The last message we got from our son in Thailand, on Christmas Eve: I’ve had enough of Bangkok so I’m off to the beaches in the South to relax. Mmm, good timing. He’s fine, we now know, but it meant that I spent more time than I wanted yesterday watching the 24-hour news channel. You’d think, what with all the thousands of people lounging on beaches armed with cameras, that someone would have managed to get some decent shots of the tsunami approaching, but instead we had the same tired footage of flooded streets in the Maldives, and interviews with journalists taking their holidays there or in Thailand, who managed to provide uninspired comments on their own little experiences. Pride of place must go to the hack on a beach in Thailand who saw the wave in the distance and rushed into his hut to get his camera, couldn’t find it, rushed back out, and just had time to pick up his 5-year old son before they were swept off into the mangrove swamps. Very scary, he reckoned. Give that man a Pulitzer!
In fact the tsunami didn’t fit the classic image of tiny figures fleeing in terror before a huge wall of water. It was more of a surge: relatively low, but just as relentless and devastating. The death toll will surely keep on rising.
Tim Blair has details, plus links to aid organisations.
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