Remembering the Southeast Asian Tsunami of 2004

It was the 26th of December 2004, a time when I was working in Kuala Lumpur as Ireland's Ambassador to Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos. I had been out that morning and had come back to have lunch with my daughter and son, who were visiting us for Christmas, when my mobile phone rang. It was a call from Dublin, from the Duty Officer at the Department of Foreign Affairs, whose job it is to provide an out-of-hours emergency service at weekends and during holiday periods. The Duty Officer asked me about the tidal wave that had struck Malaysia earlier that morning.

KL is located too far away from the coast to be affected by a tsunami, but when I turned on CNN I saw horrifying images of death and devastation. It soon became clear that the coast of Thailand and Aceh in Indonesia had borne the brunt of the sea's destructive impact. I spent the rest of the day on the telephone trying to reach Irish people I knew in Northern Malaysia and Thailand to enquire about their welfare.

The following day I set out for Phuket and spent three weeks there dealing with the aftermath of the tsunami. The first few days were especially difficult as everyone struggled to come to terms with the enormity of this unprecedented catastrophe. I remember seeing evidence of the ferocity of the wave which had swept sizeable boats inland and left them marooned hundreds of metres from the seashore.

I was in daily contact with colleagues at Foreign Affairs in Dublin, who had compiled a long list of Irish people reported to have been in the affected areas at the time of the tsunami. With help from members of the Irish community, staff from our Honorary Consulate in Bangkok, and a colleague sent out from Dublin, we started to visit hospitals in search of Irish citizens. We also had the valuable assistance of two members of An Garda Siochana who travelled to Thailand to assist in the identification process. I recall one day when we located a group of Irish people at a local hospital and managed to get them on to a Thai military flight to Bangkok from where they could be transferred to Ireland.

Once the injured had been dealt with, our attention turned to the search for those Irish citizens who were still missing. Friends and relatives came from Ireland to take part in the search. With victims of the tsunami coming from so many countries, we all became part of an international community of grief. I witnessed some heartbreaking scenes as people from all over the world came to terms with news of the loss of family members.

I was impressed with the manner in which the Thais dealt with this unparalleled crisis. When I arrived in Phuket, a crisis centre was already up and running, providing those affected by the tsunami with access to food, water and clothing. Flights back to Europe were being arranged for those who wanted to return home. In extreme circumstances, the authorities there acquitted themselves very well.

The international operation to identify the victims was a meticulous undertaking with experts from many countries working together for months to ensure that families could repatriate the remains of loved ones. It was a very good example of effective international cooperation. Sadly, there were four Irish victims of the tsunami. All were identified and their remains repatriated within a few months.

Lessons were learned from the tsunami. The Department of Foreign Affairs set up a Consular Crisis Centre, which has been used in dealing with a number of subsequent emergencies in which Irish citizens were involved. Given how extensively Irish people now travel internationally, it is likely that a crisis anywhere in the world will have some Irish involvement. We are now better prepared for such eventualities.

Looking back, I retain sombre memories of those dreadful days in Phuket. I witnessed at first hand the fragility of life and saw the dire consequences of nature's destructive power. I also saw the positive side of the human spirit - in the fortitude with which people faced inestimable grief and in the desire of so many people to assist in anyway they could. I saw young tourists volunteering to go out to the islands to retrieve the bodies of tsunami victims. A local man volunteered to help the Irish effort and spent more than a fortnight driving me around the area and acting as an interpreter, refusing to accept any recompense for his efforts.

Ten years on, one of my saddest memories is the collection of photographs I saw in the days after the tsunami had struck. There was a whole area at the crisis centre in Phuket where friends and relatives could display photos of missing persons in the desperate hope that they would somehow be located. As the days passed, it was desperately sad to walk past those photos - mainly holiday snaps of happy healthy, people, including many wedding photos - and to know that most had probably perished in the waters around Phuket on that awful St. Stephen's Day ten years ago. The families of the many victims are in my thoughts, and especially those in Ireland who suffered such grief and loss. May all who died on that fateful day Rest in Peace.

Daniel Mulhall is Ireland's Ambassador in London.