Couple battle wave of grief

By Kelly Yates
A BELATED honeymoon turned into a fight for survival for a Narre Warren worker and her husband, who were caught up in the Samoan tsunami last month.
Vicki Damon returned to work at Just Jeans in Westfield Fountain Gate this week after what she describes as a “traumatic experience.”
Mrs Damon and her husband Chris, who are expecting their first child in March, were enjoying the relaxation of being tourists in a beach resort along the South Coast of Samoa to mark their one year wedding anniversary.
The 29-year-old said she was asleep in the hotel room on Wednesday 30 September when the earthquake struck at about 7am, just three days before they were due to leave.
“The room began to shake and the earthquake lasted for about three or four minutes,” she said.
“I went out to the porch and found the whole ground was moving from side to side.”
Mrs Damon went back into the room, saying she wasn’t expecting anything bad to happen.
“Then I saw my husband watching the ocean on the beach. He could see the water pulling back and knew that wasn’t a good sign,” she said.
“A couple of seconds later he turned to me and screamed to run.”
Mrs Damon, dressed in her nightie and barefoot at the time, began to run up the closest hill in the hope of getting to higher ground with her husband and some other hotel guests.
She described the look on her husband’s face as “horrific.”
“At that moment he said the water was chasing me up the hill,” she said.
By the time the pair reached the hill, everything below them had gone.
“Our hire car was floating in the ocean. Everything was shattered along the beach. The once crystal blue water looked like brown mud,” she said.
The shock of what they had experienced set in and the tsunami, with a wave reaching eight metres above the beach, was confirmed.
Mrs Damon said the warning sirens hadn’t gone off.
Hotel staff began to retrieve some of the possessions belonging to the guests and the Damons got their passports, despite being very wet, and an underwater video camera they had purchased for the trip.
The couple from Pakenham were then transported to the closest hospital.
Mrs Damon said they had regrets about being taken to the hospital because of the images they saw.
“There were injured and dying people everywhere. Then they started loading bodies onto trucks and covering them with blankets,” she said.
Mrs Damon says she will never forget those images.
“Seeing the aftermath was more traumatic than being chased up a hill by a tsunami,” she said.
“We feel very lucky we made it out. My husband is a hero. If it wasn’t for him watching the ocean, I don’t think we, or many of the other residents, would have made it out alive.”
The couple flew home on an emergency care flight and were greeted by their emotional family when they touched down in Melbourne. “The minute we left Samoan ground we were relieved,” she said. “We were dirty and smelly yet all we wanted to do was get home. We were relieved to be home after the events of the past 36 hours.”