Khao Lak changed me forever
In 2004 Neil Warren was working as a reporter for Channel Seven covering the 2004 tsunami disaster. This is his account of that time.
There are a few moments in time that change your life.
For me, covering the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami in Thailand was one of them.
I think it’s safe to say none of the crews heading to any of the tsunami hotspots had any idea what they were about to endure.
I had done plenty of stories in Phuket and surrounds, blinkers on, focused, just doing the job reporting on a disaster.
I'd done what you do to get through: Told the audience an important story, factually and with compassion, listened to the harrowing pleas from relatives trying to find loved ones, tried hard not to get too emotionally attached. Whatever you do, I'd told myself,
try not to look at too many bodies.
But one afternoon in the resort region of Khao Lak came that life changing moment.
You couldn’t avoid the bodies. You were stepping over them every few metres.
Unlike Phuket, where many hotels are built high up a slope, Khao Lak is flat, built on the beach, with a hill behind.
There is no inland ... nowhere for water to drain away except back into the ocean ... nowhere for victims caught in a tsunami to swim with the tide.
I heard about Khao Lak after being in Phuket for a few days.
Word was getting around that a resort village had been flattened, and no rescuers had been there yet.
There was a strong possibility Australians were there.
We decided to drive there and see if it was true. It was.
We were the first media crew there, arriving at the same time as rescuers and Australian Federal Police officers.
The beach was littered with rubble and bodies as far as the eye could see.
An American man and his daughter were standing on a pile of concrete that used to be their unit.
They were holding photos of his other daughter.
They were sure she would’ve survived. They held so much faith.
I could smell death, right under where they were standing, but there’s no way I wanted to tell them that and extinguish any hope that remained in their minds.
It was all so raw.
As we were packing up to leave, I took one last look down to the beach from the road above.
Sightseers were starting to drive past in their cars.
One passenger stuck his head out the window and was sick on the road in front of us.
That was the moment I realised the gravity of what we’d just covered.
Bodies, wrapped in plastic, were being carried up onto the road by locals.
The smell was becoming unbearable.
The next morning I woke early to do a Sunrise live cross. I reached over to the bedside table to grab a bottle of water; it tasted like the stench of corpses from the day before.
I can still taste that.
I spoke to a colleague from a rival network the day I was leaving.
We told each other our stories, the horror we had seen. He dry-retched while telling his.
Not a single person who was there wasn’t affected to some extent, some more than others … most of all, those poor families who lost someone.
I had nightmares for a month after getting back to Brisbane, faces wide-eyed, terrified, floating around in water.
Channel 7 made it mandatory that anyone who covered the Tsunami see a counsellor.
The counsellor I went to listened to my story, stared at me with a shocked look on her face and said “I don’t know what to say to you”.
No-one would, you had to be there. The best therapy was talking about it with people who had shared the awful experience. We did that, as a group, at times over a beer. Over time, it worked.
Sure there are still flashbacks, but the anxiety attacks are few and far between these days.
It was one of those rare moments in time: A life-changer.
It made me more understanding, caring, but tougher if that makes sense.
On the downside I’m less tolerant of fools, or people with petty complaints. I’m working on that.
I’m one of the lucky ones.
I often wonder how everyone else is doing … my colleagues, rescuers, the locals, and most of all those poor families.
Where is that American man I interviewed on the pile of rubble? I really hope he’s doing okay.
