The Story of Jon Walter, Tanya Smart and their children Jonah and Nat 

By Jon Walter and Tanya Smart

5 Feb 2005

We had only been in Unawatuna a day and a half when Tanya and Jon went for breakfast just after 9.00, at the Strand guesthouse where we were staying.

We sat down opposite an Australian couple and another man who were staying with us and as none of us had met, there was a slight embarrassed pause before some one said “another day in Paradise” and we began to talk.

 

After a couple of minutes we heard a huge sound, like the stamping of feet and the banging of drums. Someone said ‘ It’s poya day, it must be a procession’ and we rushed outside to see. We saw a wall of water rushing down the street with a car being tossed over and people fleeing. We scattered and ran back through the guesthouse to our children (Jonah, 8, & Nat, 7) who were still in our bedroom, having been too shy to attend breakfast.

 

Our room had a balcony that was enclosed with lattice woodwork and so we swept up the children and ran back along the hall to a room that we had seen had an open balcony. This must have taken seconds but water was already rushing into the hall below and rising at an incredible rate up the rickety wooden stairs.

 

Once on the balcony we stood as the water swept past carrying cars and debris and rising all the time. Jon jumped onto the balcony and checked out the roof for a possible place of safety while Tanya clutched the children and tried to keep them calm. A man who had been at breakfast with us, Phillip, was with us, and two young Sri Lankan girls who had ran from the beach into the guesthouse.  

 

Its difficult to say how long this lasted. We saw people clinging to branches and the water sweeping up to about a foot from our balcony until it suddenly stopped rising and then calmed. An Italian woman from one of the garden rooms clung to a wall below the balcony and we managed to haul her up to join us.  Peter, a German man, joined us on the balcony, naked and wounded.  An elderly Sri Lankan woman who had been working in the kitchen appeared.  She had been trapped in a tiny room downstairs and Asoka, our hotel owner, had freed her.  The Australian couple that we had sat down to breakfast with had been swept away and the husband had returned to the garden room that had collapsed and was diving down below the water, searching for his teenage children. We met the family later at the Rock House and though injured they had all survived.

 

At this point we had no idea what had happened and by now the water had receded to about 3 feet.  We stood wondering what could have happened, shocked and bewildered.  The cries of human voices were terrible.  Asoka, our landlord, appeared below and shouted to leave the building because it might collapse and there could be another wave.

 

We grabbed the children and left immediately, all of us walking through the water that remained, back up to the road and along the short distance to the Rock House.  All along the road were young Sri Lankan men, urging us to higher ground and helping us negotiate difficult steps.   We recognized the guy we had last seen at the Pink Elephant playing with his fire sticks. We went to the back of the hotel but still not feeling safe, clambered up the rock at the back till we were about 60 feet above the village. We then sat on a large rock, a group of maybe 20 of us and we stayed there for 5 hours.

 

News began to filter through and we heard that an earthquake in Sumatra had caused a tidal wave. Everyone knew the geography of the area and we quickly reasoned that what was happening to us was happening across Sri Lanka, Indonesia, & Thailand. Processing the enormity of what had happened must have been different for everybody.  After a couple of hours a helicopter flew over and we all waved and jumped up and down.  The children asked if we would be rescued now.  Not yet, we told them, maybe not until tomorrow.

 

 At some point the second wave hit and though trees obscured most of our view we heard the panic and the shouting and saw the glint of water again. All those films with people sitting on rocks up high, waiting for the end of the world suddenly seemed so relevant.

 

At about 2.00 in the afternoon we decided we had to come down and we could see people moving about on a balcony of the hotel below us. We descended the rock, all of us bare-foot, our children still in their pajamas. At the foot of the rock Tanya stayed with the children while Jon went to see if there was a place we could shelter. The hotel resembled a war zone, with injured people sitting in chairs and lying on mattresses.

 

When Jon returned, Tanya and the boys were gone but someone pointed him in the direction of Mo & Don’s room.  Mo had found Tanya and recognized how the children needed to be with other children, and warmly invited them to her room on the top floor of the hotel.  Jon found a room full of children playing with Christmas toys and rolling up strips of sheets to make bandages. Mo welcomed him in saying ‘ My home is your home’ and someone handed him a cup of tea. This was our first experience of the warmth and generosity of those who had sought shelter at the Rock House.

 

The rest of the day we moved slowly about the place, meeting people, talking, calming the children, always alert for another wave, still in shock.    Tanya felt increasingly sick from the adrenaline.  The children played with their new friends, Zachery and Ootee, but at times would come close to us wide-eyed and pale, needing to be held.  At one point, we heard raised voices and cries that another wave was coming, and ran back out to the bottom of the rock.  The boys were trembling with fear.  Over time, the fear of another wave receded. 

 

The room filled up with people.  Don cooked the children hard-boiled eggs, and found biscuits and crackers for them all.  He later managed, miraculously, to feed about 30 people chicken soup.  We had bottled water, and Don and Mo had already said we had to conserve the water in the pipes, so no flushing of the loo and no washing.  There was lots of clothes sharing, and brief exchanges of conversation. Very few people smiled.

 

At one point someone got a line on the mobile and had a joyous conversation with a relative. We suddenly realized that only a few people would get outside lines and so Jon went around making a list of contacts so that when we got a line they could be read out and hopefully all those relatives would have some word. We tried to get a line for hours with no success. Suddenly Jake’s mobile rang and it was a friend of his from England and the list was read through .  Whoever it was on the other end dutifully went through and called everyone, including the international calls. For those at home, we have since learned, it was the only ray of hope.  Unknown to us, most of the TV pictures in the UK   had shown or mentioned Unawatuna in their first reports. It seems like all the helicopters we waved at that didn’t land must have been full of TV crews filming.  

 

By the evening when we settled down to sleep there must have been around 25 people sleeping in the room and on the balcony.  “Give us a song, Mo” said Don, and she sung a Christmas carol in the dark.

 

We don’t think anyone slept properly that night. The fear was one reason but we must have had more than 20 people in our room including a Sri Lankan family of eight sleeping on one double bed. Groups of people had been out scavenging water & food from the broken buildings and seemed to have brought back as much alcohol as water and groups of people stayed through most of the night, drinking & talking. At times you would forget where you were and enjoy a conversation with someone new.  It would last minutes until you were jolted back into reality.

 

Next day, there was no more cooking in the room, food was centralized in the courtyard below.  In the morning people said we need to bury the bodies, and we began to organize ourselves.

Jon went back to our hotel room with Tony for water sterilizers and our medical pack, and more water. When they got to the Strand, there was corrugated iron over the doors and furniture had been thrown inside the building.  Once upstairs,  the room was just as it had been and we gathered some clothes and water and shoes! Being without shoes, with the prospect that we might need to walk inland had been terrible and yet here were Jon’s sandals & trainers and the boys shoes still sitting where they had been left.

 

 

All day we could hear the sound of the bull-dozer working on clearing the road.  Our children were heartened by the sound.  But we could hear the sea, too loud and unsettled,  and the monkeys jumping onto the roof of the hotel unnerved the boys. 

The children played, and read and were read to.  They drew pictures.  They sat quietly.  They did exactly what they were told, by our sides in an instant if there was any ripple of fear.  They overheard conversations about deaths, and burials, and fear of disease, and speculation of how long we’d be there.  We kept them close, and didn’t let them leave the apartment for safety.  They never complained about the heat or the food.

 

Around mid day Jake asked Jon if he could round up some people for digging the grave. One man said he’d like to, but had no shoes and he was directed towards Jon’s spare sandals.

 

Jon joined a group of thirty or so who went to a piece of open land at the end of the village and they began to dig. The grave was being dug thirty metres from the road in land that was thick with slime and waste and a group broke off and began to build a path from the flotsam that was lying around. The debris lying around included menus from many of the beach restaurants that we had all been eating at only days previously. We carried hotel doors that still had the room key in the lock. There were dead fish lying on the ground. Even the fish were subject to the rules of luck that kept some alive while others died.

 

All the time we worked there was the fear of another wave still in our minds. As Jon worked he marked a tree that was strong and easily climbed and tried to keep himself within running distance of it, should another wave come crashing through the palm trees that lined the beach a hundred yards away.  He had to keep himself alive for the boys. 

 

The grave was dug by Sri Lankans and Westerners alike. Some of us had been party to a row that had broken out at the Rock House over washing in the water from the well and though it had been settled earlier, this was a moment that truly brought us together again.

 

Later, a Sri Lankan army helicopter landed, its rotar blades still whirring, to pick up the worst of the injured.  The scene seemed reminiscent of Vietnam war movies as a line of injured were carried out to the chopper past men that were now waist high in the grave they were digging.

 

Back at the Rock House a generator arrived, which meant water could be pumped up from the well.

That night the Australian children started to be sick.  Jonah woke in the middle of the night feeling sick.  Before he had gone to sleep, he had reached such a low point.  “I can’t do this anymore.” 

A van arrived that night with bananas and crackers, and the men, local ex-pats, offered news, perspective, phone-calls. ‘You can’t stay here like this’ one guy said.   Another family staying in Mo and Don’s room went off with them to stay in the hills.

The word went round that we would be taken out by the British High Commission the next morning. Someone produced a bottle of champagne which was shared out and the relief was palpable. 

While the generator was running, the TV was on and phones could be re-charged.  Someone offered Tanya their phone, and she spoke to her mum and her brother for about 30 magic seconds around midnight.

 

Later a rumour went round that we wouldn’t get out for days. Jon walked around the courtyard in the middle of the night desperate to find someone who knew something but tonight at least,all seemed quiet. 

 

The next morning we felt we had to leave somehow.  The children had run out of stamina, and with sickness spreading we were anxious for them. 

There was a problem with communication, and after talking with Jake and Sian, Tanya went round the hotel telling people there would be a meeting at 8.  At the meeting, Jamie talked about clearing out all the rubbish that had accumulated, conserving water, using the loos, all useful stuff for the community to function!

At 10, when we were cleaning the room, Jake came up and told us we and Mo and Don’s  family were leaving in the next hour.  It was a strange feeling, knowing we were about to leave.  Jonah was flooded with relief, and Tanya said to him “you’ve got to keep yourself together, we haven’t left yet and there are people who will be sad they’re not going too, so stay calm.”  It was out of the question that we stayed to help, because of the needs of the boys, but it was hard to leave too.   

 

Olivia drove us in her beautiful black Ambassador car looking calm and elegant and filling us with gratitude.  She led a convoy of cars, full of families and injured.  We traveled a windy back road route to the airbase, the main road being impassable, where half of us were taken off by helicopter and the other half by military plane.  That plane ride was terrifying, rickety and old, flying along the coast, showing us the extent of the devastation that shocked the boys.  And then as we flew into an electrical storm and the sky went dark, we all of us fell silent until we reached Colombo.

 

Bizarrely, we found ourselves right back in our holiday schedule, with a room booked at the Galle Face for 2 nights until our flight home. And so, two days later, we arrived at Heathrow, and frantic days of meeting family and friends, of crying and laughing and loving, became the norm.

 

Within days we were setting up Friends of Unawatuna and meeting back up with others from the Rock House and trying to remember what we did before Boxing Day. Friends have been loving & generous, but weeks on it is still an effort to go through those everyday things that once seemed so important.

 

The post is a saving grace. As cheques pour in, many accompanied by notes from people we have never met  but who carry the thread and connections on. So much giving, so many ties that now bind us to Unawatuna.