South China Morning Post, Friday, January 7, 2005, Hong Kong Section, page 2

ASIAN TSUNAMI
'I watched as my wife was sucked into the mud'
A Hong Kong resident offers a chilling first-hand account of a lucky escape

Ran Elfassy: wept at regional loss

My wife Delian and I love to travel, and this year we wanted to take up surfing.

Travelling to a village just 20km away from Galle in Sri Lanka, we signed up for a surf school. On Boxing Day, we were ready for our final class. Cramming into the van with another surfer and four surfboards, we rode the five minutes to Welligama, a perfect setting to hone those water-riding skills.

Floating on our boards, we scanned the horizon for potential waves. The bay was mirror flat, which suggested a disappointing end to what had been a great week.

A few minutes later, I noticed the water line was creeping steadily towards the forest. Seconds later, I chuckled nervously as our van drifted down and off the road.

Impossible, I thought. Crazy.

The waterline kept rising, now lapping the top of a beach house's first floor. Paddling into the shorebound current, I saw large fishing boats, normally beachbound, set adrift.

The water calmed and we stared at a changed landscape.

Before long the flow reversed direction and the water began to drain. Fighting against the receding current, we kept the beach at least 200 metres away.

Finally, all the water drained away like it was never there, and we surveyed the distant swells. Another surge was sure to come, so we started walking across the rivers of silt and debris.

The sluices of mud were stronger than any current I've ever had to cross, but we aimed for an island in the hope of reaching it before the water reached us. Suddenly, I watched my wife stumble and get sucked down into the mud.

I jumped after her, and I have never been so scared in my life. I struggled to reach her as she was pulled under, surfacing 15 metres away.

I was immediately sucked along by a different current, and I fought to keep watching her as she regained her board. In order to jump after her, I had unfastened the leash to my board, and luckily an uprooted bush floated by.

The bush acted as a much needed raft. I screamed and screamed, yelling over the roar of the water for her to swim to shore. Luckily, impossibly, my board came floating by a little way off. I swam hard to regain it, and aimed for a nearby island.

The current was too strong, so I turned the nose towards a fishing boat that was drifting out to sea. Stroking hard, I reached the hull, lifted myself aboard, and waited almost two hours before a rescue boat picked me up.

On the trip to shore, I held on as a swell tossed us against a palm. Landing with a stumble, I got up and immediately sprinted back to where I hoped my wife was waiting, alive. Unbeknown to me, she had made it to shore.

On land, everyone who could had climbed to the roofs of the seaside houses. As the water ebbed, people emerged and looked for their loved ones, most of whom had drowned or were lost.

For two hellish hours, my wife scanned the waves, fearing that I would be another casualty. Running back to Welligama, I desperately searched for a familiar face among the carnage.

When we did suddenly see each other, between broken trees and displaced boulders, relief came as unbridled sobs. Yannick and Sofia, our surf buddies, ran over and embraced us. We were relieved, thankful and bewildered.

That night I slept for just two hours. When morning's merciful light broke, we walked back to Welligama, passing buses that had been tossed by the waves like props in an impossible play. We stood unbelieving before wrecked houses. A new sports car was perched on a 5-metre column, windows shattered, one wheel missing.

Glued to the news, we wept at the regional loss, guilty over our own survival, struggling to quell the tremors before our flight home.

Ran Elfassy is medical editor for a publishing firm in Hong Kong. His wife is an English lecturer at the University of Hong Kong. The couple come from Canada.