The Parmars can’t stop thanking their stars. The family, on a vacation to the Andamans, had a close encounter with the deadly tsumanis which lashed the islands leaving over 10,000 dead and many more missing.
The Parmars say it is nothing less than a miracle that they were saved from the sea’s fury and are alive to tell their tale of horror.
Bank of Baroda branch manager Harish Parmar, his wife Gangaben and daughter Avani, were in Port Blair when the earth shook and later the tsunamis hit the Andamans at around 6.30 am on December 26.
The family, with other tourists, left their hotel in Port Blair at around 4.30 am to visit Maya Bandar. They needed to go to Bara Tang to get a ship to Maya Bandar. On their way to Bara Tang, they first felt the tremors at 6.35 am.
“We had experienced a quake in Ahmedabad and immediately came to know that it was a big tremor,” says Harishbhai.
“Quickly, we all got off the bus and in the effort many of us lost balance and fell. The earth shook for almost five minutes,” he adds.
“Later everything was fine and we moved toward Bara Tang. There we were surprised to see the raging sea. The jetty was broken and we could not enter the sea for Maya Bandar.”
It was just a chance that the Parmars’ tour was preponed by a day.
“Originally, our tour was to start from December 21. But due to certain technical reasons, we started on December 20,” says Harishbhai.
Due to the change in schedule, the batch of tourists spent Saturday on Rose Island instead of the fateful Sunday. They left the island only hours before disaster struck. After the tsumanis hit, Rose Island was a picture of total devastation. “We were very lucky. Had the quake struck half and hour later we would have been dead,” he says.
The tourists spent about four hours at Bara Tang and watched the ocean’s fury. However, none of them was aware about the intensity of the calamity.
“I could only imagine the intensity when a local forest officer said that he had never seen the sea in such a form in the 40 years of his service,” Harishbhai says.
On way back to their hotel from Bara Tang, the tourists saw collapsed houses and sea water all over the place. “Our bus travelled for half an hour in sea water,” says Gangaben.“There was acute shortage of drinking water after the quake. But there was no black marketing,” says Harishbhai. The family’s efforts to contact tense relatives back home were futile.
“We tried a lot to contact our family here but could not get through. We could contact one of our acquaintances on his mobile at 8 pm and told him we were safe.”
Harishbhai’s nephew Ashok and sister-in-law Maniben were worried after watching the news on television at around 11 am.
Harishbhai’s elder daughter Anjana, pregnant with her first child was not told about the news, but she soon got to know about it.“Both women were crying till we received the message that they were safe. I cannot tell you how we spent the day.”
The tourists had to spend Sunday night outside the hotel. The next day, they boarded a flight to Chennai at 12.30 pm. ‘‘It was only on the flight that we got to know about the devastation,” says Harishbhai.
The family reached Ahmedabad on Tuesday night. Safe.