NZ father fears couple dead

Andrew and Belinda Welch at their wedding. Picture / Simon Baker

After spending six agonising days, waiting for news of his daughter and her husband in tsunami-struck Thailand, John Croft now believes they are unlikely to be alive.

"We would have heard from them," he said. "They are extremely capable, so if they are alive we would have heard."

Mr Croft said his daughter, Belinda Welch, 26, and her husband Andrew, 41, were holidaying on Phuket Island and he had not heard from them since Christmas Eve.

The North Shore couple spoke of being on a remote part of Phuket, believed to be Khao Lak, away from the high-rise buildings, and were pleased to have found a chalet where there was nothing between them and the ocean except sand that came right to their door.

Mr Croft, from Christchurch, said he had spoken by phone to the son of family friend Dean Lamb, who had been in Thailand and was searching for his daughter.

Mr Lamb told him that all the buildings were broken up into pieces of concrete and it was "bloody awful".

"He just keeps saying I am so sorry, I am so sorry. I suppose that is reflecting the mood of the whole place. It is utter devastation."

Mr Croft said Belinda was a pastor at the Windsor Park Baptist Church at Mairangi Bay and had just graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and Theology double degree. Andrew was a motivational speaker and had worked with former league star Tawera Nikau. 

When Mr Croft contacted the resort where they were staying, he was told the number had been disconnected. He learned later that the resort had been swept away.

Steve Wallace's long wait for news on his sister Vivienne, feared missing in southern India, ended in relief last night.

"She's back sunbathing," he told the Herald.

Mr Wallace, who lives in Otago, learned his 52-year-old sister was fine via an email she wrote to a friend in Napier on Boxing Day.

A Timaru family had good news last night when they heard 38-year-old Marion White was safe and well in the Andaman Islands.

Her sister Susan Morgan said, "Mum turned to us and shouted 'she's alive' [when the phone call came] ... it was so exciting."

Kerry Baas of Christchurch escaped the tsunami on a motorbike.

The 43-year-old, who was in Phuket visiting friends, was in the Patong area when the tsunami hit.

She jumped on her motorbike to escape water rushing down the main street, heading north to Kamala.

When she got to Kamala, it was destroyed.

"It looked like a bomb had hit," she said in an email to the Herald.

Missing

* Belinda Welch, 26, Auckland.
* Andrew Welch, 41, Auckland.
* Sam Mickell, 22, Auckland.
* Amanda Clinton.
* Paul Ross.
* Carel Visser from Auckland.