Brushed by Catastrophe: an Eye-witness Account of the Tsunami
While watching the yacht, suddenly the water comes up over the steep incline and in a flash covers the ground between, hits the patio, but not enough to wet the top of the deck chairs, and just barely splashes against the sliding glass doors. Water seeps in.
Within a few minutes, several security people are into the room checking that we're alright, and urging us to leave the room to go to the lobby.
Saifa starts to cry that she loves the boat but the boat is dead, referring to the yacht floundering against the sandbar. I call it a sandbar, but it's really just a kind of an underwater hill, that slopes off sharply immediately after, with the space between that hill and the beachfront also being quite deep. The water in the cove out to the horizon from our vantage point is quite flat, almost placid, as every day, except for an 8 to 10 foot solitary long wave that rises out of the deep every few minutes, that pounds the side of the yacht so that she nearly tips over each time. No action from the crew whatsoever. Finally we see the yacht trying to turn into the oncoming waves. Quite a struggle, as each time she's turned 30 or 40 degrees back out to see, she's slammed again by the next wave. Finally, she's headed straight out, hits the oncoming wave head-on rises about 45 degreed and plunges down the other side, but somehow keeps going. We're trying to imagine what happened to the Captain, passengers and crew of the yacht. Maybe everyone was knocked out with the first wave,then someone awoke and decided to try to get out to sea...
Later we heard that more than 250 fishing and pleasure boats that were out at sea when the wave hit the coast never returned. One can only imaging the "fear of God" that must have entered into the people out on the yacht and all these missing ships and others that survived. At the lobby most of the other guests, especially those on the ground floor, have gathered. The hotel staff security and management tell us that they are told that a second wave will hit.
We looked at the swimming pool from the balcony of the 2 restaurants. From the lobby, where the check in counters are also located, there's a long wide shallow pool situated
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