EDMONDS – When Carol Kinney and Meena Swenson arrived in Thailand on Jan. 10, they saw that surviving tsunami victims had food, clean water and clothing.
“We saw mountains of clothes – I mean, as tall as a house,” said Kinney of Edmonds. “They don’t need clothes.”
But what they do need, she said, are fishing boats, boat motors, equipment for schools and help rebuilding homes.
Swenson and Kinney – members of the Edmonds Rotary Club – returned Sunday from two weeks in southern Thailand on a fact-finding mission for the club.
On Jan. 5, the club helped put on a $15-a-plate fund-raiser at Swenson’s Seattle restaurant, Royal Palm. About 750 people attended, and altogether the club raised about $18,000.
“Now we had to find out the best way to spend the money,” said Kinney, 66, chairwoman for international service at the club.
Swenson, 43, a native of Thailand, didn’t trust the government to quickly distribute the money where it was needed most, so she and Kinney – who went to Thailand last year as guests of the Edmonds Rotary’s sister club, Charoen Nakorn – decided to go see for themselves.
They were met by five representatives of the sister club who took them on a tour.
The first thing that struck them was that richer areas, such as the tourist mecca of Phuket, were better taken care of than the poorer areas.
One of those areas was Ban Nam Ken, a fishing village of 3,000 families on the west coast north of Phuket. About 90 percent of the residents are believed to be dead, Kinney said.
The two were told that the waves that struck the village were about 30-feet high.
The two women said they’d like the Rotary to help one man, about 70, who lost his wife there when a huge wave swept through their house. His home was the only one left standing in the area. When he returned, six bodies were lying around it.
His fondest wish was that his son be able to finish his last year of college. The women will recommend to the club that some money be given to the man to help him realize his dream.
The two women also talked of a boy, about 13, they met at a camp for displaced people. He lost his mother, he said, and was awaiting paperwork and money from the government that would allow him to return to school.
The schools will be rebuilt by the government but are short on furniture and supplies, Kinney said. The Rotary will allocate some of its money to help that cause, she added.
People waited in long lines to talk to government officials, the women said. “They go very slow,” Swenson said of the government.
On a tourist island, Phi Phi, “a lot of foreigners died,” Kinney said.
While there, the women found a wallet belonging to a British man. They were told he was alive, and they contacted him. Now back in the United Kingdom, he said he was in an Internet cafe when the wave hit, but he was protected by a wall.
“I lost everything,” he told them. “All I had was my swimsuit.”
About 2,000 Swedes are believed to have died in the tourist area of Khao Lak, Kinney said. In the Phang Nga province, the women saw about seven refrigerated boxcars full of bodies, being stored pending identification.
Most were foreigners, Swenson said. Most of the bodies of Thais were buried or cremated, she added.
Despite the devastation in some areas, others areas are intact, they said, even on the west coast, which bore the brunt of the waves. The east coast and interior of the country were unaffected, and local officials and businesspeople are concerned about the downturn in tourism.
They want people to come, the women said, to help keep up the area’s economy.
The club will try to get a matching grant from Rotary International and then send the funds to local Thai Rotary clubs for distribution.
“The money goes right to the people,” Swenson said.
Bill Sheets writes for The Herald in Everett.
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