Photographs tell no lies, or so they say. But it can seem insensitive to thrust graphic photographic images of recent tragedy right up there into the faces of our readers.
It would be outrageous to understate, in any way at all, the tragedy of the tsunami that took so many innocent lives last 26th of December. And so it would be to belittle the respective power and impact of those terrible waves. Whether the wave that killed loved ones was two metres high or ten, every affected individual feels the same pain.
Yet now, after enough time has passed to ease some of the grief and to allow for more reflection, we might look at some photographs and personal experiences that shed perspective upon the tsunami waves that hit Phuket and other areas around the basin of the Andaman Sea.

Banda Aceh

This image was taken 10 days after the tsunami almost a kilometre from the seashore. This was once a prosperous seaside suburb of Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. Note the size of the reinforced concrete pillars in front of this woman, and those in back — all of them toppled, many crumpled, despite their size and the steel rods inside.

So many times in the past, when writing for this magazine, writers, including this one, have described the Andaman Sea as “incredibly tranquil”. But the photograph evidence shows how, in just a few brief moments, we could be proven so incredibly wrong. The day the waves hit Phuket, I was aboard a boat off Koh Panak, in Phang Nga Bay. We felt nothing, and were incredulous at the news that crackled over the radio waves. Ten days later I arrived in Banda Aceh, aware that the devastation there had been incomparable.
The photograph to the left was taken almost a kilometre from Banda Aceh’s shoreline. The concrete pillars seen here were big and solid, reinforced with steel. But steel and concrete were no protection against the might of the waves, and they were toppled, at least, and often pulverized and washed away. What power was capable of doing this?
The tsunami had unleashed even greater destruction on the west coast of Sumatra, though images of the devastation here are far less shocking. There was almost nothing left of entire coastal towns. Nothing remained — no crumpled homes, no twisted metal, no collapsed walls and pillars — from which to create horrific images. All was simply washed clean. In some places, the Sumatran sea captain who guided our dinghy survey of the coast simply could not recognize the locations. His voice conveyed shock and awe as he told us, “There used to be a whole town here. We used to navigate into port by the big buildings, the bridges and the mosques.” But we were staring out over muddied waters with occasional coconut trunks protruding forlornly from the sea. The entire coastline had been etched and eaten, pushed back hundreds of metres towards the background mountains.

Sumatra

The coastal town of Patek once stretched from this mosque to the shoreline, many hundreds of metres in the distance. From here to the coast nothing but concrete slabs remain. Only the reinforcing steel stopped these once-holy pillars from being completely swept away with the rest of the town. There was no vestige of the town, no rubble in any direction.

The pillars of this mosque (above) were the only things left clinging precariously to the foundations of this seaside town. Not even building rubble remained, nothing beyond flat concrete slabs sucked limpet-like against the earth. If concrete and steel pillars had been swept into the mountains or depths of the Andaman, what of the inhabitants?
In Calang, once a bustling coastal port and fishing community of 7,000, a surviving school teacher estimated that only 10 percent of the population had survived: “They were the ones who were away. Like us.” Everything disappeared that morning — including her three sons and their entire home. She and her civil engineer husband were away in the capital for a wedding. She held out her only photograph of three smiling young boys. “Please take this photograph of our sons. Perhaps you will find our boys in a foreign country one day. Perhaps the helicopters found them alive and took them away.” Hopelessness gives birth to desperate dreams.

Phuket

Right after the tsunami and Mom Tri’s Boathouse, directly on the sands at Kata Beach, needs to dry out its mattresses. They’re lucky to have mattresses to dry out? Had they been anywhere near the shore in Sumatra they would not even have a building standing, and probably no people left alive. Here, no staff or guests were lost. While the waves smashed all of the Boathouse’s ground floor walls and furniture out through the back of the building and into the street, not a single pillar was knocked down. And this was right on Phuket’s very front line facing maximum fury.

Back in Phuket, I reflected on concrete pillars and reinforcing steel, first of all at Mom Tri’s Boathouse, for years one of the best places on the island from which to enjoy sunsets with a glass of fine wine. The waves had smashed their way right through this boutique resort to the street behind. One would have expected something dramatic, given that the Boathouse’s tables lie so close to Kata Beach that one of its managers once famously fell off its balcony onto the sand while serving guests. Happily, Kata’s sands are soft, and he survived the two-metre drop. Yet the waves, while punching the entire ground floor out onto the back street, didn’t damage the concrete pillars. A full 30 centimetres thick, these were nevertheless much thinner than many I’d seen pulverized in Banda Aceh a full kilometre from shore. And the Boathouse’s second-floor rooms remained untouched. By the 26th of February the redecorated ground-floor restaurant opened again with a fancy charity party.
But Kata was not the hardest hit on Phuket. Kamala has that distinction. Along the beachfront here — and much further inland — many restaurants, shops and bars were completely destroyed. Rubble of log pillars and roofs and cars was smashed into shopfronts. Perhaps 60 people died here, many of them locals who had run out on the exposed sea bottom to collect fish left flapping by the sudden recession of water that preceded the waves. Kamala, Phuket’s worst-hit beach, was still nowhere nearly as badly damaged as Khao Lak, 100 kilometres to the north and the flashpoint of destruction and death on Thailand’s Andaman coast.
Kamala suffered most on Phuket, yet a number of buildings right on the beachfront,