MARYSVILLE – Carole Smythe of Marysville was startled early Sunday by a sound she had never heard: her son, Curry’s, terrified voice.
Hours earlier, Curry and his Sri Lankan wife, Desi, fled from a wall of mud and water that slammed into the Sri Lankan hotel pool where they had been swimming only moments before. They escaped unharmed.
But at least 22,500 people died when a magnitude 9.0 earthquake unleashed massive tsunami waves that ravaged the coastlines of at least six south Asian countries.
Curry and Desi Smythe, along with her parents and several other members of her family, had gone to a beachfront hotel for a relaxing day by the pool, Carole Smythe said.
They ran to the second floor of the hotel when employees told them giant waves from an earthquake might be approaching. As water and mud hit the hotel, the Smythes saw people below desperately hanging onto whatever they could, Curry Smythe told his mother.
The Smythes and Desi’s family then waded knee-deep through water to their rented van on the other side of the hotel and drove back to the family home in the capital of Colombo.
“I’ve never, ever heard Curry afraid,” Carole Smythe said Monday. “He was in a state of shock. The way he was talking, if he hadn’t had gotten out of there, they would have been killed. I’m just very grateful for him being alive.”
Smythe’s family is just one of many locally affected by the tsunamis.
Mike Mitchell of Everett was in the Thai tourist resort town of Phuket when the tsunami hit, according to KING-TV news.
Mitchell said he tried in vain to grab a woman who was floating by, but “I never saw her again.” He managed to climb atop the roof of a two-story building, but he watched many others wash away.
“It’s just nothing, dude, nothing,” he said. “Everything is gone, wiped away, and then you see people in trees, wedged in. It’s terrible.”
Duangporn Tengtrirat said her family in Thailand is still stunned by the magnitude of the destruction.
“They just couldn’t believe it,” said Tengtrirat, associate director of the Refugee and Immigrant Forum of Snohomish County. She has been communicating with family and friends by telephone and e-mail.
Tengtrirat comes from the northern interior of Thailand, which was not affected by the disaster. But she was initially worried that family members may have gone to the coast for a beach vacation. Residents of her family’s hometown are collecting donations for victims, she said.
Relief organizations in the Puget Sound area are also mobilizing to help. An Everett woman on the American Red Cross’s international response team has offered to volunteer in Asia, said Beverly Walker, programs and services director for the Snohomish County chapter of the Red Cross. The national headquarters hasn’t yet given her an assignment, Walker added.
At least 11 doctors from Northwest Medical Teams International are headed to Asia, said Soozi Redkey, vice president of the group’s Washington state office.
Reporter David Olson: 425-339-3452 or dolson@heraldnet.com.
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