I lost two sons & fiancé in Boxing Day tsunami – it destroyed my life – but I had to go back there for 20th anniversary
TSUNAMI survivor Sharon Howard sobs as she lays flowers at the Thailand hotel where she last saw her fiance and two sons 20 years ago to the day.
While families around the country gather for Christmas, Sharon is 6,000 miles from her home in Hayle, Cornwall, at the beach resort of Khao Lak where David Page, 44, Mason, eight, and six-year-old Taylor died on Boxing Day 2004.
The trio were among the thousands — including 151 Brits — who lost their lives when an earthquake in the Indian Ocean with a force 23,000 times stronger than the Hiroshima bomb triggered 100ft-high waves.
The wall of water and debris hit coastal resorts in South East Asian countries including Thailand, Indonesia, the Maldives and Sri Lanka.
The Boxing Day Tsunami, as it became known, killed more than 227,000 people, making it the worst natural disaster of the 21st century.
Sharon, now 57, recalls how that fateful day derailed her life and explains why she felt compelled to return this Christmas even though her family could not understand her decision to make the long journey.
Sharon still lives in the family home where she raised Mason and Taylor with David.
Happy pictures of the four together — including many taken on that tragic holiday — line the walls. Two decades on, they are never far from her mind.
“I was dreading going back to Thailand, absolutely dreading it, but it’s something I had to do for myself,” she says.
“My family don’t really understand but we all grieve differently and they prefer to leave it in the past and remember them as they were.
“But I knew I would regret it if I didn’t go.
“I feel more emotional now than I did when it happened. I think it was because it was like a part of my brain shut down for years.
“I have thought about David, Mason and Taylor every day for the last 20 years.
“The boys are around me constantly; they are in my heart.
“You learn to live without them but you never forget. You never heal.
“I see their friends around still and what they are doing and it makes me wonder what my boys would have been doing — if they’d have had children, what they would look like. But I’ll never know.”
‘They are in my heart’
Sharon, then 37, was in the ground-floor hotel room when the disaster struck.
The family had all enjoyed breakfast together, then David and Mason dropped Taylor to the resort’s kids’ club before Mason went to relax on a sun lounger directly outside their room.
They stood no chance when the tsunami struck with no warning.
Sharon says: “Suddenly there was this really loud and powerful noise. I ran to the door, screaming, ‘the boys, the boys’.
“I opened the door slightly and David said, ‘Shut the door, the water will go down’.
“The next thing, water just crashed through the patio door and we were pushed into the corner by the weight of it. All I could think of was my sons.”
Sharon suffered a head injury on impact.
She says: “When the water was coming over us I said to David, ‘I’m going now I love you’ as I felt myself drifting away and I passed out.
“I came round and David was in front of me, not moving. His head was in the water. I shook him and shook him to get a response and there wasn’t one.
“I knew I had to go and look for the boys.”
Although Sharon didn’t know it at the time, David and Mason had died instantly when the wall of water hit.
Sharon managed to get into a flooded walkway outside her room, scrambling over smashed furniture and debris, screaming for help.
With the corridor flooding fast, her life was saved by Australian holidaymaker Ian Walsh, who dangled a beach towel from an upper level and hauled her up to safety. She says: “People shouted that the water was coming again.
“He grabbed some towels and helped me up to the next level.
“That saved me from being washed away. I just thought ‘I’ve got to get to the children’s club’.
“I managed to get down there but there was a man in there who said, ‘There’s no one in there’. He was also looking for his little boy.”
Sharon made her way to a medical centre and then a hospital where hundreds had gathered hoping to be reunited with their loved ones.
But she could only find Ian, whose 39-year-old wife Kim was also missing in the disaster.
She said: “If it wasn’t for Ian I would’ve been on my own. I walked, looking for my sons, all night. The next day, the man I saw in the children’s club came to find me and he said he had found Taylor’s body huddled with his little boy.”
Sharon’s eldest son Jack Coop, then 17, and her sister Beverley flew to Thai capital Bangkok while she recovered from concussion and her injuries in hospital.
Memorial ceremony
Sharon had to wait three months for Taylor’s body to be returned to her in the UK due to bureaucratic issues. She said in March 2005: “Every night I go to bed and all I can think of is Taylor lying there, cold, all on his own and that thought terrifies me.”
David and Mason were not found for months.
This year will be the first time Sharon has been back to Thailand for 15 years to lay flowers at the site of the Sofitel Magic Lagoon Resort Hotel where her family were staying.
The building was destroyed by 46ft waves, but another hotel has since been established on the site.
While many of the resorts have been rebuilt, survivors are still wracked with physical and mental trauma. Like Sharon, many want the world to remember that fateful day and the thousands of lives lost.
You learn to live without them but you never forget. You never heal.
She had hoped there would be an official memorial ceremony today, but despite repeated calls to the British Embassy in Thailand, nobody called her back.
Sharon says: “In the end, I went on to Facebook when I couldn’t get answers and was told people would be gathering near the local memorial centre. So I decided to go there for the anniversary.” She adds: “I am not the same person I was before.
“I lost my two babies who still needed me. I needed to mark the anniversary where it happened.”
David, a commercial deep sea diver, had proposed to Sharon on Christmas Day just hours before tragedy struck.
They had been excitedly planning their future together.
She says: “When David and I got engaged the day before it was one of the happiest moments of my life.
“I’d been single for a while.
“I’d been married to Mason and Taylor’s father, but he left me when I was six months’ pregnant.
“I’d been on my own so it was nice to think I’d got a family again.
“I was looking forward to the future, but it was all sadly taken away from me.”
In the years following the Boxing Day Tsunami, survivors Sharon and Ian formed a lasting friendship.
Family members of Ian and his teacher wife had flown out to Thailand to join the search, but Kim was not found until February 2005. Her body was returned to Cairns where she was buried.
‘Face reality’
Sharon says: “We met up on the first anniversary in Thailand then I went back to Australia and spent some time with him.
“We just had so much to talk about because he knows what I was going through and I know what he’s going through so we had this special bond.
“He came to England and stayed here too. We speak on Boxing Day, and we chat now and again. We’ve cried together and consoled each other. His friendship helped me a lot.”
It has been a long journey of healing for Sharon, who has battled alcoholism and depression as she struggled to cope with her loss.
At first, she made twice-yearly visits to Khao Lak, about 40 miles north of Phuket.
She says: “I would go to Thailand on their birthdays and on Boxing Day, but eventually I had to face reality, clip my wings and come back home and try and get a life again.
“If I could I would have carried on going, but I just couldn’t afford to keep doing it. I was just blanking everything else out.
“The first couple of years I went wild, going out drinking and just madness really. But I needed it to get me through. I was going down a very slippery slope and I knew it had to end — it got to a stage where it was affecting my health and I thought ‘I’ve got to stop’.
“I knew the boys and David wouldn’t want to see me the way I was. I knew I had to pull myself together and try and carry on.
“The only thing that kept me going is my son Jack. I’m so grateful he wasn’t there that day, without him I don’t think I’d have coped.”
Jack has gone on to have children of his own.
Sharon says: “Becoming a grandma has brought life and light into my world when otherwise there was just a lot of darkness.
“Seeing them grow up has brought a real joy to me again and I cherish every second I spend with them.”
THE GRIM TRAIL OF HORROR
THE 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami is one of the deadliest natural disasters in history.
The waves devastated 14 countries with the death toll estimated to be over 227,000.
It was triggered on December 26 by a 9.1 magnitude undersea earthquake, close to the city of Aceh in northern Sumatra.
Striking shortly before 1am British time, it lasted ten minutes and was the third-largest ever recorded.
The earthquake is thought to have had the energy of 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs – and tore an 800mile-long gash in the sea bed.
A surge of waves was sent across the Indian Ocean and Andaman Sea at speeds of up to 500mph.
At 1.14am the tsunami struck the northern tip of Indonesia 65 miles from the epicentre – eventually claiming more than 167,000 lives.
At around 2.30am, the colossal waves hit Thailand, claiming thousands of lives. Khao Lak, where Sharon Howard’s family were holidaying, was the hardest hit with more than 4,000 deaths.
Many tourists drowned in their hotel rooms.
At 4am, the waves began to hit India and Sri Lanka with more than 40,000 lives lost.
The Maldives, Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Seychelles, Somalia, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, and Yemen were also hit. Some 1.7million people were displaced and entire communities obliterated.
Over £11billion was pledged from governments, charities and private donors as part of the world’s largest ever relief operation.