![]() ![]() This was the nerve centre for the rescue mission for southern Thailand, with helicopters flying in and out with dead and wounded, bringing relatives to the disaster areas, and occasionally flying in politicians such as Colin Powell and Jeb Bush. A large number could have been affected,” he said. We had a couple of thousand Irish people on our list – it’s a sign of how many Irish people were travelling at that time. “My job was to track down Irish people who may have been caught up in the tsunami. Initially it was hard to work out where the worst impact was, but he established that Thailand was among the worst affected places, and he arrived at the emergency centre in Phuket around lunchtime the following day. Thais would often say to me in the days after the tsunami: “You didn’t shut New York down after 9/11, so don’t write us off now after the tsunami.”ĭan Mulhall, currently Ireland’s ambassador to Britain, was the envoy to Malaysia and Thailand and was living in Kuala Lumpur when he got a call on St Stephen’s Day while he was having lunch with his children. It’s not an act of terrorism, there is no hunt for Osama bin Laden, no Isis, no al-Qaeda, merely an awful tragedy and a reminder that nature is a monstrously powerful force. As well as the cost in human lives, the tsunami cost around one million people their livelihoods.įinding closure can be hard, as it’s no one’s fault. The tsunami killed 228,000 people in 11 countries, the majority in Indonesia. Unlike other major international events, natural disasters like the Asian tsunami are difficult for those left behind as there is no recourse, no one to blame. Connor Keightley (31), from Cookstown, Co Tyrone, also lost his life on Phi Phi. Eilis Finnegan (27), from Ballyfermot, who was with her boyfriend Barry Murphy on Phi Phi island when the wave struck. It was here that three of the four Irish victims of the tsunami died.Īmong them was Lucy Coyle (28), from Killiney, who died with her English boyfriend Sean Sweetman.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |