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Thailand’s tsunami freebies draw 6,000 guests
Bangkok Post 16 dec 05
Phuket, Thailand (dpa) - Some 6,000 people who lost relatives to the December 26 tsunami, including 1,200 foreigners, have accepted Thailand’s offer to provide free airplane tickets and hotel accommodation to attend a year-after ceremony marking the disaster.
Thai Deputy Prime Minister Suwat Liptapanlop, chairman of the “One Year in Memory of the Tsunami” committee, told reporters that Thailand would be paying an average of 50,000 baht (1,220 dollars) per person invited to attend the memorial ceremonies.
The Boxing Day disaster claimed nearly 5,400 lives, half of them foreign tourists, in Thailand and left another 3,000 missing.
Thailand originally hoped to attract more than 10,000 relatives of victims and people who suffered injuries from the December 26 disaster to attend first-anniversary ceremonies in Phuket and Phang Nga provinces, two of the hardest-hit areas by the tidal waves.
The functions will include an interfaith memorial service at Bang Niang beach in Phang Nga province and a Tsunami Memorial foundation stone-laying ceremony in Khao Lak beach, where the vast majority of foreigners died.
The government-sponsored memorial ceremonies aim, in part, at demonstrating to the world that the area is now ready to receive tourists.
Suwat admitted that tourism in Phuket and Phang Nga had not revived as swiftly as the government had hoped, partly because of safety concerns and worries that hotels and infrastructure had been destroyed by the disaster.
“Actually we were ahead of the other tsuanmi-hit countries in terms of putting up early warning systems and in renovation,” said Suwat.
On Friday the government conducted a test siren and evacuation drill in Takua Pha, Phang Nga province, successfully moving 3,000 villagers to higher ground in ten minutes.
Suwat claimed that 24 disaster-warning towers had been installed at major beaches and towns rimming the Andaman Sea, and another 38 would be in place by March 2006.
A more expensive tsunami buoy-alert system, to be located in the sea, is expected to be operational by mid-2006, Suwat said, although other sources have speculated that it would take longer.
The December 26 tsunami was triggered by a devastating magnitude 9.0 earthquake that occurred off the coast of northern Sumatra, creating a 1,200 kilometre-long underwater fissure that moved northward causing tidal waves that hit 16 countries rimming the Indian Ocean, including southwestern Thailand.
Thousands of vacationing tourists and villagers were caught unaware by the tsunami at Thailand’s famed beach resorts on the Andaman Sea including Phuket Island, Phi Phi Island, Krabi and Khao Lak beach in Phang Nga, a relative newcomer destination that was particularly popular among Europeans.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand expects total arrivals on Phuket island this year to be 40 per cent less than the 4.7 million tourists who visited it in 2004.