Miracle boy Hannes,1, back home again, tells of ordeal

[cliss]

Source: Expressen (online Swedish newspaper)
Date: Jan. 7, 2005
Translated by Cliss
http://www.expressen.se/index.jsp?a=226527

"The Big Stupid Wave"

Miracle Hannes is back home again. He spends his day by his father's side in the hospital bed at Östra Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden. But Hannes still doesn't know that the "big stupid wave" probably took his mother Suzanne's life.

Hannes' mother Suzanne Bergstrom, 32, was on the beach with her SO Marko at Khao Lak, when the water suddenly pulled back. Hannes was with his grandmother Raja, 56, and grandfather Asko, 58, eating breakfast a few hundred meters further up. Marko called from the beach, "You must come down and see this. There's such a low tide, this never happens in Thailand".
<snip>
The grandfather Asko took Hannes down to see the beach. At that moment, panic had struck. "The wave wasn't so big when it came, but it never stopped coming," says Marko. "We started running when we saw the military boats tip over out in the waves".

Marko and Suzanne ran for their lives. But many stayed behind. They came to a building and desperately opened the door. "I got into the bathroom, but Suzzi didn't make it; the wave pulled her away and slammed the door shut. She disappeared in the wave". The wave had also taken little Hannes.

At first, the grandfather held onto the boy. But the wave took him, and the grandfather saw the little boy disappear in the churning water.
<snip>
A short distance away, Marko was struggling to survive. In the bathroom, he felt as if he was in a big washing machine, full of debris.

"I saw the light fixture, but I couldn't come up to the surface, there was a lot of junk in the water. I became crazy; I had to get up, I couldn't die like this, it won't work". Marko started to climb, got up a ways, and then slipped down, twirled around, came up to the surface, grasped a palm tree.
<snip>
At this point, Marko thought he had lost everything; his son, his wife, his parents. But suddenly he saw Asko who had crawled to safety. How Hannes was able to survive, no one can understand.

Can't describe

Hannes himself can't explain in words what happened to him, other than, "The big stupid wave took me!". This means that the boy twirled in the wave for several hundred meters, and still managed to survive with all the debris in the water. A bruise and a cut on his face was all. And lots of cold gulps.
<snip>

[Mistress Quickly]

1. Amazing

Its amazing that anyone, especially that small, caught up in the water, lived.

[medeak]

2. one yr old pretty verbal?

The big stupid wave took me!".

[ananda]

3. He's 2 1/2

He's not one. He's two and a half.

Sue

[Chimpeach]

4. It's a bittersweet story

But this kid sure is getting lots of media attention considering he is one of thousands with a tsunami story.

Oh wait....he's white.