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Marshall native recounts harrowing survival
December 28, 2004

Sri Lankan pedestrians walk through floodwaters in a main street of Galle, after the coastal town was hit by a tsunami. (Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Marshall, Minn. — (AP) A former resident of Marshall who survived Sunday's earthquake and tsunami in Malaysia saw "this big white line in the distance" as he looked out to the ocean and seconds later was swept away by a wave of water 6 feet over his head, he wrote in an e-mail to his parents.

Clay Johnson, a 1994 graduate of Marshall High School, is a teacher in Tokyo but was vacationing in Malaysia for a Christmas break. Since Sunday he's sent several e-mails to his parents, Steve and Mary Beth Johnson, in Marshall.

His latest e-mail recounted in greater detail what happened Sunday morning. Clay Johnson wrote that he was eating breakfast on the beach when he and others realized a large wave was approaching. They started to run to higher ground but were overtaken by waves, first one three feet tall and the next 15 feet tall.

"There really was no warning," Johnson wrote in the e-mail to his parents.

Johnson finally found footing on a main road as the water swept back out to sea.

None of the 10 friends Johnson was traveling with were killed, he told his parents. But he said 21 people on the beach were killed.

"I saw many people suffering and many people's homes destroyed," he wrote.

Steve Johnson said Clay wrote that he is OK, but that his travel situation is uncertain. He was scheduled to leave Malaysia on Jan. 4.

Meanwhile, St. Cloud State University announced that a group of 18 students who traveled to Thailand and Laos on Christmas Eve are safe. The group's first stop was in Bangkok, which is inland and was not affected by the tsunamis.

The earthquake's death toll stood at 44,000 people Tuesday, and is expected to rise.

Some Twin Cities residents native to the earthquake-struck region of Asia are waiting for news from relatives still there.

Mauris Desilva, a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota, is a Sri Lanka native with relatives still in the country. He said a group of cousins and other family live in Galle, a tourist village at the island's southern tip. Reports have described the city as among the hardest-hit in the nation that took the tsunami's brunt.

"They don't have electricity, communication, nothing," Desilva said. "We're trying to get information."

Desilva said he has spoken to other relatives in Sri Lanka who are working to get information about family members in Galle, but so far have been unsuccessful.

Desilva, an engineering student, has lived in Minnesota for eight years. He said he may try to organize a relief drive at the University of Minnesota for tsunami victims.

At least two organizations in Minnesota said they would set up victim funds. The Minnesota Indonesian Society already has a fund set up at TCF Bank in Eagan and the Tamil Association of Minnesota plans to set one up in the next few days.

The Minneapolis-based American Refugee Committee, a relief agency created to protect violence-displaced refugees around the world, has offices in Thailand and its officials there are meeting with other relief agencies in the area and offering to provide assistance, said David Hassell, the group's Africa relief director.

Hassell said the organization can help, because conditions likely to be endured by tsunami victims will in many cases be similar to those suffered by inhabitants of refugee camps.

"In many ways, the needs aren't that much different," Hassell said. "But the impact can be greater because it hit so quickly."

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