'We are so lucky to have survived'

FURTHER details emerged yesterday of how lucky two Guernsey States members were to have survived Boxing Day's tsunami. Health minister Peter Roffey has undergone surgery for his wounds and has been taken off the critical list, although his lacerations are badly infected.

Scrutiny Committee chairman Jean Pritchard was so badly battered after fighting for survival in a concrete toilet block that there was a risk of thrombosis from the bruising she sustained.

And, she told the Guernsey Press yesterday, the scenes of death and destruction were beyond belief.

Bodies lay everywhere, especially those of children. Mothers were looking for children and youngsters were looking for parents.

There were so many corpses that after being photographed, they were placed in temporary graves by volunteers and survivors.

And she could barely believe that she, her daughter, Azy, and Deputy Roffey were alive. She had just been for a swim and ordered breakfast when the tidal wave, triggered by an underwater earthquake, hit Unawatuna, the Sri Lankan beach resort where they were staying.

'There were six of us here on the beach when it hit. It was huge - massive - and the power behind it was horrendous. You couldn't believe it.'

Deputy Roffey pushed her into the only solid building around - a toilet block - before he was swept away. Debris built up as the waters roared around and trapped her inside.

As the sea rose she fought for air and was alternately underwater or gasping for breath before the sea started receding.

When she managed to get out of her makeshift shelter she was appalled at the devastation - bodies and debris, including slabs of concrete, everywhere.

'We had just ordered breakfast when it suddenly started happening and it was so fast. The poor guy cooking my eggs died. There's nothing left, just the toilet I was in.'

As Deputy Pritchard was fighting for her life, Azy was up at the hotel frantic for her mother and other friends on the beach, said to be one of the world's 12 best.

Eventually mother and daughter were reunited deeper in the jungle that fringes the beach and were given aid by Sri Lankans. It was only much later that Deputy Pritchard learnt that Deputy Roffey had also survived.

Battered by the sea surge and what it was sweeping along with it, he was severely gashed on his right shoulder and chest.

'Had the cut been any different it would have severed the artery and he'd have died,' she said.

Deputy Roffey was airlifted to hospital in neighbouring Galle for emergency treatment.

He has since been transferred to the capital, Colombo, with the Pritchards and yesterday underwent a third operation to remove infected tissue from the wound.

Deputy Roffey remains on an intravenous antibiotic drip and surgeons are unable to stitch his wounds because of their condition.

Deputy Pritchard said: 'It really is very bad but he's off the danger list. I hope we can start coming home tomorrow but it will take us a couple of days to return.

She was critical of the assistance that survivors, including themselves, had received from the British Consulate in Colombo.

It was in total contrast to Galle, where they were earlier, and which was devastated by the tsunami.

'There was one woman with us who had lost everything, all her clothes, the lot. She had been helping to bury bodies and look after survivors and asked for some clothes and sanitary towels.

'The consulate refused to help so we all had to rally round for her ourselves.'

In Deputy Roffey's case, despite his injuries, he was told to go to a hotel.

With a real risk of gangrene setting in, Deputy Pritchard insisted that he be transferred to hospital, where he underwent yesterday's further operation.

Deputy Pritchard's overwhelming recollections, however, are of the dead children and of the care and hospitality of the Sri Lankans, who are so poor they have virtually nothing to share.

Volunteers and survivors have been looking for bodies and, in a hotel used as a makeshift morgue, have been washing and clothing youngsters to make identification less harrowing for parents.

She urged islanders to support aid initiatives because of the overwhelming need caused by the disaster and the poverty of people in the area.

'They really have nothing, yet the little they had they wanted to share with us. There was not enough food for them, but they gave it to us. When we'd finished - and we ate as little as we could - they had what we left,' she said.

The next killer after the tsunami is disease and the Indian Army is consequently shooting all the dogs it sees.