An unholy scene in Banda Aceh. Click for the full-size shot.

Wave of Destruction
By Erich Krauss
Published by Vision Paperbacks
Reviewed by Paul Dorsey

Swallowed whole

Though the focus sometimes falters between the strident sea and the mangled shore, Nam Khem’s tsunami horrors are recounted with great affection.

The Nation
To be published in February
The last that most Nation readers heard about Nam Khem was in our news update in early December on the mess it’s still in because well-intentioned donors were falling all over each other to help fix the place. So it comes as a bit of relief having a book that puts a genuinely human face to the tsunami tragedy in this little corner of Phang Nga, and the fiasco that’s followed.
Having said that, Erich Krauss lets slip much of his emotional hold on the reader by getting a bit preachy in his epilogue about the continuing corruption, land swindles and incompetence that are stopping the residents from making much progress.
Though doubtless never intended as a definitive tsunami book, “Wave of Destruction” is a fine contribution to the record that’s just beginning to emerge. It moves among four poor families, a policeman and a physician to examine one edge of the mother of all disasters, as it afflicted Baan Nam Khem, which was ignored in the days immediately following the tsunami in favour of the more prominent places further south and offshore.
Krauss, a muay thai contender who was trekking in the North when the waves hit the South, met his protagonists after volunteering for the recovery and rebuilding, in part putting to use his degree in “physical geography with an emphasis on geomorphology and natural disasters”. He’s previously written about California wildfires and the ongoing debacle that is the Mexico-US border.
Krauss is sharing some of his book-sale receipts with the US-based group Compassion in Action, which pitched in manually and financially in Nam Khem, but he writes with disdain about the counter-productive confusion surrounding relief efforts there. These overlapping contributions, The Nation reported, have resulted in the village being variously renamed Baan iTV, Baan Washington DC, Baan Everton Chang, Baan Rotary, Baan Thai Red Cross etc etc in honour of its successive patrons.
“Wave of Destruction” gets off to a tentative start with a lengthy introduction to the principle players that’s meant to be character development, but tempts tedium. There are all the usual poor-villager stereotypes: Land-ownership disputes, alcohol abuse, womanising and nasty accidents imperil already precarious lives spent fishing, rice farming and tin mining. Everyone is wondering how things could possibly get any worse, but of course we know what’s coming next, so the suspense is tenuous, and at this point sympathy for the strugglers can only go so far, as the sea prepares to impose convergence on their disparate destinies.
Still ahead of the tempest, Krauss finds far better traction when he identifies former deputy Interior minister Suchart Tancharoen, reputed owner of Far East and Construction Co, as a “corrupt politician” behind the land-grabbers’ bullying, but once the waves approach shore he truly becomes a wonderful storyteller. One of his central subjects, Wimon, is out fishing from his longtail boat.
“He scooted forward and looked overboard. He saw rocks below the surface. Even when the water was crystal clear he couldn’t see the bottom, not this far out. As he tried to figure out what was going on, he suddenly got the sense of movement. He looked inland and saw that the beach had grown five times in size. The tide had gone out, way out. ‘What do you make of this?’ he asked Prakong. Prakong, sitting at the front of the boat, spooned some rice into his mouth and then looked overboard. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? I’m not sure. Could you pass me a slice of your watermelon?’”
Nam Khem was third in line for the mighty waves after they’d raked Patong and Khao Lak. The book’s onshore protagonists were scattered beyond the village, and thus escaped the near-total destruction there: Of the 1,911 Thais killed by the tsunami, 941 lived in Nam Khem, and the village still hasn’t found 502 others. A thousand homes were swept away, leaving about 200.
Running inland from the first assault, Nang clambers onto a truck bed with her baby in her arms, and they’re engulfed. After a minute or so she stands up, raising her head above water, then remembers her infant daughter and hoists her up to find her blue. She hears the second wave coming.
“Screaming and crying at the same time, she let the baby go. The water carried her for a few yards, then the tiny body disappeared beneath the surface. For a few seconds Nang gazed at the spot where her baby had vanished, knowing that now even if she somehow survived this she would never sleep another night.”
What happens next is scarier than imagination commonly allows. Kraus is adept at focusing on the individual terrors of that morning; each tale presumably recounted for him in harrowing detail by those who endured the monstrous frenzy.
Another woman watches the wave recede from the hotel lobby beneath her, carrying away bodies and debris like a “massive frog’s tongue” retracting with its prey. Still another looks on from a treetop as an elderly neighbour up a second tree is harassed by a floating sharp-edged roof. The old woman drops into the water, only to be immediately covered by the roof as it sinks, with her “in its belly”.
There is much more like this – gripping anecdotes faithfully retold – so it’s a shame that the book loses much of its impetus once the immediate calamity ends. The introduction here of the policeman and doctor allows Krauss to detail the ungodly chaos of the aftermath, but the facts and figures tend to weaken the impact rather than add to its weight. The human-interest quotient becomes watered down by an effort at incensed reportage, and though the story of the looters and seedy politicos is a crucial part of the big picture, it.would have been better told by the main characters themselves.
There are well-known names in Krauss’ rendition, though oddly two of them go without surnames even when he has no hesitation identifying others fully. Forensics specialist Khunying Pornthip (Rojanasunan) is, of course, among the heroes, as is “Mr Sorayuth” (Suttassanachinda), who answers Wimol’s appeal for some attention for Nam Khem with immense personal generosity, almost too much for the village’s own good.
Also mentioned with great admiration is Phuket restaurateur Sudthida Somsakserm, who swept Krauss into her own rescue efforts, but the author’s bile spills onto Nam Khem headman Sathien Petkliang. He’s called a crook outright, and one wonders if Krauss doesn’t have a lawsuit coming his way, if not from Sathien then perhaps Suchart.
A flawed but remarkable chapter in the tsunami drama, “Wave of Destruction” warrants much praise for its honest and heartfelt recounting of the suffering and shock. Krauss leaves his central characters in a turgid state of uncertainty, but there is hope in just having heard their stories of survival in the midst of enormous loss.