Apta, October 04: As the crushing suction of the tsunami pulled Jack Batchelor under water and far inland, he flung the baby in his arms up out of the churning waters to the safety of a rocky cliff.
The baby and Jack joined the many stories of survival to emerge from the vicious destruction of Samoa wrought by three waves up to an estimated nine metres (30-feet) high that pounded into the Pacific island.
After the powerful 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck at dawn last Tuesday, coastal residents had only a few minutes to race to shelter before the first of the tsunami waves crashed ashore.
Carol Batchelor told the Samoa Observer how her husband Jack grabbed two babies off a neighbour and started to run uphill as the first wave surged in.
When he was overtaken by the wall of water, one baby was snatched from his arms and Jack clung fiercely to the other as they were dragged under.
“He could see the sky through the bubbles, and the rock cliff. So, he tossed the baby up on to the rocks,” she said.
The water started to recede, and Jack and the one baby survived.
At nearby Virgin Cove Resort, New Zealand trio Melissa Sharplin, Kimberly Brown and Preston McNeil fled to their rental van when the “wall of terror” raced towards them.
“We jumped in the van, just closed the door and then the wave just crashed into the car … and swept us down into the mangroves and into trees and the windows smashed,” Sharplin told The Age newspaper in Melbourne.
“It was like … a really bad, cheesy Hollywood disaster movie, but it was actually happening.”
As the van filled with water and glass smashed over them, the trio feared they would be killed.
“It was just the most horrible, horrible feeling.”
When they thought the crisis was over, the New Zealanders returned to their beach bungalow only to flee into the forest when the next wave approached.
Wellington surfer Chris Nel was already on the water when the giant waves surged over the Pacific.
“All of a sudden the water went real weird, it kind of glassed off and got real lumpy, then we started moving real quick, getting sucked out to sea,” he told the Dominion Post.
“It was pretty scary looking back and seeing the reef completely dried up. It looked like a volcanic riverbed — it was just gone.”
It took about 40 minutes for Nel to return to shore, by which time the camp he had been staying at was destroyed and his possessions washed away. He returned to New Zealand wearing a pair of jeans he found in the jungle.
Juli Clausen told how her cousin had to call on his diving experience to survive after being pulled out to sea.
“He knew that rather than to try and swim against the pull of the waves, just to relax and allow himself to be pulled out and with the next wave be drawn back in.”
He was pulled out to sea three times but eventually made it back to the beach.
With thousands of tonnes of water surging ashore, 84-year-old Lemafa Atia’e sat in his home ignoring pleas from his family to move to higher ground, knowing he would not be able to keep up.
When his sons returned, they found their father alive and naked clinging to a steel post after being swept 150 metres from his home, his lava-lava (sarong) ripped from his body.
His neighbour Eva Tupusela told The New Zealand Herald that the search for the missing lava-lava had become the joke of the village, providing a glimmer of light relief amid the chaos and destruction.
Two-day-old Narineaso Agaalenuu has been renamed Tsunami by his parents in honour of his survival, after his uncle held him high in his arms as he waded through rising waters to safety.
–Agencies