PHUKET, Thailand (7 Jan 2005) -- AS much as Kylie Stevenson hates it, they're calling her the Angel of Patong Beach. Within a day of the tsunami, the former Cairns woman donned her scuba gear and dived into the depths of a flooded hotel lobby in Phuket to retrieve bodies. She helped pull out four. Since then, Ms Stevenson, 28, has barely had time to draw breath. Yesterday she was leaving to help with the grisly work of DNA-testing unidentified corpses at the makeshift morgue in Takua Pa, two hours' drive north from Patong, the hardest-hit of Phuket's beach areas. "What are the bodies like now?" she asked. "No, don't tell me – I'd rather not know." Ms Stevenson says she's doing no more than any normal person would in these most trying of days in southern Thailand, where at least 5000 people were killed, half of them foreign tourists. "I don't want anyone to think we're making out that we are doing more than anybody else," she said, referring to workmates at Hyperbaric Services, a Patong treatment centre for scuba divers with the bends. "Anyone would do whatever they could to help . . . it's not something you need to think about, really. You just get in and do whatever you can. "And when you compare that to what the Thai locals are doing – digging through rubble, picking bodies out – it's nothing much at all. "There have been many times throughout this when all of us foreigners felt completely useless." The hyperbaric clinic Ms Stevenson manages was far enough back from the beach to be spared inundation. The Seapearl Beach Hotel, on the waterfront, was another matter. The wave flooded the basement-like lobby, dooming those inside. She and workmate Stan Petitedemange volunteered to search the submerged lobby for bodies after locals were trying to do the job with masks and snorkels. The prospect of venturing into the murky depths – filled with debris and who knew what else – was unnerving, Ms Stevenson said yesterday. | | ANYONE would do whatever they could to help . . . scuba diver, rescuer, aid worker and now morgue assistant Kylie Stevenson in the foyer of the Seapearl Beach Hotel yesterday. After recovering four bodies they had to call a halt. It was simply too dangerous to continue. So the hyperbaric team, including Dr Luba Matic of Serbia, organised a convoy of trucks to transport relief supplies to the devastated Khao Lak coast, north of Phuket. After delivering the goods, they loaded up with survivors for the return trip to Phuket, ferrying them to emergency accommodation or to the airport to be flown out. "We couldn't do all that much for them apart from that," Ms Stevenson said. "Basically all we could do was to talk to some of the victims who had lost people. It was just emotional support, really. We felt so bad, because we wanted to do more for them." Dr Matic and Mr Petitedemange peeled off to help at Wat Yan Yau, the principal collection point for the dead from Khao Lak. They have been there all week, working alongside Australian disaster victim identification experts in appalling conditions. Yesterday Ms Stevenson went up to relieve them. "They have been there for five days and they need a break," she said. Ms Stevenson qualified as a diving instructor and called Cairns home until two years ago. Her parents in Melbourne, Alan and Elizabeth Stevenson, are intensely proud of their girl. "She's always been a very people-oriented person," Mr Stevenson said. "We're very proud of her, though a bit worried, of course." SOURCE - Courier-Mail |
