‘A Big Adventure’ Goes Terribly Wrong

The Santa Monica couple had plunged 60 feet under water on a scuba diving trip near Ko Phi Phi island in Thailand when the first tsunami current began to suck them down farther. Silt from the ocean floor swirled wildly. The force of the tsunami pulled the couple apart. Then everything became white.

Eugene Kim, 34, a transportation consultant, saw only soupy water and bubbles. The current tossed his body around like he was inside a washing machine. He slammed against a 7-year-old sunken ship, a diver tourist site. Jellyfish swarmed him, stinging his neck, chest, arms and shoulders. He thrashed, trying to reach the water’s surface. But he could not move.

His wife, Faye Linda Wachs, 35, a sociology professor at Cal Poly Pomona, managed to rise above water with their scuba instructor. She scoured the water frantically looking for Kim in his red swimming trunks. She looked at her instructor. “I just saw terror in his face,” she recalled in an interview from her Santa Monica home Sunday, a week after the catastrophe.

The couple’s diving boat floated by and Wachs climbed on, finding that her husband had managed to get aboard. Relieved, they hugged, unaware that they had just survived a tsunami that killed more than 150,000 people.

Other Californians were not so fortunate.

Rita King of McKinleyville, north of Eureka, last heard from her husband, Brian, on Christmas Eve, when he called from Phuket, Thailand. He had gone there to learn how to scuba dive.

“He was telling us how excited he was, and how he was going to have a lesson planned and how he had dinner with friends,” she said.

A day or two later, a family friend called Rita King to tell her that her husband, a father of two and native of Alaska, had been killed by the brutal wave.

“We’re just trying to deal with it,” she said, adding that she never imagined her husband would be in such danger in Thailand.

“He made it through the ’64 earthquake in Alaska, he was a commercial fisherman, he was a Vietnam vet. He was always in places like that.... He was having a big adventure.”

Kim and Wachs had gone to Ko Phi Phi for the same reason.

After they both had managed to get back to their diving boat, they sailed back to the island thinking that they had just survived an isolated episode of wild waves. “We suspected nothing at that point,” Kim said.

The first hint that something was terribly wrong came five miles offshore. Water bottles, slabs of wood, a chair and plastic bags filled with meat floated by their boat.

As they drifted closer, pillows, embroidered Thai tapestries and a soccer ball glided by. A motley armada of about 40 hobby boats, fishing boats and diving boats congregated away from the shore.

A Swedish diver on the couple’s boat received a text message on his cellphone from his wife: There had been a catastrophe.

He wrote back: “What do you mean?”

She replied: “Tsunami.”

“At that point, we were all shocked,” Kim said. “A state of utter disbelief.”

More debris floated by -- purses, backpacks, flip-flops, chunks of bamboo.

Then came the bodies.

First, they spotted a man’s body with slash marks on his neck, back, arms and legs. Kim and Wachs made a lasso out of rope and looped it around the man’s torso, pulling him toward the boat.

Then they saw a lifeless teenager caught under debris. People on another fishing boat pulled that body free.

Minutes later, the couple spotted a dead toddler.

“It was just horrific,” Kim said. When they reached shore, they saw what had become of the quarter-mile concrete boardwalk that had been swarming with people that morning.

The tsunami had obliterated the restaurants, shops and cabanas, scattering drywall, aluminum roofs and bamboo across the coast. They saw a fishing boat impaled on an 18-foot-high palm tree. Bloody people ran around screaming and crying.

The couple walked to the bungalow where they had been staying, only to find its door hanging off a shell of the structure. The waves had swept away the bed, dresser, walls and all of their belongings. The only thing left standing was the bathroom, with a pair of Wachs’ shorts still inside.

Wearing flip flops and swimsuits, the couple began to rescue others.

They hiked 25 minutes up a hill to carry a screaming man with a broken leg down on a stretcher. Wachs held the man’s hand as he told her that his girlfriend had been killed.

In an e-mail to family members and friends the next day, Wachs wrote: “I saw more bodies than I care to report. The hotel where we were staying is mostly gone. We lost everything but our lives.”

Kim trekked across the clutter to help pull a Canadian man from under a collapsed cabana. With another tourist, Kim built a stretcher out of bamboo sticks and a tarp, and carried the man through the wreckage to a hotel.

Wachs walked up another hill looking for 50 people who had been seeking refuge there. Carrying a flashlight, she yelled: “We have a boat.... We want to move everyone to the dock.”

About 250 people came running down the hill toward her, some hugging and kissing her on the way.

Past 1 a.m., Kim and Wachs fetched supplies and rolled up ripped sheets, stuffing them into people’s wounds.

“We heard cholera is starting to spread and we have a lot of cuts and scratches on our feet and legs because we were wearing flip flops and carrying people through rubble and brush,” Wachs’ e-mail continued. “I think we will both need some serious counseling when we return.”

The next day, the couple boarded a ferryboat off the island along with other tourists. As they left, Kim fell asleep listening to the sobs of his shipmates.

The couple returned home to Santa Monica on Wednesday, the horrible images still vivid. All Kim and Wachs said they want now is for those who hear their story to send money to relief organizations.

“My recurring nightmare is a giant wave,” Wachs wrote in her e-mail Dec. 27. “It is so much worse than I ever dreamed. I stood on the balcony this morning looking at what yesterday was a pristine beach with some resorts and cabanas; it’s rubble as far as the eye can see.... So many missing children. Toys everywhere. It’s unbelievable. Gene and I are just grateful we are alive and unhurt.”

Times staff writer Jia-Rui Chong contributed to this report.