
We picked them up, and communicated as best we could (her Thai was minimal) that we wanted to drive by the temple. By now, there were almost no people still there. The ones who were there, for their morning offerings, had vehicles. They were all Thai. So we asked our ladies if their friends had gone home yet, they said yes, they all go back already. We took these poor ladies home. I felt pretty bad, but then was remembering they weren't where we had dropped them off. Had they been, we would surely have taken them back to our village.
Why do I tell you all this? I guess just to tell you how it went in our village on Wednesday. And to say, any time we take two loads of people down the road one way, we will try to bring (at least) two loads back to where they need to be.
Oh--that tsunami that we thought was going to be the Hand of God crashing down on us? It turned out to be--just a Wave.
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