February 23, 2005

Last moments of Tsnuami victims caught by camera. A local (Vancouver, Canada) couple went missing during the tragedy and were later found dead. Recently, the memory card from their wrecked digital camera was found by a relief worker, from Seattle. The card contains pictures of the last moments before the tsnuami hit Thailand. If there is a sliver lining in this story, it's that their sons know they were together at the end.

Do you find it comforting or unsettling? I'm not sure myself. I guess that means unsettling.

posted by zedcaster 19 years ago
  • That's a nice photo of impending doom right there. What were they thinking?
  • not a bad picture of the couple... but the waves? egads. unsettling.
  • ummm... I would hazard a guess at "Oh shit!" :) but that is some seriously freaky stuff... I don't know if I'd want to see the last thing my parent's saw before they were washed out to sea.... creepy..
  • in the end, everyone's gotta go somehow. dying with my sweetie would be one of my choices. and dying in a tsunami would indeed be very dramatic. like i said, we all have to go sometime, better start getting used to the idea.
  • I can get used to the idea conceptually. sure, I'll shuffle off at some point, but I think we're all allowed a bit of panic in the moments before it comes. the whole survival instinct and all. dying with the one you love is not a bad way to go, good point.
  • If I didn't think I could survive, I'd likely do it for posterity's sake (knowing that the likliehood of the camera being found would be small). But I doubt that I'd be so sure I wouldn't survive. More likely, I suppose that until the last moments, they just didn't comprehend how big the wave really was. But that one photo with the ships in it? The wave is behind them on the horizon and taller. I would think that would alarm me were I in that position and I wouldn't be in the same place able to take a photograph. But maybe they had moved? Were at the highest point they thought they could manage? I don't know.
  • You know SideDish, that rates a poor second to me compared to, "scooping sweetie up, running like fuck, and hoping for some luck."
  • of course there's always that option, rogerd...
  • I'm still stunned to know that after the tide had gone out so far, people were wading out there, and NO ONE seemed to know enough to GTF out of there. Creepy, chilling and sad.
  • I have a friend who lost someone who had been sitting on a riverbank. He later speculated with me that the person must have been ready to go, otherwise surely could have struggled and survived. I wanted to smack him, and hoped that if *I* go kicking and screaming some day that people don't think "oh he must have wanted this." But whatever gets you through. Did this couple take pictures knowing that they were doomed, or like tornado viewers everywhere, think it was just exceptional and picture-worthy not realizing that the end was near? As for dying with my sweetie, I'd rather she was somewhere else. If I had time to think about it even a little bit, I'd feel that much worse -- and far more panicky -- that she is about to be injured or killed. You're allowed to face your own fate resolutely.
  • Rorsarch: I got taught in school that when the water all runs away from the beach, it's time to head for the hills, but I live in the South Pacific. I guess kids in Canada don't.
  • I don't think they realised the real danger, I believe if they did, they'd have gotten out of there. It's like people may be afraid of the stuff that lives in water (sharks, etc) but aren't really afraid of water itself and they'll stand by the shore taking pics or go surfing because hey, it's just water. That's a sweet looking couple, they look like everybody's parents. Sucks they're dead.
  • I wonder what it was like for the people in those small boats, seeing the waves come. Chilling.
  • Then again, it was Thailand 5 years ago that I spotted a waterspout not far off the beach, heading inland, and what did I do? ... I ran and got my camera, of course.
  • In the 80s, Albuquerque had a tornado which had never happened here before. People went up on their roofs to watch it.
  • As for dying with my sweetie, I'd rather she was somewhere else. seconded The comfort of dying in the arms of the one you love would wouldn't be worth the knowledge that the one you love is about to die.
  • The 'tidal wave' does look smaller than I would have expected in all the pictures. I think the thing is, I've seen so many pictures of surfers riding waves more than twice as tall as them that I assumed a tsunami would have to be at least two or three times that height. I suppose the thing is, those surfing breakers are really just a ripple: the tsunami may only have been a metre or two high, but it was the whole sea that was coming. I can easily imagine that people might have thought it was not especially dangerous until too late, anyway.
  • There was no where to run; apparently the only high ground was so far away they could never have made it, and they knew it. The other thing? They'd been bugging all three kids to join them there for Christmas, but the kids were all, for various reasons, too broke to go.
  • At the risk of sounding insensitive - I love this kind of thing. There but for the grace of whatever etc. You know, the pics of the bear charging the camera, tiger stalking etc. Even the faked transcript from the first shuttle disaster. Why were we so remiss not to have invented digital cameras when the Titanic went down?
  • That last photo is just about the scariest thing ever. Doesn't the sea look alive and almost consciously malevolent?