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- [00:01]
Emily Gracey
On December 26, 2004, a German tourist named Stefan Kuhn was enjoying a morning on a gorgeous beach in Thailand with his family. He pulled out a video camera and started recording his children playing in the sand. Pretty quickly he notices something strange is going on out in the ocean and he pans the camera and starts discussing it with his wife. What is that? They say. They make note of the boat, boats in the distance being tossed around, but are having trouble deciphering what it is they're actually seeing. There comes a point in the video where their tone changes, becomes more panicked. We should leave here, he says. We should be very high. Stefan and his family start to run. They run away from the beach and toward higher ground. At that point, he drops the camera. It's still hanging around his neck and it's still rolling. You can't see much, but for the next four and a half minutes you can hear every terrified breath of their sprint up the hill. He's saying to his wife, keep going, keep going. And then they reach safety and turn around to take in what has happened. The camera shows that the beautiful beach they just left has been replaced with debris filled water. This is how quickly everything can change. This is the moment. The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people across the Indian Ocean. Today we are going off the radar to hear from another survivor who lived through this unimaginable disaster. A story of survival that goes far beyond that terrifying moment. We're exploring the long journey of recovery in the two decades since. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracey and you're listening to off the Radar, a production of the National Weather Desk. On the show, we dig deep into topics about weather, climate, the ocean, space and much more. Our goal is to help you better understand the weather and to love it as much as we do.
- [02:35]
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- [03:24]
Emily Gracey
20 years ago, a massive undersea earthquake occurred off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The earthquake measured 9.1 on the Richter scale, making it one of the largest seismic events ever recorded. Located at the junction of the Indian and Burma tectonic plates, the earthquake caused a significant displacement of ocean water. This geological event triggered a series of tsunami waves that would travel across the Indian Ocean at approximately 500 miles per hour, ultimately killing a quarter million people in 14 different countries. Today I'm speaking with one of the survivors of this devastating event. Dr. Duane Meadows was working for the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at the time and was vacationing in Thailand that Christmas. Today he's going to share his heartbreaking story with us.
- [04:15]
Dr. Duane Meadows
But it was black, just pitch dark black. And I was spinning. I had no idea of what was up, what was down. I was trying to swim, but I don't know if I was going up or down. Eventually, as things started to calm down, you could look around a little bit more. I realized I was out in the ocean probably about a quarter of a mile somewhere that I did not recognize.
- [04:39]
Emily Gracey
As a scientist and a water sport enthusiast, Dwayne shares some interesting insight into what saved his life that day. This episode is part one in a two part series on tsunamis. In January, I'll be talking with the Pacific Tsunami Warning center about the science of tsunamis and the important changes and warnings that have emerged since this devastating day in 2004. Now here's my talk with Duane Meadows.
- [05:10]
Interviewer
Dr. Duane Meadows, you're a scientist, but you're also somebody who experienced something that we've all heard about. We, you know, many of us were alive for and remember very vividly hearing about it on the news. The Boxing day tsunami of 2004, which happened 20 years ago. Unbelievable that you experienced this and survived it.
- [05:33]
Dr. Duane Meadows
So.
- [05:33]
Interviewer
So I want to talk to you a little bit about your story today and then also about tsunamis in general. Can you give me an idea of what your life was like in 2004, what you were doing, why you were in Thailand?
- [05:45]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Sure, yeah. I'm a marine biologist by training and I had been working for US Government National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration doing research and conservation work in Hawaii and in particular in the remote northwest of Hawaiian Islands. And during the summer and fall of that year, I spent basically four out of five months in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands doing this kind of work on the coral reefs in that area. And because I had been at sea so much, I had built up a lot of leave time and the other sort of Strange thing that year was that my mother had inherited some money from a relative and had decided to do a cruise, a family cruise vacation with my family, my brother and his family and my uncle, big extended family trip. But it was just in like January 10th or something. So because of the scheduling of that trip for the first time in many, many, many years, I decided not to go back to Ohio where I grew up and celebrate the holidays. So like, very unusual set of circumstances. I had a friend from graduate school who was a Thai citizen and he happened to be a professor in Bangkok that I hadn't seen for many years. So I visited him for a week in the north of Thailand and then did a three day scuba diving trip in the south of Thailand where the real nice dive sites are. And I returned from that on Christmas Day on December 25th. And I knew the 26th was Boxing Day and I'd sort of already planned just kind of a chill, chill day just to relax and you know, finally sort of have the unwind portion of my vacation. So I really didn't have a lot going on. And that's how I found myself in a place called Ka Lok, Thailand, which is a little bit north of Phuket, where a lot of people would going. Especially in those days. It was very well known as sort of a party, young person, place to go and relax. This was a bit more family oriented. And then because it was adjacent to this marine park that was maybe 30 miles offshore, a lot of divers stationed there before they took trips out to this marine national park. So it was a very different kind of environment. I remember a lot of European tourists with, with very small baby children in prams and things walking about and a lot of older tourists. And it was really beautiful place, beautiful sandy beach. But yeah, that's how I ended up in Southern Thailand in Kellogg on December 26th.
- [08:38]
Interviewer
So you were staying, was it kind.
- [08:39]
Emily Gracey
Of a resort area?
- [08:41]
Interviewer
Tell me about where you were staying and how close it was to the water.
- [08:45]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Yeah, again it wasn't hugely developed at that point. There weren't a lot of major corporate hotels, it was a lot of smaller things. And I was staying at one that was owned by a German man and his Thai wife that was mostly small, like duplex bungalows. Two rooms connected and then there was another little bungalow here. They had a small like two level, like really basic walk through hotel building, lots of beautiful vegetation. But that was the predominantly kind of housing behind the shore of this beautiful beach. There was a national park in the mountains and so the town was actually Kind of stuck between the mountains and the ocean. There were just two kind of parallel roads, and the one along the ocean was not complete. So it's a very small community. I mean, there weren't like sidewalks. There was just small mom and pop restaurants and these small resorts and like a lot of Thailand, some silk shops where you could have dresses or suits, like, made in two or three days. And that played a little part in my story as it. As it goes along as well.
- [10:00]
Interviewer
Okay, so can you take me through that morning of the 26th and what you were doing and the timeline?
- [10:06]
Dr. Duane Meadows
I had met a German woman who was also traveling alone the night before and was a diver. And we had gotten into a conversation. She wanted to do some diving. I told her about my trip. And so we had agreed to meet on the morning of the 26th for breakfast. And we did that. We had a kind of nice leisurely breakfast. And she was waiting for some friends to arrive and didn't have a lot to do that day either. And so at breakfast, we decided we would just kind of hang out for the day, maybe do a little snorkel, walk up the beach, just kind of relax. I had built up some laundry I needed to have done after traveling for a while. And so I said, I'm going to go back to my room and gather my laundry. And they had sort of a laundry service through the resort. And I don't know, she had something she was going to do, and she was in a room in the one sort of hotel ish building. And we were going to meet in 15 minutes. And that's in that time period is when everything happened. I went back to my room. I had like a hiker's backpack, and I was gathering up dirty laundry to put in that bag to take to the. To the front desk when I first hear people scream. And I had this. This bungalow was beautiful. It had a, like, sliding glass door on a little patio, and it was built up above the water slope, so you had to walk down some steps and you could see this beautiful view of the ocean out in front of you. But I just hadn't been looking out that window as I was gathering all my things. And when I turned around, you know, the first thing that caught my attention was this thin white line on the top of the ocean out in the distance and people screaming. And it looked like starting to run my way. And having been living in Hawaii, we're familiar with tsunamis because they test every month the warning sirens in Hawaii. And so you're always sort of Thinking about what would I do if I'm in this location when the tsunami hits and how would I get myself to safety and that sort of thing. So I knew what it was, but unfortunately the people on the beach that day really didn't. And one of the things about tsunamis is their waves. So they have a top and a bottom. And when you're on the shoreline, the first thing that can come on shore can either be the top of the wave, that is the water, or the bottom, which in a wave means it actually pulls away from the shoreline and the water goes out further from where it should be. And so the shoreline extends out and what, what it had, that is what had happened in our location. And so you had this area that was always supposed to be underwater, and everybody saw a fish flopping around and thought, oh, this is interesting, let's go towards it and see this, you know, strange sort of thing that's going on. It's like the tide went out in an instant kind of thing. And, you know, that was very unfortunate that nobody in our area recognized what, what that really meant. We hadn't been notified in any way of the earthquake at all. So nobody was thinking tsunami. But what really got everybody's attention and made them scream was there were two, I always call them like PT boats for older folks, you know, like John F. Kennedy in Vietnam. And these gray military boats, they were 60 or 70ft long and probably had 20 soldiers on them. And they happened to be guarding members of the Thai royal family. The king's daughter, she was an older person, so she had sort of older, teenage, young, 20s, two or three children. Her son happened to be out jet skiing in ocean at the time. So they were also military and police sort of secret service types protecting the royal family. And those boats were part of their protection. And what people saw was one of those very large, very stout boats starting to get just completely tossed around in ways that didn't seem possible from what looked like this just tiny white line. And that's when folks really realized that this white line was very dangerous and started to turn and try and get away and started screaming. And that's what I heard. And unfortunately at that point, it was pretty clear I didn't have much time. I would have to go down the stairs. And my bungalow was surrounded by this very spiny plant called bougainvillea, that the spines are like twice as long as rose thorns. You really don't want to choose to walk through just this thicket of this stuff. And so I knew I was going to have to have this long walk. And I really didn't actually think that it was that big of a wave. Despite knowing it was a tsunami. I thought, oh, it looks small. I mean, it didn't look like more than 5 to 10ft high. Like it didn't overwhelm the boat. It was just tossing it. And so that, that caught me by surprise. So much so that I literally had this backpack in my hand as I was like, observing this. And things were going through my head and thinking about what was happening. And my room just had like this armoire, closet thing. And I thought, oh, I'll keep my stuff dry if I just throw my bag on top of this armor six feet up, and the water will wish through and it'll probably won't even get in the room, maybe go underneath and I'll be good. Unfortunately, I, you know, again, didn't understand that the wave just really keeps coming and coming and it's so big and so long that what you're seeing out in the ocean where the water is deep doesn't represent the volume of water that's actually coming towards you. And so I did manage to throw my backpack up on that armoire, got my hands free, and as the water started to come in and build up into the room, I noticed that actually the wall to the side of me was collapsing. And I kind of at that point dove in that direction and probably got myself out of the building by doing that, but quickly found myself underwater, twisting and spinning and turning and, you know, as a. As a diver or anybody to go swimming in a pool, we close their eyes. You can't see, but you can still tell it's daylight out. I mean, this was late morning on a beautiful sunny day. If I close my eyes, I should still be able to see something that signifies where the sun is, sunlight. But it was black, just pitch dark black, and I was spinning. I had no idea of what was up, what was down. I was trying to swim, but I. I don't know if I was going up or down. And, you know, things were starting to hit me and it was very violent. And even though a lot of the diet work I do, I hold my can hold my breath for three, four minutes. You know, that's when you're calm and relaxed and prepared. I was, I was not. So it was probably only maybe a minute that I was underwater, but I was quickly at the point of saying goodbye. Like, literally at that point. My son was about 6 years old, very small. I was thinking about him back home with his mother and the rest of my family, and just thinking like, this was the end. And then lo and behold, I just sort of popped up. No hint that I was anywhere near the surface of the water. And of course, very relieved to be alive and be able to take a breath. But very quickly sort of going into stress panic mode again, realizing as I was getting my senses that the water level was such that I was being washed at very high speed, like a whitewater raft through this ocean size massive river that was now covering at least 30 or 40ft of the land. Because what I could see next to me was the very tops of palm trees, you know, and there were some rubber trees, but the palm trees are really obvious. Like where the palm fronds are is very high up and the coconuts, and that's where we were. And I was just stunned at how deep the water was. But the wave had come at an angle and it was pushing us through the land.
- [18:17]
Interviewer
Were you coming in to, like, inland, or were you at that point being pushed out?
- [18:22]
Dr. Duane Meadows
As I learned later that the wave sort of struck at an angle to the shoreline, if you will. So it was pushing us in, but not straight in from where I'd started. And my resort was near the end of the row, if you will. There was one more resort, and then there was these rubber tree plantations and even some coconut and other sort of agriculture. And so I, in the beginning, I was definitely in that area because it was just a lot of trees. And it was just like being in a whitewater rafting trip, but with all kinds of debris hitting you. You know, there was trees that had already been uprooted. There was some of the buildings, the wood, the metal. There were cars floating around at that point.
- [19:06]
Interviewer
Were you sustaining injuries throughout this? And were you, like, aware of that?
- [19:11]
Dr. Duane Meadows
I was definitely aware of it. And very quickly as I came up and realized how bad the situation was, I started to try and push those things away from me and keep myself safe. And at one point I found like a foam spaghetti swimming noodle. And that helped a little bit to protect me, but mostly just give me a little more buoyancy, which helped me see a little bit. And it's hard to imagine because there's so much stuff very quickly in the water. It's you, you know, get your head above water. You still can't see very far because there's all this debris floating around. Literally some whole buildings, these bungalows, some of them just floated up off their foundations. Cars. There were big propane tanks that were used for cooking and refrigerators and stuff that were hissing gas. So there was noises as well. It wasn't. You know, it wasn't just the. The ocean noises. It was stuff in the water, people screaming. I didn't really see people, but I could hear screams around me. But I was so focused, really, just in the few feet around me. And what was coming towards me at that point, I hit a tree and I grabbed on. And I think a lot of people at that point did that. It seemed initially kind of like a good idea. But then what I realized was that all the debris was hitting me in the back, and I couldn't protect myself. And I was. You know, a couple points where I was getting the breath kind of knocked out of me almost from bigger things. And, you know, being a pretty good swimmer, I just purposely decided to let go because it seemed like going with the flow. The debris was mostly around you, and some of it was big and hitting you, but not as violently as when I was holding onto the tree. So I let go, and we kept going. And more debris. And at some point, something got between. I had, like, Teva sandals with a strap strapped onto my foot. Something got between the bottom of my foot and the sandal and was heavy and was pulling me under again, like, literally to the point of my head getting sucked underwater. And I was able to reach down and pull that thing out. And for some reason, I did a scuba diver thing. I still have no. I don't even really remember doing it. But divers, you always take your fins, they have a little strap at the end, and you put that around your wrist. So if you're climbing out of a boat and you happen to fall back in, you've got these fins still attached to you that you can put back on if you need to swim back to the boat or whatever. Something they teach you, diving 101. And I did that with my sandal. Meanwhile, I'm still rushing through the water and through space on this really fast wave. The next thing I found was half of a mannequin that was probably used in one of the soap shops, including there was a very small one at my little resort. Didn't know they come in two pieces. I happened to get the lower half, the legs up to the waist of a nice young lady. And also never thought about it, but they're hollow, plastic and really buoyant. So like a perfect life preserver when no life preservers are around, right? And so I hugged her to my chest the rest of the way through until it started to get Calm. At some point I started to recognize that all that twisting and spinning had really messed up. It turned out my left leg, I basically like damaged my hip joint, my knee joint and my ankle joint. They all got twisted around and all of that in some way. I knew I was going to have some problems walking and I thought, oh, this will make kind of a crutch even when I get to shore. Unfortunately, the wave at some point had turned around and started washing me back out towards the ocean again. And I don't have any recollection of that. I really wasn't looking out that far. But eventually, as things started to calm down, you could look around a little bit more. I realized I was out in the ocean, probably about a quarter of a mile and somewhere that I did not recognize the shore that I could see. And that's where it stopped. And I had to now swim if I wanted to make it back to land. And so I started to do that. And of course it wasn't like a straight line because again, there's all this debris floating around and some of it's really congregated into piles. Something about the swirls and eddies of the waves. The debris wasn't uniform. There were piles and open areas and so you had to sort of pick and choose the easiest route to go. And I did that and I thought, I'm getting there, I'm getting there and all looks good and I'll get to shore and I'll be okay. It's all. It's all over. Right.
- [23:56]
Interviewer
Did you still have the mannequin at that point?
- [23:58]
Dr. Duane Meadows
I still have the mannequin and at this point, this is the other thing I hadn't really thought about or recalled from all this experience, like with the tsunami warnings, is that there can be more than one wave. And for me though, at least as a biologist, the first thing I recognize as I got close to shore, there were a few big rocks, like 40, 50 foot long rocks out in the ocean, as I had recalled from being there before. And what I noticed was that a lot of the snails and shells and little animals and barnacles and things that, you know, should have been, you know, no more than a foot above the sea level. The tides there are very small, were again like 8 or 10ft above the water, signifying that once again the water had left the bay and there was another wave coming.
- [24:52]
Interviewer
How far did you have to swim back to get to that point?
- [24:56]
Dr. Duane Meadows
It was about a quarter mile back to shore in a straight line distance, probably closer, maybe to a half A mile swim by the time I had to zigzag.
- [25:04]
Interviewer
Did you encounter anyone or see any other survivors as you were out there?
- [25:10]
Dr. Duane Meadows
I did. There's one in particular that I don't always talk about. It sort of haunts me a little bit. There was a woman who was actually on the peaked roof of a floating bungalow. So she pretty much had her entire body out of the water, sort of draped over the peak of the roof. She was a Thai or possibly Burmese. There were a lot of Burmese workers in the area. We couldn't understand each other without signaling, but I actually offered her the mannequin and sort of waved her over and said, I help her get to shore. And she actually came down and got in the water and held onto the mannequin but was very freaked out. She clearly didn't know how to swim naturally and she wasn't comfortable with her face that close to the water. And she just got scared and basically climbed back on the roof. She thought that was safer for her. So I tried to signal that I would, like swim and come back and get her thinking again. We didn't know this was this enormous region wide thing. We had no thought about how big this tsunami was. Thought we might get help soon. I had no idea what it looked like on shore, so I left her there. As I got to shore, I realized that the mannequin had probably saved me because she had taken on a bunch of holes that something had punctured that I hadn't really even noticed while she was in front of me. And she was now almost full of water. And I didn't want to wait and try and drain it. So I left it there sort of. I was very disappointed. I'd really thought that would be a great crutch, but she saved me. I had a lot of wounds. At the end of the day, I counted 130. Some wounds to my body, my arms, my legs, my face down, my feet, but not my chest. Nothing around my heart and lungs. The most important part, and I think the holes that she took there were a couple that were up here that probably would have punctured me pretty good if I hadn't had that little piece of plastic. The other thing I started to see when I got to shore was more people starting to look around. They were trying to find their partners, family members, whatnot. At that point, none of them had recognized that there was another wave coming. And so they really were just sort of congregating by the shore, which I didn't think was a good idea for us. Besides the fact that really couldn't see anyone else, I mean, there were a couple of stragglers starting to come in, but it didn't seem particularly productive to stay there. The main road was 150 yards inland, seemed like a better idea. So I first tried to suggest that to people that we go there. And most of the people understood, but there I remember one woman who really wanted to stay there and I didn't want to freak her out, but I eventually had to sort of slightly hint to her that there might be another one and it might be safe. Unfortunately, she didn't freak out. She joined us. And of all of the what started out as eight or 10 people and ended up about 30 people, I was the only one who still had any footwear at all. That one sandalwood that I talked about, I was the only one who had footwear. Most of the people were naked or half naked, like bikini tops, bottoms, swimsuits. I had a swimsuit still on, but it had a very large cut in the side. So it was also salt revealing. And I. That's all I had was the swimsuit, the T shirt that had been on my back, and one sandal. And we came out near one of the biggest resorts in the area. It was a three story concrete, multiple concrete buildings. And what I learned later is they had of these kind of swimming pools that was not just a rectangle. It sort of came in front of some of the fancy rooms so you could hop into your swimming pool right from your room. All we saw were big piles of debris and puddles of water. And we were again trying to make our way inland. It wasn't just like a little stroll. It was all this dangerous stuff. And sometimes we had to walk through, you know, puddles of water. They were maybe only a foot deep, but they were deep enough we couldn't see what was in them, so. So I ended up using my sandal to kind of scrape along the bottom, see if there was anything sharp. And everybody else, you know, was following behind so we weren't cutting up our feet. We made it through that. We made it to the first set of buildings, seeing a lot of. A lot more people kind of joining us. There were a lot of injured and dead by that point. We could see the waves starting to come. And we fortunately reached kind of a clear area and were able to run up the hill towards the main road before the next wave came. And it turned out we were lucky. The second wave was not so big and didn't come so far inland that time. So our little group was okay from the second wave, fortunately. But in some cases, in some parts of Thailand or other parts of the region with this tsunami, it was the second or even the third wave that was the biggest and most dangerous wave. They're not always. Not always the first wave, that's. That's the worst. So, you know, you never want to go back. Just because the first one didn't only went so far doesn't mean the second one's going to not go that far. It may go further.
- [30:39]
Interviewer
How long do you think it was between the first wave and the second wave?
- [30:42]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Uh, probably 10 to 15 minutes.
- [30:45]
Interviewer
Wow. All of this happened in 10 to 15 minutes?
- [30:48]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Yeah, you know, that's what. That's what we remember. I timed it at one point. There's. There's video, some from a lookout that. That sort of spans that time period. So you can see some of it. You can see the wave hitting us. Actually, from this lookout point, there's interesting records of all that. Long story short, we started to look for loved ones. We got to the main road. There was a resort high up on the hill that locals were directing us to, and some of the area there had not been hit by the wave on the main road, including a number of dive shops. And so there were workers at the dive shops who had some basic first aid and CPR training. They were helping people. A guy in a shop gave me a pair of sandals and a hat to cover my head from the sun. He was given out. People were great, giving out supplies for my work for Noah. We were all trained kind of as paramedics. I always say I could give IVs, stitches. We had a big kit with narcotics. And I had a pretty advanced level of first aid training thanks to my government work and previous experience. And so unfortunately, in our area, there was about a mile section where the road was washed out both to the north and the south. We were on our own, and people didn't get rescued till the next day. We didn't have. We had a nurse show up after about four or five hours and a doctor show up maybe an hour later, and then another doctor later in the day that were just all foreigners who happened to be around or one of the doctors that really helped us out a lot was working in Thailand, but he was Serbian. And so there's a whole part of the day that became just involved in first aid and helping people out and doing that sort of stuff before I was able to get out.
- [32:44]
Interviewer
During that time with the other survivors, did you form friendships Relationships, people that you kind of stayed with through this process. Once, once that second wave was coming, like from that core group of people. Did you hold on to any of those people throughout this?
- [32:59]
Dr. Duane Meadows
I did. I first came across a young, 14, 15 year old Swedish girl as we were walking up to that resort. She was very distraught, looking for her family members, and I sort of took her. And when we got up there, we sat down together and we're resting. I had told the guys that were sort of triaging first aid that I had some experience, but I was still kind of almost hyperventilating at that point and very exhausted. I set up. I'm gonna rest a few minutes. I'm gonna get this young lady settled and come and give you guys a hand. But literally five minutes later, they came to me and said they had this little boy who had a hole in his chest, he was blue. They had done some things. They weren't sure if what they were doing was right. Could I give them a hand? And from that point on, first day, the rest of the day, so I was seeing a lot of people and working with a few others. You know, again, there were people from 35 countries died that day. Maybe more were there that didn't have fatalities. But just the act of giving first aid was very complicated because sometimes we would need one or even two translators to get between all the languages of the person who needed help and the person giving help and the person helping us. We didn't have a lot of first aid supplies. We were setting broken bones with pieces of PVC pipe used in construction and people. So people were scrounging supplies for us, you know, clean towels and clean water. And those things were in short supply. So there were a number of people that I treated that day that I developed relationships with in weird ways. I saw some of them later. The little boy who was injured was German. His mother was with him, but the father and the other child were missing. And Paul tore at my heartstrings. He asked me for my hat that day, and I was able to go back to Germany in 2006 and give him that hat. So I developed a relationship with that family and a number of others. And there's a whole side story for me of finding the woman that I had met that night before, Caroline, also German, who also survived, but in a different location. And we did not reconnect until Valentine's Day six weeks later, when she remembered the dive shop that I had used and contacted them. And they contacted me and said, this woman wants to talk to you can, can we give her your email address? And that's how I found out that she was alive.
- [35:38]
Interviewer
What was your reaction when you got that message?
- [35:42]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Oh, it was amazing. I mean, those first weeks, it's hard to explain it. It's really the first time the Internet was used in this way, in a lot of ways for finding people. People were creating groups, posting, looking for family members, or a lot of people who had traveled there would send you once they knew, like I disclosed where I was. And some people that I was looking for for, including Caroline, and they would ask you, have you seen this person? Somebody who worked at a hotel that they were very fond of, that they had stayed at, you know, every year for 10 years or whatever. And, and it was very excruciating to try and answer those questions because, you know, I saw a lot of people those days. You don't want to, you don't want to give hope or, or say no. And, you know, I wrecked my brain a lot in those days. Did I, did I see this person? I asked a few folks, you know, those same questions and looking for Caroline and a couple of others that I had met, you know, so it became a very, a very interesting community that, that developed as a result of that. Then the, you know, what I learned was these long term people who had vacationed there year after year after year with their families and had, you know, real strong relationships with locals there that they were very concerned about was something I, you know, as a first timer, was just completely unaware of it until that happened. And that became very important in the recovery afterwards because many of those people came back and volunteered and helped out, which is another just amazing part of the story. People ask me about and think it's sort of a bad memory, but for me, I think the way I deal and process with it, process it in some ways is to remember those amazing things that I did see about what people did that day and helping others, the first aid providers, the people finding supplies and water and translating like a lot of people really stepped up and helped strangers. And there were, you know, in that area where I was, you know, you may have seen the story of David Attenborough and his family. He was closer to the royal family, Petronemkova, the swimsuit supermodel who lost her fiance. She was between where I started and I came out of the water about half a mile south. She got stuck in a tree somewhere between where I started and where I ended. So you had very rich, famous people and these Burmese immigrant construction workers. And we were all in the same boat that day.
- [38:16]
Interviewer
Did you ever reconnect with the Swedish girl?
- [38:21]
Dr. Duane Meadows
I never did. There were a number of names that I wrote down that day and had on slips of paper in my swimsuit. And I eventually make it to Phuket that first night in an ambulance looking after a young boy named Jay Bryche, who was severely injured and had been severely injured in a car accident in the weeks before and had pins and hardware in his body that was very disrupted by the tsunami injuries that he had. And so I was sort of translating and helping him as he was getting care. And we, we went to Phuket that first night. That night when I got to the hospital, I, Jay got looked after and I ended up kind of in the entrance foyer. There was this big room and they put cots in there for those of us who were, you know, again, I had a lot of cuts and bruises and sprains and things, but I didn't have any me. I didn't need surgery or anything like that at that point. And so I was on a cot in this room and at some point I was given a non ripped pair of shorts and somebody, and I tried to save my shorts, but somebody had seen them and they were a mess. They were cut up, they had a lot of debris still in the pockets. Somebody had thought it was garbage and threw it away. Um, and so, and I lost my sandal. So at the end of the day, the only thing I came home with was a bloody T shirt that I started with from that trip. And to this day, nothing of mine has ever been found. Some, some of the survivors have had things found where there was, you know, luggage with IDs in it or wallets or that sort of thing. But not a single thing of mine has ever, has ever been recovered.
- [40:16]
Interviewer
What did the following days look like? Did you come home quickly? Did you stay there?
- [40:22]
Dr. Duane Meadows
So, you know, even though I wasn't seriously injured, I was very exhausted and I couldn't walk. The hospital there was fantastic. They had a couple computers and free short phone calls that were being offered to us. I was able to make contact with the US Embassy for us and they informed my parents that I was alive and I was able to start sending out emails. And the Thai people were bringing just all kinds of food that they were making in their houses. And we were hearing how horrible it was at the. Basically the city hall for Phuket was a staging point in a giant park to get people out. But they were sort of overwhelmed in the early days and I Figured I was fine. So I spent a couple days in the hospital. I reconnected again with some of the people gave first aid at, in that hospital over those days and then decided to make that journey to get out. Went through that process. A bunch of airlines were donating airplanes and you basically took a number. If you were able to walk, you got on sort of regular airplanes. And if you were injured, they had special airplanes for medical cases. And there was a Swedish boy who I had seen at a number of occasions and we again reconnected at the airport. He had a broken arm that was severely broken and was treated without anesthetics. They ran out of anesthetics and he was still alone. His family was missing and thought to be alive, which turned out to not be true. And so he had a number for the special flights for medical cases that needed help. And I had a number and I said, well, he just wanted to get out of there. And it turned out my number actually came up first. And it was literally a piece of paper torn into strips with a number written on a pencil. And we had a little plastic bag with snacks that people had donated and a toothbrush and toothpaste. And that was your belongings, was a tiny plastic bag and your number. And when they called my number, I said, let's, let's go, let's, let's try to go. And we, we basically made, you know, I just made up the story that we lost his number. He's my kid. And I got him on the plane with me and we got to Bangkok and the Swedish government did a great job taking care of him. They gave him a bunch of money and they, they had a place for them to stay and a hospital that was treating all the Swedish injured. And so I knew he was in great hands. Fortunately for me, my friend picked me up. The US government was a little less good to work with, a little more like if you need a loan, here's a seven page document, sign it, we'll give you a loan. And here's a list of the hospitals. If you need a hospital, there's the taxi stand after you get your loan sort of thing. And fortunately my friend just whisked me to his family home and took care of me. And I was able to fly back out with a little upgrade from the airline on the same flight that I was originally scheduled to leave on. And my colleagues back home had set up a lot of medical appointments for me. When I arrived back home and helped me out, it turned out I did have some back problems. That developed over time that I needed treatment for.
- [43:51]
Interviewer
I see the bike behind you. How, how are you doing now? Do you have any long term impacts? Are you able to be active?
- [43:59]
Dr. Duane Meadows
I am in, in the early days, I had severe, like, severe back pain shooting down my leg. They couldn't really figure out where it was coming from. They tried a bunch of treatments. Eventually I, I found that steroid injections in a certain part of my spinal cord relieved the pressure. And in the early years I had to have that done about every other year. So all of a sudden it would just let go and I would be in excruciating back pain. Knock on wood. I haven't had to have a surgery in about eight years. Nowadays I bike 30, 35 miles when I want to play softball, do all those sorts of things, and just dread the day when all of a sudden my back does hurt. But I know that opioids and steroids will solve it in a couple of weeks now, after having gone through that five or six times.
- [44:57]
Interviewer
All right, so that's the physical recovery. What about the mental and emotional recovery? How has that process been? I know coming out of natural disasters, it's very common to seek professional help. Can you tell me what you've done and what's been successful there?
- [45:14]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Yeah, thanks for asking. I wasn't, I wasn't sure if we, we get into this sort of thing. I had, I had been through a divorce just in the year before this all happened and, and had gone into some therapy then and found it, found it very helpful. And in fact, when I returned, one of the first calls I made was, was to my therapist and I knew that PTSD might be an issue and he had a great referral to me. I was on, on Oahu, where there are a lot of military bases and there's a lot of great doctors that treat military members and veterans who have PTSD issues. And so, you know, I, I was able to talk to her and work through that over the early months. And for me, you know, I saw early on some value. I'd been a college professor for a number of years, so I been in media interviews, had done print and TV interviews and a few documentaries, science kind of things over the years, and I kind of understood how that worked. And I was a public speaker and I kind of realized that people wanted to hear the story. I got involved in a telethon. It was the first telethon that all the major networks co produced together and ran together simultaneously, with Dan Rather hosting it, and saw that I could use the connections to raise money and raise awareness about safety things. Some of the things I've already kind of peppered into the talk today about there can be more than one wave. Sometimes it, the wave, what you see at the beginning is small and the water goes out, but eventually it's going to come in. Like a lot of those messages I've been able to share with all kinds of groups in a variety of venues over the years. And my scientific connections have helped to do that. And so that's, you know, one motivation. But for me, behind the scenes, talking about it always has been very helpful for my ability to process it and work through it. It was very hard to talk about in the beginning without breaking down. But that, but I always tried to see again that positive benefit. I think what I talked about earlier too, about just having a positive outlook of thinking about the good things that happened that day, the great people that I met and worked with, that sort of attitude change is definitely something that's different for me. Not sweating the small stuff and some of it's cliche. We also, a lot of us became a little bit daredevilish afterwards. You feel a little bit like, you know, you survive this thing. So let's, let's do crazy stuff for a while and take more risks. You know, what, what death is like for many of us that had extreme experiences like I did in the water. And one of the things that's, you know, that, that's touched me lately is this sort of long term, you know, mental health is getting a lot more attention and it's, it's wonderful to see, but the effects really last a long time. This young boy, Jay, that I mentioned was 16, he was severely injured, a lot of pain meds, pain med, addiction. Afterwards. His sister was killed in the tsunami. They were very close. It affected his budding musical career and he struggled with that off and on for years in a variety of ways. And just a couple of years ago now committed suicide. And, and you know, the tsunami was a big, a big part of that. These things are long term. Even if you get help in the beginning, it's, it's an ongoing struggle and there's, there's different triggers. Not, you know, for me, obviously, the anniversary is a trigger. I have some sound triggers. For me, the sound of the wave coming in. A lot of people talk about it as like a train coming up the railroad tracks. For me, where I had been working at the time was near the ocean, but it was a place where there was a very shallow, rocky shore and there's something about the sound of how just the regular little waves washing up on that shore and kind of tinkling along triggered me for a very long time as a similar sound to what I remember from that wave in some way. And every once in a while I'll hear something or, um, whatever that. That reminds me of, of that.
- [50:00]
Interviewer
In particular, um, I know you spoke about the woman on the roof. I'm curious if you ever think about the people that were on the shore and lives you may have saved that day, or is that something you think back on too?
- [50:13]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Uh, you know, there's. There's certainly a few people that, that I. That I really helped out a lot. Paul especially, I think I. I helped significantly, and a few others, and maybe others with the warning along the shore. I think we're all just trying to survive even then on that first aid day. For me, giving first aid was already part of the therapy because I was doing something I was trained to do. I spent my time thinking about what they needed and not thinking about what was happening with the wave. I can tell you that the five minutes I spent before I started doing first aid was just excruciating. We sat down, there were, you know, a third of the people or so that were sort of still hysterical, screaming, crying for. For their relatives that they knew or worried were dead. There were, you know, kind of a third of the people that were sort of catatonic and in shock, which is also hard to look at and see they're not really responding. And like the Swedish girl and there were a number of other children who were just fearful, looking for clues from the adults. That was all just excruciating to sit there and not have anything to do, have any control over anything. Just feeling, you know, helpless. I think a lot of us, you know, hate the word victim survivors a little better. And. And that's the time that I felt, you know, helpless and like a victim. And for me, doing first aid was the beginning of the therapy of processing and taking some control over. Over my surroundings and my life again. And so that's mostly how I think of it. And again, just the fond memories I do have. A lot of those people that are. Are really important to me. And in many ways, even with the therapists, it's the other survivors that really understand what we actually went through. I think even for medical professionals, it's such a weird. At least at the time, and we've had a number of tsunamis since then. Lots of people have been through the trauma of war and that's sort of well understood, but these sort of natural disasters, it's a little bit rare and even the professionals don't quite fully may understand what, what we saw and what we went through in, in those events and what it's like. It's a little bit harder. I think it's, it's much better now. Obviously 20 years later there's been much more emphasis in that area. But at the time it sort of felt that way that, you know, as much as people were trying to be helpful, it was only survivors who kind of fully could appreciate what we went through.
- [53:04]
Interviewer
Yeah, that makes total sense. Do you still speak to them? Are you still in touch with any of the survivors?
- [53:09]
Dr. Duane Meadows
I do, yeah, yeah, many of them. And of course, you know, these kind of every five year events are often bigger. I've been back to Thailand a number of times. I got to do some professional work there in restoration and helping with dealing with the debris and making it safe to go in the water again and reattaching corals. But the Thai government also paid for all of us to bring someone back with us at the one year anniversary which was a great step in the, in the recovery as well. And many of us reconnected. Then Caroline and her boyfriend, another woman who I had done first aid on came back with her partner who I hadn't met up to that point. And another gentleman had stayed at my resort who I ran across who had. Was pretty sure he had seen my bungalow disintegrate and was able to sort of share like his perspective on that. And we became close. The Bryche family created a foundation in honor of their daughter, asked me to be a board member and we did a lot of activities. The foundation was focused on support for children who lost one or both parents in the tsunami. And so they became very, very famous in the States. Good Morning America was following around for weeks at a time and people donated millions of dollars to them which they spent in those activities and allowed me to participate. So we were very close. I visited Paul in Germany. Caroline and I have seen each other two or three times over the years.
- [54:54]
Interviewer
Can you tell me I want to kind of pivot to your career. Can you tell me how and if this experience shaped the or affected the trajectory of your career and what you do now?
- [55:07]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Sure, yeah. As I mentioned, because of my injuries and the uncertainty about how good it would be for me to continue diving, I ended up taking a more office based policy position with the federal government working on endangered species. So still in the same area, but ever Since I've had this interest in disaster response, I connected with some other survivors who had created the first tsunami museum in Hilo, Hawaii, and they hooked me into both doing outreach to communities as well as. One of the women who was involved was also the State of Hawaii civil defense earthquake tsunami specialist and got me on board an advisory committee that the state had of various scientists and educators and Red Cross and those sorts of people who were doing various sorts of planning activities for tsunamis in Hawaii and got me in there and working for noaa, I was able to connect with a national tsunami hazard mitigation program that NOAA coordinates for the federal government and get involved in a variety of different things on all different levels. I took it upon myself to get training in a bunch of FEMA courses in their disaster response systems and was able to put that to use in a number of events. I worked as part of a program where they take volunteers. I worked in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017 for almost two months. I was part of a group of people who worked on the Deepwater Horizon disaster for probably about six months of my life afterwards, and all of the both environmental and economic and community impacts that that had on people, as well as another type of disaster. So it's become something that's, you know, kind of bit of a sidelight. But every opportunity I get to get involved in some way and share that. That and give back, I've. I've appreciated.
- [57:24]
Interviewer
I want to talk a little bit about tsunamis and maybe some misconceptions and what we've learned in the past 20 years and some changes. One thing that is kind of interesting to me, you never mentioned feeling an earthquake. Did you ever feel the earthquake?
- [57:40]
Dr. Duane Meadows
No, we didn't feel the earthquake. I know in some parts of Thailand, people were made aware of it through the media or whatever. And in our area, somebody had tried to call, I think, a resort owner who tried to warn people, and there's a video of him sort of yelling down to the beach, but it was too little, too late. So we had no knowledge of even the basic earthquake itself. And as I said, in our area, nobody knew the sign that the water leaving signified a tsunami either. There's the famous story of a young British schoolgirl who was further south of us toward Phuket, on a beach there where she had just learned about tsunamis in school, and she was able to tell her parents and start warning people that were near them and got those people off the beach. But we didn't have any of that, unfortunately. In our area. And so the Kellogg area had far more deaths than any other part of Thailand where I was at. There were probably 7 or 8,000 deaths ultimately in Thailand. And Kellogg was the center of thousands of those deaths. There were only hundreds in the Phuket area.
- [58:50]
Interviewer
Can you give me the basics of tsunamis? Because I think a lot of people don't even know what causes them. So, obviously, earthquake. And now we do hear of tsunami warnings when there's an earthquake. But what actually causes not just one, but sometimes two or three of these tsunamis to occur?
- [59:07]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Yeah, certainly the most common cause is relatively big and also shallow earthquakes. Earthquakes have to be near the surface because they're basically flipping up the substrate under the water, which then forces the water away from that and creates the wave. So there are a lot of very large earthquakes, but they're very deep in the earth, and by the time they get to the surface or near the water, they've dissipated a lot. And so they don't actually create a tsunami wave. So sometimes you'll see on the news, oh, there's a, you know, very quickly nowadays, a big, big warning of a big earthquake, but you don't see a tsunami warning. And that's usually the reason is. Is that the depth of the earthquake matters. Where on earth, what crust, what plate. Those are all things that the scientists have to look at in addition to just how big the earthquake is.
- [60:04]
Interviewer
Do you think your knowledge from working with Noah and then also your background in scuba diving, do you think those two things saved your life?
- [60:13]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Yeah, most definitely. I mean, being a good swimmer, recognizing at least having a little bit of sense that something was coming and what it might be about, and being able to. I mean, I definitely remember, you know, holding my breath at the right time, you know, being able to recognize that there was a second wave. Those. Those. That knowledge helped me and maybe a few others. But there was also a tremendous amount of luck, too. As I said, you know, if I hadn't had that. That mannequin, I'm not sure that I would be here either.
- [60:45]
Interviewer
Did you? I wanted to ask you because so so much of people who don't. Who haven't lived through a natural disaster, their knowledge of it often comes from TV and movies. And so I'm curious if you saw the movie the Impossible and if you did, what your thoughts on it are.
- [61:03]
Dr. Duane Meadows
I was a consultant on it.
- [61:05]
Interviewer
Oh, you were a consultant on it.
- [61:07]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Wow. Yeah, they actually interviewed me in the prep, you know, in their preparation for it. And so there's a scene and there's. So I think there's only one little part of my story, and that's, like, the person in the water. Like, there's a person who's sort of like, underwater and spinning. And that is, like, I think, based off of what. What I told them and a few things. Obviously, I didn't have a. Like, a compelling family narrative, but they did pull, like, a lot of those details from us. So they. So I can tell you, I mean, they put a lot of effort in. Into talking to survivors like myself. And, you know, I'm trying to hear, like, some of those tidbits, I think, of what happened. And there's a lot of, you know, real good, very accurate things in there.
- [61:58]
Interviewer
One, the part that I'm remembering is when the wave comes in, and her view is, like, trees just snapping and coming down, almost like a bulldozer was coming in. That's the part I was curious about.
- [62:11]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Yeah. I mean, my view wasn't initially that. So, you know, I just saw the water. I mean, it was just a beach and water in front of me. So I didn't, like, see trees fall at all. I just, you know, came up and saw them, the ones that were left that were now in very deep water, you know, so I, you know, I've seen the same videos of, you know, those things. I don't. I don't know how many of them would have snapped necessarily like that. I mean, I think, you know, those trees. I mean, the water came up. I mean, it was still like. It didn't come like this and hit the top and snap them. I mean, I think it was still like a flood more than a. Like a. So, yeah, you might have hit on one of the things that was maybe a little bit overdone, but it's certainly, you know, there were certainly a lot of them, you know, pulled out, but I think mostly that would have been more like, you know, washing away the sand underneath and the roots and. And just ultimately all the pressure rather than, like, snapping. I mean, certainly, like, branches and stuff, maybe. And there was definitely a lot of. Most of the. Like, the wood I remember was a lot of wood with nails. It was from some sort of structures that was, you know, that was the damaging stuff to us tsunamis.
- [63:29]
Interviewer
And when we talk about warning systems and predictability, we can't predict earthquakes. Right. So then the tsunami prediction becomes this very short period of time. So then is it more about the coastline and the way that the water reacts with the coastline and the seafloor? Is that where, like, the modeling happens?
- [63:47]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Yes, very much. Yeah. It's that. It's that seafloor topography and the shape of it and, you know, the volume of water that will come and whether the. If the coastline's shallow enough, it might help slow it down before it hits. There's some evidence that things like having good, healthy coral reefs out in front of your shoreline and in tropical areas where we have coral reefs, you know, serves as a buffer. So places that had good, healthy coral reefs had smaller waves hitting the shoreline where the people were then places where those reefs were damaged from overfishing, or some places in Asia used to dynamite the reefs to catch the fish, to sell for aquariums and that sort of thing. So the reef structure was not what it otherwise would have been, and there were essentially openings for the water to get in. Right. So those sorts of natural habitats can be important to mitigating the effects of the waves.
- [64:48]
Interviewer
Is there any. My knowledge of tsunamis is limited, but I'm a meteorologist, and I keep hearing some parallels here with, like, storm surge situations and hurricanes. Is there any cross research that, you know, that's going on? Because that sounds like something that would be helpful when it comes to dealing with storm surge, too.
- [65:07]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Yeah, that sort of stuff had been, I think, maybe earlier recognized as helpful for, like, storm surge and hurricanes and that sort of thing. And those people are, yeah, all advocating for those benefits. I think, you know, the tsunami warning centers in NOAA are part of noaa. They're part of the weather service, but they had been sort of developing differently in their warnings. And the tsunami warning system is. Is also tied in with the United Nations a little bit in different ways. But another thing that's happened over the years is sort of standardization of warnings. I think even in this year, like, we're seeing some new kind of warning products for hurricanes. And the tsunami system has also developed that, tried to standardize, you know, what is a warning, what is a watch, what do all those things mean? How do you respond? They try to simplify those and use some social science research, I think, to make the messages more effective and timely.
- [66:12]
Interviewer
Is there anything that you want to share with people about tsunami safety or what you've learned over the years about tsunamis?
- [66:21]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Just those signs. Just be aware of those things happening in the ocean. Even if you're not native to that area, if you're a tourist, you know, there's. If you're going near the water, think about where. Where you might go to protect yourself. Where's a good, solid, tall building, three or four stories tall that you can get to pretty quickly if something does arrive. And think about, think about those things just like any other sort of preparedness for fires in your house or, or other disasters. I think it's worth a couple minutes to think about that when you're near the ocean.
- [66:59]
Interviewer
So what does December 26th look like to you? How will you spend that day?
- [67:04]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Yeah, it's always been very weird experience on that day because it's Christmas. It's literally, I live on the east coast, so if you do the time change, the tsunami anniversary actually falls on Christmas in the United States. And so for me, I have Christmas Day and then Christmas night has always been kind of that switch for me of remembering. And I've always kind of forced myself to kind of walk through it again as part of my one, I think therapy. But also not wanting to forget what it was like and forcing myself to go into some of the scarier parts of that day is a weird, I guess, tradition that I got into over the years. This year there's a larger number of folks who are going to be in Thailand and I assume some of the other countries for the anniversary. And I've kind of debated back and forth about whether I want to go. It's been about 10 years since I've been back before and just haven't decided yet if I'm going to do that or not. Less people than I had hoped were doing that.
- [68:24]
Interviewer
Will you keep me updated if you do that?
- [68:26]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Absolutely. Yeah, I know, of course.
- [68:28]
Interviewer
Thank you so much for sharing this story today.
- [68:30]
Dr. Duane Meadows
This is, you're welcome.
- [68:32]
Interviewer
Heart wrenching, but I think really important for people to hear about and to remember that this is something that could still occur. It's not an old problem. It's. It's something that can still happen.
- [68:42]
Dr. Duane Meadows
Yeah.
- [68:45]
Emily Gracey
Off the Radar is a production of the National Weather Desk. Make sure you're following the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. New episodes publish every Tuesday. As I mentioned earlier, there will be more on tsunamis coming next month with the Deputy Director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. First and foremost, I want to thank Duane Meadows for sharing his story today. It's my hope that by listening, another survivor of a natural disaster could be comforted and inspired by his story. Also, thank you to Sinclair Broadcast Group and the National Weather Desk for their ongoing support. And a huge thank you as always, to my associate producer, Brian Petrus for his extensive work on this episode amid urologist Emily Gracie. Make it a great day.