SURVIVOR stories serve not just for us to relive the gamut of emotions, but more importantly, for us to effectively learn and enlighten ourselves in recognising the ultimate human potential that exists within.
On this International Women’s Day, follow us as we listen to the accounts of dynamic women that have not let the horrors of their mishaps seal their fate.
Instead, they carried upward and onwards with their heightened instincts as well as tenacity over time, confronting any remnants of fears induced by their past head on.
Surviving the Boxing Day tsunami
On the morning of 26 December 2004, Priscilla Patrick woke up in her cabana to the breeze of Sri Lanka’s southern coast, facing the Indian ocean.
“There was this crow on my balcony gawking away (annoyingly),” shared the celebrated radio announcer.
“I opened the door, and I closed my eyes, I said ‘Shhhhh’ (trying to hush it).
“Saw it flying inland, and I was thinking what the hell. I have never seen a crow for the last 10 days that I have been here, I have only seen seagulls”.
She brushed off at what seemed to be a strange occurrence and went back to bed to enjoy a good reading of her Christmas present – a copy of the book titled ‘Carnal Crimes’ (presumedly by Constance Backhouse).
Just the day before on Christmas Day, Priscilla and her friend had roamed the coastal beaches down south, with the intention to try and head up northeast to Trincomalee. They were on their motorbikes enjoying the day (just like one would expect a chill and fuss-free year-end holiday would be) stopping at every beach bar when they could for drinks and cigarette breaks.
Priscilla and her friend had only made it up to Mirissa, before deciding to turn back to cut their journey short as they would need to catch a flight out back home in just less than two days. That night Priscilla had already noticed the changes of her surroundings.
“While I was showering, centipedes were coming out. Sat down (later into the night) up to two to three o'clock in the AM, a pack of dogs just ran to the ocean and howled. Then, they ran back inland.
Whatever the signs were, she was still unaware of what each of it entailed.
“[While reading the book] Then I heard this lady screaming, and it was a scream like playing on the beach. So, I continued reading.
“The next scream was the I-am-not-so-enjoying/having-a-good-time scream.
“The third scream was the I-am-going-to-die scream.
“I put down the book and thought; what the f%@! is going on. I opened the door and I saw the ocean (in front of the cabana) drying out, up to the horizon.
“I see from a distance, just whiteness and like white snakes crawling – it was actually the foam of waves crashing. It was coming towards me from the horizon, but it looked like snakes from far”.
Priscilla stepped out to her balcony for a better view, trying to make sense out of the situation. There, she could see the other cabanas, even from about one to two kilometres ahead, being demolished by the aggressive power of the waves that were fast approaching.
“Between my cabana and the ocean, there is a three-foot wall. The water is – coming in – very fast banging onto the wall.
“It's now eye-level with me. I am on the cabana with stilts, so (getting worried) I woke up my friend (to alert) something is up with the ocean and thought the full moon of the night before may have had a magnetic pull towards the ocean because it was quite rough.
“Then I saw the water coming, I closed the door. What you can't see, can't hit you right?
“I told my friend to get the bag with the passports, she grabbed it. Then, the whole chalet (cabana) started to shake, and water started to seep in.
“The next thing we know, all the nails on the floor started to protrude and pop out. The bed broke into two, the cupboard too. I looked at it all in total silence, just dead eyed.
Scenes that took place immediately after are part of an event that have claimed more than 230,000 lives, and displaced millions, in fourteen different countries.
The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami was in fact one of the deadliest natural disasters ever recorded. Although many of the communities have recovered today, painful memories and the aftermath of structural ruins remain in place for some.
Priscilla details her experience of the disaster.
“Before I could do anything, I was underwater and now in (what can be closely associated to) a washing machine spin.
“Within three seconds I saw my t-shirt tearing into half. At that moment all the furniture, even the toilet bowl, were going in circles with me in the mix.
“I can see above me, a whirlpool above me. You know, when you watch the surfing documentaries (when the wave crushes), and I am underneath that.
“I remember thinking that I needed to come up, I needed to breathe. But every time I tried coming up the current would pull me down as I was trying to go up.
“Trust me, when you are about to die, you will give 100%. Everybody has that survival instinct in us, you would even kill to survive. You would do everything.
“You know the feeling when you stay in a swimming pool and you see who can hold your breath the longest. That point when you just need to breathe, I was reaching that stage. That is when I saw my tattoo, which reads, ‘Strength of a lion’, in Sanskrit.
“When you have held everything with all your power of the mind and mental strength, you cannot fight it when the body takes over. When the body demands air. I remember my mind telling me; ‘It's OK Pris, 10 seconds, it will be over’, and then I just stopped fighting it.
“So, when I stopped fighting it, I started going with the current. That 10 seconds, it was counting down so slow. Then, I passed out.
Because Priscilla did not fight the waves, she was carried away and ended up being drifted to within proximity of a coconut tree. Having gone back into her conscious state, she immediately held on to it but would lose her grip after three additional waves hit.
Now in open water, she noticed that the sky was grey, “because the wave blocked the sunlight,” and the water was lukewarm.
Priscilla managed to get hold of a nylon rope, but not without burning her hands because the current was pushing hard to pull her away from securing herself. After the sixth wave, she had lost her energy and decided to let go of it, but just when she decided to do so,“ it stopped.
“I remember standing up, and I was coughing like crazy. The feeling after going through it all was getting beat up by a group of five men for ten minutes straight. I even remember my cuticles were hurting the next day.
“My shorts were now down to my ankles, but my panties were on. However, my t-shirt was gone. It was carnage, complete carnage like a bomb had dropped where we were. There was no road, there were no houses, trees fallen. There were bodies, so many bodies.
Just then, Priscilla felt the gush of water that the tsunami had brought inland rushing out back to the ocean. She immediately took the rope that she held on earlier and quickly tied it around her stomach not knowing what the end of it was attached to. That decision was a smart one.
“The water started pushing me forward, so I'm using my legs to resist, but it was difficult because the ground I stood on was like rocks and rubble.
“As the water flowed out, I just watched the debris, vehicles, scooter, bus, cars, bodies (hands and legs sticking out) being swept away into the direction of the ocean.
“I felt numb. No pain, no tears, just numbness.
Not long after, she heard a familiar voice calling out her name. It was her friend that was on the trip together, who got separated earlier when their cabana got knocked down by the strong waves. Apart from seeing her friend safe but afar, Priscilla saw a human chain of locals holding on for their dear lives onto what was a broken staircase, and a Sri Lankan lady in a deconstructed sari waving her hands and banging her head while crying something out.
“I could not hear sh*&. My body is in shock, the brain is not computing what I see. It’s not registering the noise around me. Seventeen years on and I can still remember it vividly.
When the dust started to settle, Priscilla and her friend took refuge at a nearby colonial bungalow owned by a French national who was married to a local. Earlier, a kind local man returned her bag filled with belongings intact, which contained passports and flight tickets, “but it was all drenched”.
According to Priscilla, the first miracle was surviving the tsunami. The second miracle was finding her bag with the important documents. The third was finding the person who found her bag when she returned to Sri Lanka the year after to help with donations and community relief efforts.
“The island spared my life and I just had to give back”.
After being hit by the disaster, Priscilla returned home only to find solace at work.
She notes, “being in the office and hitting the button and going on-air was my safety net because I know I'm flawless when that microphone goes on.
“We all have our own regimes for recovery. For me, it was talking. Talking a lot about it to the point where the tsunami became a story. Of course, every time I talked about it, it brought back memories, but it was my chance to turn it around.
“Living through that moment (sight, smell, sound, etc), I get stronger and stronger. The tsunami experience is the worst thing in my life that can happen, and I have put that as the bar. No challenges can be worse than it. When I think that way, nothing worse would happen.
Not letting the trauma of the experience come back haunting her, “I’m a beach bum, and I love the beach. So together with my friend who survived the disaster we went back to the ocean to deal with it. I told her that we have to go back before we get fearful of the ocean”.
“Truthfully, you will never be over nearly dying, but you live around it and learn how to adapt with it. I say I took it very well because my experience didn't stop me from travelling – I got even hungrier for it.
“What I do now is every sunset, moonrise, sunrise – I will stop. I see a glimpse of beauty in nature, I would stop. Every second I will stop, to take a moment and appreciate what I have because why be in a rush?”
Listen in to more details of Priscilla’s tsunami experience here.
Surviving an unfortunate fall in the rainforest
Every hikers’ dream is to climb any summit they set their eyes on – this was true for business strategist Nurfatin Sulaiman who took a trip with a group of her friends up north to the mysterious and evergreen Mossy Forest in Pahang.
Little did she know, back in 2017, the forest she is enchanted by, which is the entrance to the summit of Gunung Irau, would be the place where she would unexpectedly spend three days being lost alone in.
“The hike was supposed to be a leisure day trip. So, we did not prepare any tools, like a Bunsen burner, camping knife etc, to camp out.
“There were nine us – four including myself that had hiking experience prior.
“The ones who are more adventurous went up to the summit, while the remaining stayed at the base camp, including my best friend. So, the group was split into two.
“As we were descending from the summit, the majority from the group that stayed behind at the base camp started to also descend towards the start of the hiking trail, not wanting to slow people further.
“Because the four of us just arrived from climbing down the summit, we decided to take a break before continuing our journey down and catch up with the other group.
Without staying for too long to ensure sunlight, the second group started their descent to the start of the trail as well.
As they reach somewhere after the checkpoint called CP Pisang, Fatin separates away from the group. The reason, despite having a tragic misadventure as the outcome, was comical to say the least.
“It’s quite normal for hikers to experience flatulence. The boys in the group I was with were simply fooling around, passing gas. I got annoyed, so I decided to speed up to join the group ahead, overtaking a pair of girls of the same group to take the lead.
“We reached a corner where there was a blind spot, so being at the front I raised my hand to notify the condition."
The ground along the area was soft, and a patch of it broke off when Fatin stepped on a particular point that was not firm enough to support her weight. She then fell but the group behind her did not realise it. They assumed she already joined the group upfront when they did not see her in sight, after turning the corner.
She tried to climb back up by grabbing nearby trees from her initial fall, but most of the plants she managed to grab hold of had fibrous roots that were not strong enough to support her. This allowed for the ground to break again, and she continued to fall even deeper. The height of the fall was around 100m.
“Fortunately, there was somewhat of a safety stop (possibly due to the attempt of grabbing the trees as I fell) when I fell so I did not completely plunge down in one go to the ground below, with serious impact. I also did not get hit by any rock, which could have left me unconscious.
“As soon as I realised I was not able to climb back up, I screamed for help a few times but to no response.
Fatin tried to make a call to her friends but she could not get a stable connection for an S.O.S. Having failed at her attempt, she quickly checked the time to calculate her journey back to the base, assuming she was still on the right track. At this point I had decided to not wait for only about two hours before it gets dark.
“I picked up my pace and made my way to chase the sunlight in what I thought was the right direction until I realised that I was lost because there were no signs of a proper footpath. It was just dense greenery, and I was completely off track.
“Of course, when you are in that kind of environment the first thing that comes into your mind is the number of wild animals that you are exposed to. So, finding a safe area that can give you a good vantage point to defend you from every angle you can think of becomes a priority.
“The myth is if you ever get lost in the jungle, find a river. In my case, I found the source of it. So I just followed the flow of the water down where it would expand. I only found out later after my rescue that the river also puts you at risk to many things.
Her journey, now trailing the river to at least find any sort of civilization, was a time where all her survival instincts were put into full gear. She had to pass through the difficult terrains without any equipment to smoothen her crossings.
One point during her endeavour, she slipped and fell on her face when she tried to come down a slope only to realise an oncoming tree bark falling fast behind her.
“I really thought that was the end of me. I could see all the important faces flash before, and before I knew it, I was hit by the tree. Thank god the bark was hollow that it disintegrated upon impact.
As the first night dawns, “and immediately when the sun sets and darkness fall, I could see small flickers of light. Lights from fireflies were just crowding the void around me, like how you see in movies. It was so magnificent and beautiful to witness”.
Apart from the comforting glow that mother nature had granted, which brightline a sense of optimism in the situation Fatin found herself in, the steady frequency of airplanes taking off and landing from a distance makes way as her temporary mental exercise of counting sheep to put her at ease as she tries to sleep through the night.
She kept turning her phone on and off in a shift to preserve her battery, only using it when she can get to a high position for an emergency call.
“Because the hiking trip brought together a combination of experienced to beginner level individuals, I had brought a pouch filled with energy bars, chocolates and ‘Halls’ (which helped me to keep my voice going through the days I was lost).
“I would say I was lucky because supplies as such were able to sustain me. Normally, I would only travel light during hikes with just a water bottle, important identity cards, some petty cash and makeup (this is a given).
“For this trip specifically, I also had a bunch of ponchos in my backpack in case someone within the group needs it. This was important because I had left it behind where I had camp the first night in case any rescue team was able to find it, to at least notify me of my whereabouts.
On the second day, Fatin managed to climb up to a vantage point that was high enough for a cell reception and get a hold of one of the groups that was out to rescue her where she tried to explain her path and whereabouts. However, the signal was very poor that the call had to end short.
She was told to wait for the rescue team to arrive but seeing the hours pass well into the day, she grew increasingly worried and decided she too had to decide to put in some effort for her survival and not simply rely on people.
Fatin later found herself having to spend another night alone in the rainforest before finally being found by the rescue team at a point where she felt all hope was lost.
As a last attempt at S.O.S., Fatin even left notes by writing on paper money and releasing it to the river so it flows out, hoping that it would be a better chance for someone to take notice of it for its value, instead of having to write on leaves.
“I was at a point of the river where it had opened up into having banks on each side, where the water was deep enough that I could not tell if it was safe or not.
With an already low mental and physical strength, she was contemplating hard whether to jump or just stay put. It was not until she heard a faint call of someone screaming out for her name, that her full mental alertness came kicking back in.
“I waited for a couple of seconds to hear the voice again, wanting to confirm it wasn’t my mind playing tricks on me.
“By the grace of God, it was actually one of the guys from the search and rescue (SAR) team. I was so grateful that I dashed to where the voice was coming from, replying the call in just a few minutes.
When the SAR team found Fatin, the first thing that she did was to apologise intensely for causing such a big fuss in having to deploy for her rescue efforts. They told her that she was 900m off track from the point she fell (a total of 1km, including the height of her initial fall).
“If I were more patient and just stuck to my group, the events that had taken place would not have happened. I realise my mistake. I am not proud of it and this was my reason for apologizing.
“That said, I did not want to beat myself up too much. I managed to also remain as positive as possible because the fact that I am still alive is because people had put a lot of faith into finding me. I truly believe this – the amount of attention and prayers that were sent for my safety, I will never take for granted.
An important message that Fatin would like to put out, when people hear about her story is that hiking is not dangerous.
“It’s important that I try to rectify this view, and therefore I will never get tired of sharing my story when people ask. I feel it is important for us to not generalise an activity based on one incident because in everything we do, there is a degree of risk to it.
“The key message here is to advocate on how we can be well prepared by adequately equipping ourselves with the do's and don't's. Learning from the mistakes so it will not be repeated,” she expressed, having noted that her experience has only made her more attentive and a better planner as a person. – The Vibes, March 8, 2021
