Young girl may be alive a year after Thai tsunami
Nearly a year after the tsunami separated them from their daughter, a German-Thai couple say they are certain their missing five-year-old child will be back with them as a special Christmas present.
Sascha Meissmer and his Thai wife, Patchara, said today that a photograph of a girl seen on a website and in a Thai newspaper is that of their daughter Solitaire. A meeting is scheduled for Tuesday with officials to resolve the case.
“We never gave up searching for her because several people saw her still alive one week after the tsunami,” Patchara said. “I hope and pray to get my daughter back as a Christmas present. We are a million percent sure that the girl in the picture is our daughter.”
The photograph shows an Amerasian-looking girl with brown hair sitting in the administration office of Phuket province, which was struck by the killer waves on December 26.
Meissmer, 36, of Frankfurt, owned a bungalow and restaurant in the nearby province of Phang-nga, where the greatest number of lives were lost. He has been in Thailand for eight years.
The Meissmer family were in their beachside restaurant, with Patchara holding Solitaire in her arms, when the tsunami struck.
“I was swept into the sea for more than 100 yards but miraculously survived,” Patchara said. She was in hospital for one week while her husband began the search for their daughter.
Nearly 5,400 people died and another 2,817 are still listed as missing in Thailand from the massive waves which crashed into the country’s southwest coast. Many of the victims in Thailand were foreigners holidaying at beach resorts on the Andaman Sea coast.
The couple said that someone in Germany had posted the photograph on a Phuket tsunami website – www.phuketremembers.com – where they first saw it last week. The photograph was reproduced in a Thai-language newspaper today.
The couple is scheduled to meet with the Phuket governor, who they hope can resolve the case. Officials pictured in the photograph with the girl are believed to be employed at the provincial administration office which falls under the governor’s control.
Meissmer said they had gone to Thai and German police as well as the Phuket-based Disaster Victim Identification Unit after the tsunami but nobody believed their daughter could still be alive.
“Nobody helped us. Even friends said they didn’t believe our daughter had survived,” he said. “But everything was possible that day. It was the craziest day of my life. I was standing about 100 yards away from the water and didn’t even get wet.”
Not wishing to return to the scene of the tragedy, Meissmer said the couple opened a restaurant in Phuket.
In a related development, officials have retrieved the body of a woman believed to have died in the tsunami in Phang-nga.
“The remains were first found by a scrap dealer who said he dreamed of a dead woman pleading that he help in retrieving her body,” Police Captain Anan Kiauboonkhaew said.
Sirichai Saisawat, who had been collecting items washed up by the tsunami, told police that he went to the area that had appeared in his dream and found the body under a fallen tree.
The body has been sent to a hospital for initial examination, Anan said.
