My Life and Times

December 29, 2004REACTION
A Tragedy in Asia Affects All Corners of a Closer WorldBy CRAIG S. SMITH
ARIS, Dec. 28 - The tsunami that struck over the weekend spread a ring of destruction through nearly a dozen countries. Those are the places most directly affected, and on a calamitous scale. But the disaster has rippled far beyond South Asia, making it truly a tragedy felt across the globe.
Among the tens of thousands of people missing or dead, thousands are believed to have come from outside the region, including many who were spending their holidays at Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian beach resorts.
Reported deaths now cover at least 40 nationalities, reaching from South Africa to South Korea, with surprising concentrations of people still unaccounted for from European countries.
Those still missing include 1,500 from Sweden and 700 to 800 from Norway, 300 from New Zealand, more than 200 each from Denmark and the Czech Republic, 100 from Germany, 100 from Italy and 188 Israelis.
The disaster's reach is an unsettling reminder that globalization has brought the world closer together in unexpected ways so that people now share the pain as well as profit from far-flung places. Even for people who have never left home, otherwise abstract calamities in distant lands now frequently have a familiar face.
Only a hundred Europeans have been confirmed dead so far, leaving anxious relatives and friends to await word from distant lands where often-sketchy communications were either overloaded or knocked out altogether after the devastation struck.
There is little way to know for now whether many of those missing have been killed or are merely cut off. Meanwhile, stories of desperate searches and unlikely reunions have begun to trickle in from abroad.
Vacationing children who lost their families in the disaster are slowly being identified.
A Swedish boy, 7, was found at a shelter in a Buddhist temple in Phuket, Thailand, on Monday. Marie Gulbstrand, a doctor from Stockholm, told The Associated Press that the boy has identified himself as Karl Nilsson and that his parents and two brothers were swept from their hotel by the surging water.
A 10-year-old German girl pictured on the Phuket hospital Web site has given her name as Sophia Michl and says her parents are Norbert and Edeltraud Michl. Both are missing.
Olinto Barletta, an Italian tour operator, made the rounds of Phuket hospitals on Tuesday waving an Italian flag to track down compatriots who had survived the wave, according to the Italian news agency ANSA. He told the news agency that he had found about 50 Italians alive but that many of them had missing friends or relatives.
A dozen Italians have been reported dead, mostly in Thailand. But more than 2,000 Italians were vacationing in Sri Lanka, about 1,500 on the Maldive Islands and another 1,000 in Thailand and in Indonesia when the waves struck, according to an Italian tourism association.
The situation was worse for Sweden and Norway.
"It could be the most serious catastrophe of modern times to hit Norwegians abroad," Norway's foreign minister, Jan Petersen, told the country's public television station, NRK.
Johan Murray, a spokesman for the Swedish Foreign Ministry, said 20,000 to 30,000 Swedish tourists were vacationing at Thai beach resorts when the disaster struck.
"Thailand is one of the most popular places for Swedes to go during Christmas and New Year's," he said. "Only six Swedes have been confirmed dead, but we think many, many more people have died."
Winter-fleeing visitors from across Europe and northern Asia book rooms in the region's beachside hotels for the high season in December and January. Many of the best resorts operate at total occupancy during the year-end holidays.
Premiums paid for proximity to the sea meant that some of the region's wealthiest tourists were the most vulnerable.
At the Sofitel Magic Lagoon resort in Khao Lak, one of the worst-hit areas on the Andaman Sea coast, the three-story bungalows closest to the water were entirely gutted.
The resort's French operator, Accor, said Tuesday that 35 bodies had been recovered from the ruins and that more than 200 of the hotel's 415 guests were still missing. A hotel spokesman said that the hotel did not know the nationalities of the dead or missing, but that more than two thirds of the guests were German.
The Thai deputy interior minister, Sutham Sangprathum, said Tuesday that more than 700 foreign tourists had been identified among the dead in southern Thailand.
The French Foreign Ministry confirmed the deaths of 10 citizens and reported 18 missing and presumed dead because they were seen being swept away. Britain listed 18 deaths and the United States 11.
The dead included relatives of the well known and the unknown.
The British actor Richard Attenborough lost two members of his immediate family in Thailand, including a 14-year-old granddaughter, who was found dead, and her mother, Mr. Attenborough's daughter, who is missing. The mother-in-law of Mr. Attenborough's daughter is also missing, according to a statement released by a family friend.
The former German chancellor Helmut Kohl was evacuated Tuesday by helicopter from a hotel in Sri Lanka.
The fashion photographer Simon Atlee was swept away in the Thai resort of Phuket while his companion, Petra Nemcova, a Czech model who appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue last year, survived after clinging to a tree.
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