Tsunami survivor recounts 'running for our lives'
By Tamara McLeanThu Oct 1 21:20:54 EST 2009
Thu Oct 1 11:20:54 UTC 2009
APIA, Sept 30 AAP - It was supposed to be ten days of blissful rest and relaxation, and for nine days it was.
On the last morning, Victorian Claire Rowlands was woken by a violent jolt which sent her running for the hills behind her Samoan seaside resort.
Her travelling companion, Vivien Hodgins, 56, of Ballarat, didn't make it.
Ms Rowlands is now lying battered and bruised with other tsunami victims in a crowded makeshift ward at the national hospital in the capital Apia, awaiting an operation and longing for relief from her own memories.
"I just can't think about it or I'll cry," she told AAP in the hospital ward, which is decorated with cartoons of Sesame Street characters.
"I've been crying a lot. She (Ms Hodgins) didn't make it. It doesn't bear thinking about."
The long-time friends were staying in the village of Lalomanu, once one of the most beautiful parts of Samoa's southern coast now hardest hit by the tsunami.
The tsunami generated by the 8.3-magnitude quake was at its fastest and fiercest here, giving the hundreds of local residents and tourists little time to get clear.
"I remember we were all running, running for our lives, before the first wave. We didn't make it and got sucked back and forward over rocks and everything for ages. It was just horrible," Ms Rowlands said.
She heaped praise on the local people but said she could never return to Samoa as a tourist again.
"Not after what I've been through. It was my worst nightmare."
The death toll from the tsunami is expected to keep climbing as the search for the missing continues.
The latest official count in Samoa is 110, including four Australians and a New Zealand toddler with permanent Australian residency. This takes the total, including lives lost in Tonga and Western Samoa, to 149.
Most families in the village of Lalomanu lost at least two members.
Ben Taufua, who ran the Taufua Beach Fales where Ms Rowlands was staying, lost 11 in his family including his father.
A British-born New Zealand couple also lying in the tsunami ward lost their young child.
The traumatised pair have given the child's description to AusAID paramedic, Steve Williams, a Victorian given the job of caring for displaced Australians and New Zealanders.
"It breaks your heart to hear their story," Mr Williams said, who has the grim task of matching bodies of Europeans in the hospital's overflowing morgue with the identifying features marked in his little notebook.
"It was just a little child. As you can imagine, they are totally distressed."
Also among those receiving treatment were two German couples and several dozen Samoan locals.
Six injured Australians were evacuated on Thursday night Australian time.
The hospital's morgue was filling up, with 110 bodies now being held there.
"It's getting very packed in there," hospital manager Dr Lemalu Fiu told AAP.
"And many, many of the bodies belong to young people, some very young. It's very hard to see."
He praised the dozens of Australian doctors and student doctors who were working around the clock to operate on the very sick.
"Thank you, Australia. It has been such a relief for us to get all those helping hands."
