The Thai government reports 5,246 [1] confirmed deaths, 8,457 [2] injuries and 4,499 [3] missing after the country was hit by a tsunami caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake on December 26, 2004. The Thai authorities estimate 8,000 are likely to have died. The popular tourist resort of Phuket was badly hit. The smaller but increasingly popular resort area of Khao Lak some 80 km north of Phuket was hit far worse with 3950 confirmed deaths, while the total amount of dead in Khao Lak may exceed 4,500. The severity of the situation in Khao Lak is probably explained by the fact, that unlike the high-rising city of Phuket, the village of Khao Lak only had low built bungalows instead of high-rise concrete hotels. Khao Lak also has an extensive area of flatland only a few metres above the sea level, on which most bungalows were situated. Hundreds of holiday bungalows on the Phi Phi Islands were washed out to sea. Tuk-tuk drivers were quick to offer assistance, driving victims to hospital and higher ground and away from the surging waters. Bhumi Jensen, grandson of HM King Bhumibol Adulyadej, was among those killed.

At some places in Phuket and Phang Nga provinces, elephants were used to move and lift heavy wreckage to search for victims and clear roads. These were, or included, six male Indian elephants which had previously been used in making the movie Alexander.

On a beach in Thailand, a man was leading an elephant to entertain tourists, when the tsunami came. He put several children on the elephant's back and so saved them from the flood.

Source: Bangkok Post. The "total deaths" and "total injured" categories include dead and injured persons whose nationality is not given or has not been established. The number of "foreign injured" has been reduced by evacuations of foreign nationals. Thai sources acknowledge that the great majority of those listed as "missing" are in fact dead, and that a large majority of these are foreigners.

An article in the Bangkok Post on 10 January suggested that some of the figures in this table may be seriously misleading. Accoding to this article, the estimated number of deaths among Thai nationals has been reduced from about 2,500 to about 1,800, and the estimated number of deaths among foreigners has been reduced from 2,500 to 1,300. The number of deaths whose nationality has not been established has risen correspondingly, from less than 200 to about 2,100. This is due to increasing doubts about the reliability of the classification on the basis of visual identification of badly decomposed bodies into "Thai" and "foreign" categories. All bodies of unknown origin will now be DNA tested to determine their ethnic origin.

The economic impact of the tsunami on Thailand will be considerable, though not as great as in poorer countries such as Indonesia or Sri Lanka. Thailand has a liberalised, flexible and robust economy, which has shown powers of rapid recuperation after previous setbacks. The sectors most badly damaged have been tourism and fishing. The beach resorts along the Andaman Sea coast have been extensively damaged, and infrastructure will take several years to rebuild. Many Thai-owned hotels and other small businesses have been ruined, and the Thai government will need to provide large amounts of capital to enable the private sector to recover.

The confidence of European tourists in travelling to places such as Phuket will also take some time to recover, which is one reason why Thailand is strongly backing the proposed tsunami warning system. In the meantime, thousands of Thais dependent on tourism-related industries have lost their jobs, not just in the south but also in the poorest part of Thailand, Isan in the north-east, where many workers in the tourism industry come from. By 12 January some of the affected resorts in the south had re-opened, and the Thai government had begun an advertising campaign to bring visitors back to the area as quickly as possible.

The fishing industry has been damaged by the extensive destruction of fishing boats and tackle, which individual fishing families cannot afford to replace, particularly since many have lost their homes as well. According to one report, 500 fishing boats and ten trawlers have been destroyed, as well as many piers, boatsheds and fish-processing facilities. Again, grants or loans from the government will essential to enable the industry to re-equip itself.

A further problem is the current public aversion in Thailand to eating locally caught fish, for fear that the fish have fed on human dead bodies which were swept out to sea by the tsunami. Thais find this possibility offensive both on health grounds and for religious reasons. Fish product distributors are refusing to buy fish and crustaceans from Andaman Sea ports, preferring to buy from Gulf of Thailand ports or even from Malaysia or Vietnam, so that they can assure consumers that there is no possibility of such contamination. As a result, even those fishing families who are able to fish are now unable to sell their catch. The Director-General of the World Health Organisation, Dr Lee Jong-Wook , went on Thai television to say that he was eating fish every day.

In the long run the tsunami disaster will bring considerable benefits to Thailand, especially the southern tourist areas. European governments have already pledged large sums of money to rebuild infrastructure and to fund new schools and orphanages for the Thai communities affected, as a gesture of thanks for the assistance given to their citizens by the Thai people. The destruction of many second-rate structures along the beaches may provide an opportunity to rebuild popular tourist areas such as Patong Beach at Phuket in a more aesthetically and environmentally suitable way.

Thailand is holding legislative elections on 6 February, and the tsunami disaster has been increasingly drawn into the election campaign. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has accused the former Democratic Party of Thailand government of Chuan Leekpai of ignoring warnings in 1998 of the possible risk of a tsunami affecting Thailand. His allegations have been supported by the former head of the Meterological Department, Smith Tumsaroch . Democratic Party politicians said that Smith had failed to produce any evidence for his warnings at the time, and accused Thaksin of politicising the tsunami tragedy.

External links

• Video from Patong beach hotel (snipurl.com)
• Photos out at sea from Phuket as it happened
• Photos after the destruction of Koh Phi Phi Island
• Thailand-Photos.net: Tsunami photos from Patong beach few hours after the disaster
• List of damaged resorts in Southern Thailand
• Photo sequence of tsunami flooding in Phuket (Thailand) resort.
• Photos from Phuket at the time of the disaster
• An update of Beaches around Phuket Jan 2nd 2005