Alumni

Lending a Hand in Phuket

In early 2005, Brennon Jones ’68 went to Phuket, Thailand, to assist victims of the devastating tsunami that hit the region on December 26, 2004. A certified emergency medical technician (EMT), Jones has worked with a volunteer ambulance corps in New York City for the past 11 years, and he has been employed as a public information officer with the United Nations in East Timor and Afghanistan for much of the past four years. The memoir below was published in the International Herald Tribune and has been edited for publication here.

By Brennon Jones ’68 

As a veteran emergency medical technician with years of experience on a New York ambulance, it just made sense that I lend a hand after the devastating tsunami hit a vast portion of the resort provinces in southern Thailand. The injured of that region—more than 10,000 in all, according to the latest estimates—had suffered blunt and penetrating trauma, which was similar to the type of injuries my emergency medical colleagues and I routinely treat on the streets of New York.

Having been in Bangkok at the time, I was soon aboard a Thai Royal Air Force jet bound for Phuket, the focal point for most of the relief and recovery efforts in the region. Surprisingly, I was the only “farang” (foreigner) to be found on a mercy flight that included several hundred medical volunteers. There were doctors, nurses and medics, and dozens of search-and-rescue workers. They included many of Bangkok’s legendary “body grabbers,” the groups that compete vigorously with each other in chasing Bangkok’s horrific car crashes, retrieving the road-dead to give them proper Buddhist burials. These grabbers came burdened with hundreds of sheets of white, linen cloth to wrap the dead—the only covering available until supplies of zippered body bags could be procured. The rest of us carried medical supplies—tetanus shots, antibiotics, painkillers, and dressings—to treat the living.

While in the air, I befriended a team of six Thai surgeons and a dozen nurses. The head surgeon, Dr. Taweewong Chulakamontri, from Bangkok’s Vajira Hospital, invited me to join his medical team in their mission. Working with staff from Phuket Inter-national Hospital, our group quickly established an aid station at the departure terminal at Phuket airport. A second medical station, chiefly for the stretcher-borne, was operating in a building a short distance away. I ended up moving between the two.

We were soon treating a tidal wave of injured foreigners, all of whom, despite their injuries, were desperately attempting to secure passage on long flights home, mostly for Sweden and other European destinations or shorter flights to Bangkok, where they could obtain further medical treatment.
 Many of the injured I saw would be deemed medically unfit to fly in any normal situation. But this was definitely no normal situation, particularly given that local Thai hospitals and clinics had become taxed far beyond their means with the massive numbers of Thai and farang injured.

When I treat trauma injuries in New York, I am usually dealing with patients at the moment of injury, when the wounds are raw and the adrenaline runs high. If these individuals are not unconscious, they are typically wide-awake, anxious, often hysterical at the extent of their injuries, or just plain exhilarated at the realization that they are still alive. What we found at Phuket airport was profoundly different.

At that point, several days had passed since the foreigners were initially injured. Any adrenaline high was long since gone, replaced by blank-faced despair and depression as the reality of the injuries and of the loss of loved ones settled in full force. In addition, most of the injured were suffering considerable pain from wounds now becoming dangerously infected.

Our medical team cleaned the festering injuries the best we could, rebandaging them and providing sufficient antibiotics and painkillers to buy the patients adequate time to get safely to their next destination. Some of these foreigners had multiple injuries, from head to toe. It was the result of the crushing forces of a sea gone wild, equivalent to being caught in the spin cycle of a washing machine in which you’re joined by the household furniture and the occasional appliance or car as well.

The most common injuries were lacerations, abrasions, and bruising to the ears, face, arms, and legs. Many had sweeping abrasions to their backs and arms, the result of being grated along the sea floor against the coral and rock beds. Others had walked shoeless through the rubble, which lacerated their feet, now severely infected from pacing the dirty corridors of hospitals and aid stations. More than a few foreigners were in respiratory distress—some from broken ribs and chest bruises, and others from pneumonia-like symptoms due to ingestion of salt water.

Even given these substantial physical injuries, in the end, I wouldn’t be surprised that the psychological injuries will be the most enduring. “I lost my husband on the first wave,” said one woman, her face in a thousand-mile-away stare as she cradled her two injured infants. “When we came here we were a party of ten,” said an elderly man with extensive injuries to the head and arms who was seated with his injured wife and granddaughter. “Now we are just three,” he cried, actually apologizing for being distraught while he told me he had lost his children and some long-time friends.

ne woman with dozens of stitches across her lower forehead and between her eyes—a type of injury seen quite often—was just not psychologically with us, although she was attempting to fly to Bangkok alone.

In a small way, the Thai tsunami disaster has been my September 11, and one that seems to involve a much broader cross-section of the world community. In September 2001, I was not in New York. I was working with the United Nations in far-off East Timor, and I had been filled with anguish at the death of friends and colleagues in the towers, and particularly at being unable to assist my fellow emergency medical workers.

In Phuket, however, I was able to provide a bit of much needed medical help and, more importantly, lots of psychological first aid as a curious phenomenon unfolded. Sadly, many injured farang focused their attention on me, the Western face, convinced that I was the doctor and the authority figure. This occurred even though I was standing among a highly competent team of Thai doctors and nurses, most of whom spoke some English and all of whom had, of course, higher medical skills than I (the EMT).  

In the end, we used this phenomenon to our best advantage. I would steer patients to the overworked Thai surgeons, saying, “These are the doctors—ask them those questions.”  But I would linger longer with such patients, hearing their stories, sharing their grief, taking a bit of time to lend an ear and the psychological support they were desperately grasping for.

In medical terms, the trauma in Thailand is worlds apart from that experienced during the September 11 terrorist attacks. The numbers of fatalities suffered in Thailand alone has far exceeded our own losses in New York, and the psychological scars will likely be even more lasting. In New York, the lack of survivors was, of course, heart-wrenching for the families of the victims and rescuers alike. But, in most cases, family members did not actually witness the death of loved ones. In my short time at Phuket airport, I saw fathers nearly catatonic over the loss of their children, and children gone mute at the loss of their parents.

Here, as in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and all the other countries that fell victim to the tsunami, thousands of adults and children watched immediate family and loved ones disappear before their very eyes on the cusps of lethal waves. That experience, combined with their own serious personal injuries, will leave psychological scars not easily removed. It is likely that long-term counseling and psychological support will be needed, and on a worldwide scale given the sheer numbers and disparate nationalities of the traumatized. God knows, just being among those survivors, hearing their stories, and gazing at their faces left more than a few relief workers, including myself, deeply moved and occasionally in tears. 

Brennon Jones is currently the head of the media office and spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Sri Lanka. OCHA is the umbrella organization for all UN post-tsunami relief and rehabilitation activities in Sri Lanka. In addition to his tsunami-relief efforts, Jones is currently writing a book, Chasing Vietnam, about trauma and loss.