Missed death by ten minutes (From Stroud News and Journal)

Missed death by ten minutes

Former Minchinhampton Primary School teacher Glyn Jackson now lives in Sri Lanka and was holiday on its south coast when the Boxing Day tsunami struck.

In an e-mail to friends, excerpts of which are published here, he tells of his narrow escape.

Wednesday, December 29 2004

Still alive and unhurt.

When the wave struck I was staying in an area just outside of Tangalle in the south of the country. Tangalle the area where I had built a house a year or so ago. That house I sold some months back. The house has now been destroyed.

At the time the wave struck I had been delayed by ten minutes leaving the place where I was saying.

If I had left on time I would have been directly in the line of the first wave and would have had no escape. As soon as people realised what was happening they rushed out of houses to the nearest high ground.

I was dragged along with them and bodily hauled up a tree by a couple of Sri Lankans. Several waves came but none reached the high ground we were on.

After an hour or so we were able to move onto the main road. The devastation was incredible.

TV pictures cannot convey the experience of being in something like that. Houses had been torn like paper and their contents strewn over the ground.

People were in tears in the street having lost many of their family as well as their homes. I met a number of tourists one of whom had lost his five-year-old daughter and his wife was critically injured.

There was no way I could get medical attention as all communications were down. I had only the shorts I was wearing. Everything else had gone. I was in a complete daze. There are many fishing families who have lost their boats (their only means of earning a living), members of their family, their possessions.

Some of these people only make £1 or so a day so of course they have no savings. I know many of these families and the tasks of rebuilding will be major for them...

The town itself suffered major damage. It is incredible to think of large buses just being lifted as if they were scraps of papers.

I spent the next few days living in a very poor family house full of dislocated people. There was no easy way out of the town and no communications...