Aired December 18,
2005
Updated December 6, 2006 at 9pm
on CBC-TV
Produced by:
Stuart Coxe & Doug Arrowsmith
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CBC News Indepth:
Disaster
in Asia
CBC News Indepth:
Tsumanis
Tuula and Stein Ulve lost their eight-month old baby to the tsunami.
The Background
December 26, 2004. An earthquake shakes the ocean floor 240 kilometres
from the island of Sumatra. Most major earthquakes last only a few seconds.
This one rumbles on for close to 10 minutes and is so powerful it speeds
up the rotation of the earth.
Twenty minutes later a wall of water 20 metres tall slams into the coast
of Indonesia. In Thailand water is sucked more than two kilometers from
the beaches and comes roaring back in waves 10 metres high. In Sri Lanka
and India seaside communities are decimated. By the time it's over
more than 325,000 people are dead.
The Documentary
Freeze Frame: Tsunami documents extraordinary experiences
of people from around the world who were caught in the deadly force of
the tsunami. These are stories of survival and loss from the beaches, hotel
rooms, jungle camps and bloody, makeshift triage rooms run by volunteers…stories
of super-human strength, twists of fate and dreadful loss. Many people
in the documentary share their experiences for the first time.
- A European couple vacationing in Thailand, lose each other in the chaos
just before the wave hits. The woman and their five-year-old son race
to safety across the rooftops. The man is swept away by the wall of water,
clutching their seven-year-old boy and their eight-month-old baby. When
the family is reunited the next day in Phuket, the man must tell his
wife how he lost the baby.
- A 15-year-old Sri Lankan boy struggles to describe his experience.
He clung to his bed as the wave thundered through the house, taking his
mother and sisters. They perished along with two hundred from his village.
- A diver on vacation in Thailand is dragged along by the wave for what
seems like an eternity. When the water finally subsides he runs frantically
along the beach shouting the name of his girlfriend. He's surrounded
by hundreds of other people screaming for help – in Norwegian,
Swedish, German, English and Thai.
- A Thai fisherman loses his wife, three children, five grandchildren,
a daughter-in-law and a granddaughter-in-law in the Tsunami. He is now
a monk. "I pledged that if I found the bodies of my children and
grandchildren and also my wife, then I would enter the monkhood," he
said. "I have to come to accept that once we are born we can never
escape….none of us. There's aging, there's sickness
and there's death."
Using previously unseen home video and photographs to illustrate the personal
stories, this documentary allows viewers to experience the tsunami and
its aftermath in a way they couldn't as the disaster was unfolding.
Survivors come to terms with how their lives have been altered forever
by one of the worst natural disasters in human history.
