Mainer joins in tsunami relief Man helps rebuild on Thai island

PENOBSCOT – We hear very little about the devastation that still exists in many areas hit by the tsunami that struck Southeast Asia on Christmas.

But the cleanup is slow, money is needed, and people there are still suffering, according to Daryl DeJoy of Penobscot, who recently returned from a three-week stay on the small island of Ko Phi Phi in southern Thailand that was almost obliterated by the wall of water.

“It’s only 15 feet above sea level,” DeJoy said. “So when a 30-foot wave came along, it swept completely across the whole island. Some of the concrete block buildings are still standing, but even on those, the lower floors were blown right out of them.”

Most of the homes were wooden structures and were simply washed away, leaving most of the 14,000 residents without homes or businesses.

DeJoy, 46, who owns Penobscot Solar Design and is director of the Wildlife Alliance of Maine, saw the devastation firsthand and heard stories of miraculous survival. A young girl had been asleep when the tsunami hit and was washed into a reservoir. Someone saw her hand break the surface of the water as she was going down, they got to her and pulled her to land.

“They found 200 people dead in that reservoir,” DeJoy said. “Officially 1,500 people died and 600 are still missing.”

More than 1,000 children were orphaned.

DeJoy hooked up with Help International, an all-volunteer group that already was working on the island.

“These are great people,” he said. “They’re helping these people who are just looking to get back to living again.”

Their help is critical because there is no government aid to the island, DeJoy said.

“These volunteers are trying to get it all cleaned up so that people can have a chance to start their lives again. But they need aid money. The government would like to see no one return to the island. They’re not giving them any money because they want to build their own resort on the island.”

DeJoy worked at a variety of tasks during his three weeks on the island, often as a group leader, from building tables for a new orphanage now under construction to helping local dive teams refloat sunken fishing boats from the main harbor to searching with a team of Norwegian police and their cadaver dogs, often finding parts of bodies that were collected to be identified.

Digging through the rubble in 90-degree heat was exhausting, physically and emotionally, DeJoy said.

“We never found an entire body,” he said. “We’d find hair, a lower portion of a body, bones. The violence of this thing really struck me.”

Workers also found objects in the rubble.

“We’d find alarm clocks, all of them stopped at 10:35,” he said. “The was a very bizarre thing, very eerie.”

Those clocks and other items became a resource to help the islanders. Tourists still come to the island on day trips, “disaster tourists,” DeJoy called them. The volunteers clean items they find and sell them to benefit the restoration efforts.

“In a day, we raised as much as $2,000,” he said. “Guilt is a powerful motivator. And those alarm clocks were a big seller.”

Friends in the United States had given money to DeJoy to use when he got to Thailand to help the local people. He used that money to help stock a local store and to set up an Internet business for a woman who had lost everything. That business provided volunteers, most from other countries, with a link to the rest of the world.

The trip was an emotional one, De Joy said, but it was also remarkable. He made many friends, and he hopes to return to continue some of the rebuilding work that has been done.

“It was nice to be an American there and have people glad to see us,” he said. “Especially on a Muslim island. There are a lot of places in the world where it’s not like that.”

For information on Help International, check the Web site: www.hiphiphi.com.