Thailand Tsunami

Devestation in Paradise

The Call

It was early the morning after Christmas—Boxing Day, if you’re across the pond. Our Los Angeles bureau was quiet, still rubbing the sleep out of its eyes as the sun hadn’t fully committed to rising yet. As I turned the corner toward my desk and readied myself for some early morning reports from our newsroom, my office phone rang. At that hour, it was only me, a freelance photographer to run the studio camera, and my buddy, producer Jeff Nguyen.

I picked up.

“You’ve heard about the tsunami, right?”

I had. Earlier, when I had walked into the office and turned on my computer, I’d seen a wire alert: a massive seismic event in the Indian Ocean, early video not yet in, early reports grim.

“It looks bad,” I said. “Really bad.”

New York asked about availability. Before they’d even finished the question, I said yes. By the time I hung up, the message was unmistakable:

Go. Now.

I turned to Jeff.

“Want to go to Thailand?”

He was walking down the hallway and had just fed video for our story to New York. Without hesitation, he tossed the tapes he was holding into the air and grinned.
“Let’s do it.”