VICTIMS, DEATH AND EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OF THE 2004 TSUNAMI N THAILAND

VICTIMS OF THE DECEMBER 2004 TSUNAMI IN THAILAND

The final death toll of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami in Thailand was 5,395, of which 1,953 were believed to be foreigners. Many locals and tourists were caught off-guard by the tsunami, as there was no prior warning. According to Reuters the number of dead was 5,395, with: 2,817 listed as missing for a total of 8,212. [Source: Reuters, December 16, 2009]

Reporting from Nam Khem, Seth Mydans wrote in the New York Times: This little fishing village is shattered, too, with only a few broken buildings still standing, but it is not empty. Dazed residents sit in the rubble, breathing in a funk of mold and putrefaction, waiting, without real hope, for the bodies of lost relatives to emerge. Here and there, under piles of concrete and tin roofing and coagulated clothing, the smell grows stronger, like a marker on a map suggesting the location of a buried father or sister or child. Workers set up giant pumps and began to drain foul water from a mine shaft. In another village not far away, several cars and a tour bus had already been recovered from a mine shaft, along with dozens of bodies.[Source: Seth Mydans, New York Times, January 2, 2005]

There is no body count here in Nam Khem, which was home to about 6,000 permanent residents. Thawip Sayhui, 47, a fish farmer whose wife was caught by the wave as she tried to flee in a pickup truck, estimated that as many as half the population had been lost, like her. For the past week, volunteers have been carting away bodies without keeping records and residents have trekked from temple to temple, peering into grotesque and swollen faces in the hope of recognizing a relative.

Chanjira Sangkarak, 39, a fish trader whose husband is a fisherman, found her mother's body and joined an assembly line of fast-forward Buddhist rituals and round-the-clock cremations that sent almost constant towers of black smoke into the sky here. Three other relatives are still missing, although her husband and children survived.

Poom Jensen, the 21-year-old grandson of the King of Thailand was killed. He was last seen jetskiing off of Krabi. His body was found near Khao Lak beach. He is the son of the king’s eldest daughter Princess Ubolratana. The princess and her 21-year-old son were staying in Khao Lak at La Flora resort, The hotel's villas were destroyed, and water damaged the main building.

Witnessing People Killed by the 2005 Tsunami in Thailand

Thai navy rescue team retrieve bodies of tsunami victims near Khao Lak

Robert McFadden wrote in the New York Times: “It was just after breakfast on Ngai Island, one of the many resorts on Thailand's west coast that welcome Asians and Europeans escaping winter's cold.Simon Clark, 29, a London photographer, looked out on an almost idyllic scene: sunbathers lying on the beach, snorkellers bobbing on the gentle waves out near the sharp-edged but beautiful coral reefs. The deadly wave was unimaginably big, stretching to the horizons, and it struck suddenly, looming up with a roar like a monster from the deep. It buried everyone, everything. It was over quickly, Clark said. "People that were snorkelling were dragged along the coral and washed up on the beach," he said, "and people that were sunbathing got washed into the sea." [Source: Robert McFadden, New York Times, December 28, 2004]

A Swedish boy, 2½-year-old Ragnar Bang-Ericsson, was among the missing from Khao Luk. His father Anders told the New York Times the last time he saw his son the boy was “floating away on the waves, away from me, on his blue water wings...It was like being in a big washing machine, thrown around,, tumbling around. I had to change my grip in order to swim better. But then I lost hold of him for a second. The last thing he said to me was, “Daddy, I am scared.” Anders and his wife stayed in Thailand for weeks looking for clues of Ragner but never found anything.

Ander said family was hanging out at the pool at his hotel. “Suddenly someone came shouting, saying there is a tidal wave coming” and not long after that they found themselves facing a wave as high as a four story building. “I was carrying Ragnar in my arms, but we were all flushed out of the room through the concrete wall. We were floating at a speed that I was later told was 30 kilometers per hour. We were struggling with a lot of debris, garden furniture, trees, cars, electric cables.”

His wife grabbed on a door and rode it like a body board until she was deposited at the edge of a rubber plantation. “There were cars in the water, houses, floating next to me, refrigerators, beds. Then I saw an electricity pole started crashing down in front of me. I thought now I am going to get strangled. Then, everything went black.”

2,500 Myanmar Nationals Killed by the Tsunami in Thailand?

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami had a particularly severe impact on migrant workers from Myanmar living and working along Thailand’s Andaman coast. Non-governmental organizations working with migrant communities reported that thousands of Myanmar laborers were among the victims in Phang Nga Province, one of the areas hardest hit by the disaster. Many migrants were employed in fishing, seafood processing, agriculture, construction, and other low-wage industries concentrated in coastal districts vulnerable to the tsunami. [Source: Asiantribune.com, January 17, 2005]

Satellite Views of Blue Village Pakarang Resort, Khao Lak, Thailand, before (A) and after (B) the Tsunami

According to the Yaung Chi Oo Workers Association, a Myanmar migrant rights organization based in Mae Sot, at least 2,500 Myanmar migrants were believed to have died in Phang Nga Province. The organization based its estimate on a week-long assessment that included interviews with migrant workers, Thai employers, and local residents. The group also estimated that approximately 4,000 Myanmar migrants were missing in the aftermath of the disaster. While many of those individuals were presumed dead, others were thought to have relocated to different provinces or returned to Myanmar.

At the time of the tsunami, more than 120,000 Myanmar migrants were working in Thailand, particularly in labor-intensive sectors such as fishing, seafood processing, farming, and construction. Many worked for low wages and often lived in temporary housing near coastal areas, increasing their vulnerability to the tsunami. The disaster exposed the precarious conditions faced by many migrant workers, who often lacked legal protections and were difficult to account for during emergency response efforts.

Other migrant advocacy organizations reported even higher casualty estimates. Htoo Chit, coordinator of the Grassroots Human Rights Education and Development Association, stated that surveys conducted in the heavily affected communities of Ban Nam Khem, Khura Buri, and Khao Lak suggested that between 2,500 and 3,000 Myanmar migrants had been killed. The same surveys estimated that between 5,000 and 7,000 migrants were missing. Although exact figures remain uncertain, humanitarian groups generally agreed that migrant workers represented a significant proportion of the tsunami’s victims in southern Thailand.

Kids Swept Away to The Deaths by the Tsunami in Phuket

Tamaki Oshima, from Yokohama, was vacationing in Phuket with his family. In a letter to his children's school, publsihed in the Asahi Shimbun, he described the terror and helplessness he felt as he watched his son Kai, 9, and daughter Sara, 6, washed away in tsunami. Everything seemed normal, he wrote, when the family left their hotel on Boxing Day and walked to the beach close by. They had heard no reports of a magnitude 9.0 Richter-scale earthquake off Indonesia or tsunami in the Indian Ocean. [Source: Asahi Shimbun, January 2005]

bodies washed up on Khao Lak beach

"I don't remember what time it was when we were caught up in the tsunami,'' Oshima wrote. "`There were three big waves.'' He said the first wave was only 30 or 50 centimeters high, but it came in very fast. As the family fled to higher ground, a second, bigger wave, hit. "The four of us were swept away by the second wave that reached a height of about 2 to 3 meters,'' Oshima wrote. "It felt like we were in a washing machine full of dirty water. We were thrown against trees and we struggled desperately in the direction of whatever light we could barely make out from the dirty water.''

Oshima said his wedding ring and his watch were torn off as he fought to escape the raging torrent, finally emerging about 800 meters from where he was standing when the wave hit. He said he and his wife, Noriko, were rescued in separate locations after the second tsunami settled. The third tsunami crashed into the spot on higher ground where he had found safety. The waves rose 1 to 2 meters more, almost dragging him under again. "I had climbed up an electric utility pole, but the water reached just below my feet,'' Oshima wrote. `"After about an hour passed, I met up with my wife at our hotel.''

The Oshimas were taken to a hospital so their injuries could be treated. On Dec. 27, they contacted the Japanese Embassy for help in locating their children. They also asked hotel staff to assist. The Oshimas had the awful task of identifying the bodies of their children on Dec. 28. Oshima said he found Kai's body and that a search party found Sara. Oshima wrote that while he had hoped to find his two children sooner, he was at least consoled by the fact he knew by Dec. 28 what had happened to his precious offspring.

Split Second Decisions Decide Life and Death

Reporting from Ban Nam Khem, a fishing village in Takua Pa District in of Phang Nga Province.Peter S. Goodman wrote in the Washington Post: “In the instant before the water swept over the land, her father rushed into the house to warn her. Get out, he shouted. Run. Kanchlee Oonmanil ran, and she lived. She raced up the hill as the wave demolished everything behind her, flinging boats onto the shore like toys. Her father, meanwhile, ran to warn some cousins living nearby. No one has seen him since -- not in the hospitals, not in the open-air morgues. Not among the bodies strewn in the muck in this wasted village, once home to 2,000 families and now a graveyard for more than 600 people. [Source: Peter S. Goodman, Washington Post, December 30, 2004]

“While much attention has focused on the thousands of foreign tourists who died while vacationing on Asia's white sand beaches, the disaster overwhelmingly affected local residents who occupy marshy scraps of undeveloped land with no protection from the sea's wrath. Within these coastal communities, the difference between living and dying was often determined by panicky, split-second decisions or small twists of fate. The dead were closer to the water, or farther from the door. They were the ones like Kanchlee Oonmanil's father, who tried to help friends and relatives, or who did not immediately heed entreaties to run, or who heard them an instant too late. They were the ones who hesitated, torn between the impulse to flee and the fear of losing their belongings.

Most fishermen here spend their nights at sea, casting nets for tuna and squid. By 10 a.m. Sunday, when the first warnings of the tsunami came, they had already returned and unloaded their catch. Some were having a meal or cup of coffee. "Fishermen, they have no fear about the sea, so they couldn't believe all the shouting," said Talinee Chuwanakit, a woman who sold shredded coconut in the village market. "They stayed behind and they worked on their engines."

“Talinee said she was tending her market stall in the center of town when she saw people running and heard shouts of "Water! Water!" She fled immediately. The path up the hill lay straight ahead. "As soon as I got outside, I saw that the water had already swept in on both sides of the market," she said. Two of Talinee's friends -- who worked in another row, up against the market wall -- did not make it out in time. One was a 65-year-old woman who sold chicken and chili paste, the other a 50-year-old woman who sold pork. A third vendor just one stall away from Talinee, a 70-year-old man who sold vegetables, also died. He was in good health and could move fast, Talinee said, but he made a bad calculation. "He didn't believe the warnings," she said. "He was worried about his stuff, thinking about business. I ran, he stayed."

“Supon Panjarat, another villager, did not hesitate when he heard the shouting. He grabbed his wife and headed for their motorbike, but the engine did not start right away, according to a family friend. The wave hit the couple before they could move the bike. Supon was hurtled through the window of a nearby house and out the other side, the friend recounted. Floating in the water, he grabbed a plastic jug and bobbed like a cork as he was swept along. He landed in mud a quarter-mile away, alive. But Supon's wife has yet to be found. She lost a leg in a car accident 15 years ago, limiting her ability to swim.

Swept Away by the 2004 Tsunami in Phi Phi

Abby Goodnough wrote in the New York Times, “Most hotels, shops and restaurants were clustered between two bays at the island's flattest and narrowest point, which proved pitifully vulnerable to the 20-foot wave. At least 700 people here died, with 950 more presumed lost when the water plowed buildings, palm trees and everything else in its path several hundred yards inland. Chay Kyme, a Briton who owned a dive shop on Loh Dalum Bay, was lucky, suffering only deep gashes in his hand and foot when the water swept him across the isthmus and into the other bay, where a longboat rescued him. A friend who had been at his side, five months pregnant and soon to be married, was gone, as were dozens of others he had worked and lived with. [Source: Abby Goodnough, New York Times, January 11, 2005]

“On the morning of the wave, Mr. Kyme said, some people were sleeping late while others were sunbathing or diving. An initial, smaller wave flooded the beach, startling people who then watched in wonder as the water receded as far as they could see. When it returned, Mr. Kyme climbed on the hotel reception desk. His friend Marc Bérubé , diving in the opposite bay, began tumbling wildly underwater. The second, much larger wave suddenly loomed, and some people began running to the hills. Lisa Bier, a diving instructor on one of Phi Phi's other beaches, said that those who escaped to higher ground waited nearly two hours before daring to return to sea level. When they did, she said, they saw dead and injured people everywhere amid debris. Survivors spent the rest of the day carrying the wounded into the hills and waiting for helicopters from the mainland.”

Toru Kawabe wrote in the Yomiuri Shimbun: “Yuko Hirose, 41, of Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, and her daughter Midori, 7, who were staying on Phi Phi Island, which faces Phuket Island, were swept out to sea by the tsunami. "I swam desperately, holding my daughter," she said. Hirose and her daughter were walking on a pier in the island's harbor when the tsunami hit, just after local people had gathered on the beach saying something strange was happening at sea. "A wave more than two meters high struck me, and the next thing I knew we were being swept away," she said. [Source: Toru Kawabe, Yomiuri Shimbun, December 27, 2004]

“The wave engulfed the two and quickly dragged them out to sea, at which point Hirose managed to grab Midori, she said. Swept several hundred meters away by the wave, she found a chest floating in the water. They swam to the chest and drifted for a while around the market, which had become part of the ocean. They reached a hotel building whose first floor was submerged, and a foreign tourist in the hotel pulled them up through a window. Hirose and her daughter went to the hotel's rooftop, where they joined about 50 people taking refuge. Hirose said it looked like a hospital, with injured people lying everywhere. People carried beds and bedclothes from guest rooms onto the rooftop, where they spent the night.

Nick Cumming-Bruce wrote in the New York Times, “William and Amanda Robins knew something was wrong when what had seemed like cries of excitement from Asian tourists coming off the ferry from the Thai mainland turned to screams of terror. The newlyweds from Sacramento, California, feared the island was the target of a terrorist strike. They jumped a low counter and hid in a small room full of computers. “We got down and started to pray. Amanda said “This is it? and I said “No, it’s not and we held on together.” [Source: Nick Cumming-Bruce, New York Times, December 28, 2004]

“The building started shaking, they heard a roar like a bulldozer and minutes, perhaps seconds, later they were swept up by a torrent of water of terrifying force, “One minute we were on our honeymoon,” said William a 26-year old pro golfer, “the next we were in the water fighting for our lives.” The Robins described a terrifying ordeal similar to many others as the water wrenched them apart, battered them with concrete blocks and other debris of their hotel’s now demolished computer room and dragged them at high speed more than 150 meters out to sea. At the point when William feared his lungs could not hold out he came to the surface and miraculously Amanda bobbed up a few feet away and a boat nearby pulled them from the water. Amanda suffered a fractured pelvis. William had a broken collar bone and a nearly severed ear.

Grief and Death at and Phuket After the December 2004 Tsunami

Nick Cumming-Bruce wrote in the New York Times: “The photo of a small, smiling Scandinavian boy taped to an office window in Phuket International Hospital epitomizes the crushing anxiety and grief that weighs on this holiday resort island. "Please help us find little Rangnar," pleads the message left by desperate family or friends. [Source: Nick Cumming-Bruce, New York Times, December 30, 2004]

“At Phuket City Hall, an information and clearing center for survivors, gruesome photographs of the dead, battered and disfigured by the forces of nature, have been posted alongside lists of casualties in an effort to help the process of identification.

“The magnitude of the disaster has overwhelmed the facilities available in Phuket to cope with the dead. The Thai authorities have arranged to send 10 refrigerated containers to ease the pressure on Phuket's morgues, Western consular officials say, but in the meantime bodies are being transferred to hospitals in other provinces, complicating the process of tracing and identifying the dead. The horrific end to year-end festivities was evident in the small clusters of bodies wrapped by plastic, or partly covered by it, lying along a 30-kilometer stretch of coast waiting for collection.

An international forensic team, believed to be the largest ever put together, was assembled in Thailand to identify the victims. It was comprised of more than 200 forensic experts from 20 countries. As of April 2005, they had identified 1,176 bodies but had yet to identify 2,547 victims, about half of them foreigners. It was initially estimated that it could take five years to identify all of victims. People found without identification were identified using fingerprints, dental records and DNA samples. The process was slowed by delays in the arrival of “ante mortem” data from families of the victims. DNA identification was not as effective as people thought it would be because the tissues decayed very fast.

There was an outcry over the use of mass graves. In some cases bodies were exhumed and refrigerated until they could be identified. Most of those who were identified were foreigners. Most Thais were placed in shallow trenches and kept there without being identified or they were cremated, sometimes on a pyre made with old tires. Families members of the dead and missing foreigner poured in from all over the world to look for their loved ones or clues to what might of happened to them.

Overwhelmed by the Death at Khao Lak After the December 2004 Tsunami

At Khao Lak, dozens of bodies arriving at a temporary morgue at Yan Yao Buddhist temple were unrecognisable after so long in the tropical heat. Marko Cunningham, a New Zealand volunteer at the temple, said that the decomposing bodies posed a health risk. "Human parts all over the place, dogs have been in as well last night to some of the bodies. Yes, there is a potential for disease here, yes," he said.

A week after the tsunami Reuters reported: “At least 1,927 foreigners died on Khao Lak, where a giant wall of water swept her one kilometers inland and crumpled luxury hotels whose 5,000 rooms were full at the peak of the Christmas and New Year tourist season. Khao Lak, with a gently sloping beach which made it safe for children, was especially popular with Scandinavians and Germans. [Source: Reuters, December 31, 2004]

“The bodies arriving at Cunningham's temporary morgue were unrecognisable after so long in the tropical heat, some so decomposed they were half liquid. "Everyone is sick of it," Cunningham, a linguistics teacher at a Thai university, said of the volunteers handling the bodies. "I can see people shirking, just like me," he said. "The last truck yesterday, I just couldn't handle it."

“Environment Minister Suwit Khunkitti appealed for more refrigerated containers to store the thousands of bodies. "Many firms are shutting down during this holiday season. Please send refrigerated containers or dry ice to help us store these decomposing bodies," he told Bangkok radio while supervising the search on Khao Lak.

“Relatives and friends flying in from Europe in the vain hope their loved ones are lying injured in hospital are having to face the grim reality that they may be among the bloated bodies now lying in refrigerated containers the government sent. They scour gruesome mosaics of photographs of distorted faces pinned on bulletin boards alongside small possessions -- a ring perhaps, or a watch -- which someone might recognise. "She was with her boyfriend on Khao Lak," Miriam Rhyner said of her 25-year-old sister Nicole after flying in from Switzerland. "My father is there searching," she said, pinning Nicole's photograph on a bulletin board at Phuket City Hall.

“Sweden estimated 2,500 of its people were missing and said its toll could top 1,000. Germany has more than 1,000 missing. Italy, Norway, Denmark, Finland and the Czech Republic each reported hundreds missing. Australia said it feared its toll might be "in the hundreds". Russia had 80 missing.

Elephants in Thailand Put to Work Recovering Bodies

Reporting from Khao Lak, James Brooke wrote in the New York Times:Up to his knees in mud, Plai Sudor gently pushed aside a car to reveal a tsunami victim lost in a lagoon. Lumbering down a jungle path, this saggy, baggy 30-year-old carried, slung from his tusks, a green plastic bag loaded with a 200-pound body....The task of cleaning up in the aftermath of the deadly tsunami has, at least temporarily, brought elephants out of technological retirement. The December 26 wave was so strong that the surging water deposited bodies in dense forests one mile in from the Andaman Sea beachfront resorts, which were packed with European tourists. "We need elephant power, because there are things we can't move, places where heavy equipment can't go," said Siriwan Phakphin, leader of a search team that has recovered 80 bodies in the last week. Nearby, Plai Sudor snacked on fresh sugar cane stalks brought by his handler, Nimit Insamran. [Source: James Brooke, New York Times, January 7, 2005].

Scattered through the jungle and rubber plantation were three other elephants from the same elephant park, Ayutthaya Elephant Palace. "There are many more bodies out there," a South Korean searcher said, surveying a fetid saltwater lagoon that had been created by the wall of water that roared through the area on the morning of December 26.

To find bodies, the team dispatched by the South Korean government used dogs. But Ms. Phakphin criticized those animals' performance, saying her workers had found bodies in areas cleared by the dogs. "With the elephant we get two for one," she said. "The elephant can help find bodies. They can also help move bodies through the jungle. Before we got an elephant, we moved a body two kilometers through the jungle," a distance of a mile and a quarter. "My staff could not walk after that" in the tropical heat.

Here in Khao Luk, people are talking about how eight elephants from a local tourist ride may have saved the lives of a dozen European tourists. After the earthquake, the elephants started trumpeting oddly. Then, shortly before the first tsunami hit, the story goes, they bolted for high ground, charging through jungle, with frightened tourists clinging desperately to their baskets on top. Down below, the waves were crashing through the resorts, wiping villas cleanly off their foundations, wrapping pickup trucks around utility poles, wedging a motorboat into a second-floor balcony and sending hundreds of tourists running, too late, for the high ground.

The Missing in Thailand — Never Found, and Unable to Identify and Count

Thousands of people reported missing were never found and many bodies were never identified. Associated Press and Reuters reported: “Southern Thailand’s status as a world-class tourist destination meant that victims of the disaster could come from literally anywhere around the globe. And due to the heat and the immersion of many bodies in water, the thousands of corpses decomposed quickly, losing their identifying features. Specialists, such as doctors, dentists and police officers, always have a chance to quickly find a unique, identifying feature or mark, But their painstaking efforts could take months — or even years — and come up blank.”

Determining the exact number of people who went missing in Thailand as a result of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami has proven difficult. Although the disaster claimed thousands of lives, authorities acknowledged that the number of missing persons may never be known with certainty because of incomplete records, population movements, and difficulties in verifying reports. Some individuals initially reported missing were later found alive, while others may never be conclusively accounted for. [Source: Mail and Guardian, Christopher Torchia, Associated Press, December 7, 2005]

The Thai government reported 2,817 missing persons before discontinuing updates to the missing-persons tally. However, officials and forensic experts cautioned that not all individuals listed as missing could be assumed to have died in the tsunami. Positive identification of remains was required before a missing person could be formally confirmed as a victim.

The Thai Tsunami Victim Identification (TTVI) center, operated by Thai police with the assistance of international forensic specialists, spent years working to identify recovered bodies. During the recovery effort, hundreds of remains remained unidentified despite extensive forensic analysis. At one stage, 873 bodies had not yet been matched to known victims. Some of these unidentified remains may have corresponded to individuals listed as missing by foreign governments and international agencies.

Investigators also discovered discrepancies in missing-person reports. In some cases, individuals listed as missing were later located alive. Authorities found that families who had reported relatives missing in the chaotic aftermath of the disaster did not always notify officials when those relatives returned safely. As a result, missing-person databases likely contained a number of duplicate or outdated entries. This made it difficult to establish an accurate final count of the missing and contributed to ongoing uncertainty about the tsunami’s ultimate human toll.

The challenge of accounting for victims extended beyond Thailand. Several countries maintained their own lists of citizens who were killed or missing in the disaster. Sweden, one of the countries most heavily affected among foreign visitors, reported 525 confirmed deaths and 18 people still missing. Such cases highlighted the complexity of reconciling international missing-person records with unidentified remains recovered in Thailand and elsewhere in the tsunami-affected region.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Encyclopedia.com, Library of Congress, Live Science, The Conversation, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Google AI, Wikipedia, The Guardian and various websites, books and other publications.

Last updated June 2026