What Matters: April 2005
The Tsunami Aftermath: Doing What Can Be Done
By Anita D. Horton '77, SM '77
I have been working in development programs in Southeast Asia for the past 16 years. My life is busy and full, and like so many of my fellow alumni, I feel my work is important. I have hope that, with God's grace, I can make some small difference for the better in people's lives. Sometimes after months of long hours and plenty of stress, I can take a breather. That was the situation in mid-December 2004. I took two weeks off.
I enjoyed preparing for and sharing Christmas festivities in the Thai village where I had worked for several years and made plans for celebrating New Year's with my friends. Plans. Schedules. The illusion that we are in control of our lives. Sometimes an event happens that challenges those illusions. December 26, 2004, and the days that followed were filled with events like that for me, and for thousands of people in Thailand, Indonesia, South Asia, and around the globe.
I was not in the midst of the Tsunami. I was relaxing in a country resort almost a thousand miles away when the waves struck the beaches of Phi Phi Islands and Khao Lak in the South of Thailand. Several MIT alumni were on Khao Lak beach, and one amazing account is given by Paul Kan '92. I watched television, saw the many broken and twisted bodies intertwined with rubble and debris. The bungalow on beautiful Phi Phi Island where my daughter and I had vacationed in July was swept away, along with its inhabitants. It seemed impossible. How could so many thousands die so suddenly in the midst of such beauty? I found it difficult to imagine the plans I had made for New Year's celebrations. I and many, many others felt a desire to share the pain, to do all we could to bring help. I telephoned close friends who were on vacation in Phuket. I listened to their stories of unidentified people in hospitals, families separated in the violence, parents searching for children in temples, hospitals, and morgues. It was like the scene of the Tower of Babel, with so many different tourist nationalities and languages involved. Volunteer translators were working frantically to help already traumatized victims communicate with Thai medical personal, police, and officials. I speak Thai fluently and also speak or read several other languages. I knew that I had to go, to do whatever I could.
Driving south to offer help
A friend and I left on Monday night to drive 900 miles to the South in my four-door pickup, along with several villagers whose family members were missing. We arrived about 48 hours after the Tsunami hit Thailand. Much of the medical work associated with the disaster was underway, with surviving patients released or transferred to Bangkok or home countries. The focus had shifted from medical assistance to the injured, to the grim task of trying to identify those who had died. Thousand of bodies were being recovered from buildings, mangroves, islands, and beaches.
Within hours of arriving, a call came requesting a Thai-speaking, multi-lingual, take-charge type of person who could assist in coordinating volunteers at the center where thousands unidentified bodies were going to be placed. The phone was passed to me, and I said yes. I lived in the body processing center of Yan Yao Temple for the next few days. There were many volunteers, both Thai and foreign. Some were university faculty or students or medical professionals. Some were tourists or staff sent by their companies to help, and, of course, there were local people and government officials. Others were family or friends of the missing victims. We were joined together by a common mission.
What did I do?
I began by assisting in communicating needs for volunteers to the coordinating center in Phuket. We requested many volunteers to assist inside the body processing and storage area in a physically and psychologically challenging environment. We also had to be concerned about the trauma that volunteers experienced in such conditions. Many had never seen a dead body, much less had to be in the midst of thousands of bodies. We organized a team of trauma counselors to prepare and debrief the volunteers. Still, I am sure that many of them will live with nightmares all their lives from what they have seen and experienced. Certainly none of us will ever be the same as before.
After we set up a volunteer coordinating desk, I began to get involved in many other things using language, management, and IT skills—even a bit of engineering input into the construction of an ad hoc system for containing all the body fluids and waste from the forensic processing. I assisted families and embassy staff looking for clues to the identities of the bodies. I helped think about processes for gathering, recording, and communicating forensic data. I went through documents, card, and personal articles retrieved from bodies or beaches or elsewhere looking for clues to nationality, identity, names. For example, items like a wedding ring with a Swedish woman's name inside and a wedding date gave valuable clues to the identity of the man wearing that ring. I talked to business people who wanted to donate equipment, as well as to embassies, families, hospitals, and government officials. I talked with those who were despairing in their search for loved ones, sometimes helping them think through next steps, sometimes just holding their hand tightly. That was the hardest part of the task. There were too many bodies to think about them individually, but the stories and the tears of their loved ones made the bodies become real people to me.
Then, in the evenings when many of the volunteers had to leave, I went inside to help with receiving bodies. Hundreds of bodies came to us in body bags each night, truck loads at a time. We were waiting, suited from head to toe in our protective gloves, garments, and boots. When they came, we carefully unloaded the fragile bodies, arranging them in rows on sheets of plastic on the ground in the temple complex, placing dry ice around the bodies to preserve them. At the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, that is where I was, unloading bodies, moving about in the midst of swirling smoke from the dry ice on the ground, surrounded by hundreds of bodies laid out in neat rows.
Unimaginable challenges
Yes, there are unimaginable challenges to such a situation. Sudden and unexpected violent deaths of thousands of people of various nationalities and races in a few hours are fortunately not something our world has experienced often. I was amazed at how well the Thai people, officially and unofficially, rose to the task. Not because everything was well organized by some plan or coordination, but because of a sincere and heartfelt determination to do all they could to help those suffering in their country, both Thai and foreign. Disaster plans would have been a good thing, but I am convinced that the most important preparedness in those first hours and days was the preparedness in the hearts of the individual heroes who took initiatives to save lives and provide help to survivors. Even today, the relief works continues to rely on the hearts of people willing to give weeks or years of their lives to care for and help rebuild the lives devastated by the tsunami.
One thing that distinguishes this disaster from others has been the almost universal response of people worldwide. I am not sure I understand all the reasons for this response, but several circumstances seem to contribute to it.
First of all, we humans were confronted with the fact that our lives are so fragile in the face of such a natural force. We discovered that humans have no plans or schedules that cannot be disrupted or terminated in a matter of minutes. One senseless death from an accident or a crime can be disturbing, but so many lives, crushed and flung aside by a power we cannot control or even reliably predict makes all of humanity aware of its vulnerability.
Secondly, in the response to the tsunami, there was no issue to divide us. There were no political, religious, or philosophical sides to take—only a sense of undeserved pain, suffering, and loss. Compassion flowed freely from all our hearts, joining us together, unifying us in our desire to help. The healing and rebuilding efforts will go on for years, and it is my prayer that these joint efforts will not only succeed in rebuilding the lives of the victims of the tsunami, but also continue to bear fruit in bringing all of humanity to a sense of common interest and existence in this world.
And my life after five days in Yan Yao Temple?
I returned to my work as an international advisor in a Greater Mekong Subregion organization. It was hard to leave, but the need was for full time workers to carry on the long-term recovery activities. It was time for all of us to return to our normal lives; although we will always be linked by this experience we shared. I did not cry until I finally arrived home. I want to hug all my loved ones often, to consider the important things in life, and try not to lose perspective in the midst of all the busy-ness of my career. I can say that, in spite of all the destruction it brought, the tsunami changed my life in good ways. I think there are many others who could say the same.
About the Author
Anita D. Horton '77, SM '77 is an international advisor at the Mekong Institute, a Thai-based organization that provides leadership, development and regional cooperation learning programs for public and private sector personnel in six countries.
What Matters is a guest opinion column written by a different MIT alumnus or alumna. The views expressed are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Alumni Association or MIT. Interested in writing a column? Email whatmatters@mit.edu.
