Couple's final tsunami pictures
By Valentine Low, Evening Standard
24 February 2005
These pictures are the last thing John and Jackie Knill ever saw. They show the Asian tsunami seconds before it hit a beach in Thailand — a massive churning wave rushing towards them.
As we now know, few people who were that close to the wave when it struck would survive. But the Knills, a Canadian couple on holiday at the popular Thai resort of Khao Lak, perhaps did not realise that.
And instead of running for their lives, they took these photographs with their digital camera.
What happened next one will never know for sure. The Knills — from north Vancouver — disappeared and relatives say they were notified about a week ago that the identities of their remains had been confirmed.
Searchers later also recovered the couple’s destroyed digital camera but were able to print photos from its memory card. Today, 60 days after their death, the last moments of John and Jackie Knill can be reconstructed.
A shot taken at 8.20am shows that everything on the beach appears to be normal.
Six minutes later, curious onlookers are shown wandering onto suddenly-exposed tidal flats, a sign of the impending tsunami. A large wave appears to be breaking in the distance.
Two minutes after that, some spectators appear to realise this is no ordinary wave.
"I don’t know why they didn’t run," their son Christian Knill told Global TV in Vancouver. "Either they knew they couldn’t or they didn’t know the power of the wave."
A pair of photos taken at 8.30am shows a wall of water churning up sand and mud. A final shot a couple of minutes later shows the tsunami hitting the beach.
Then nothing.
At first the pictures show a distant wave on the horizon.
The water then starts to rush out from the shore as the wave draws nearer.
The wave can be seen growing as it moves closer.
The photos were taken on the popular holiday resort of Khao Lak.
The final image shows the tsunami crashing into the beach.
