Tsunami stories: British man returns from the dead

A Briton feared dead in the tsunami disaster when his passport was found on a dead man's body stunned his family when he phoned home to wish them a happy New Year.

Police had taken DNA samples from Allister Purves' relatives to confirm a belief he was a victim of the waves.

But the 30-year-old from Port Seton, East Lothian, caused tears of joy when he called from a rescuer's phone in the Andaman Islands.

Giant helpers

Elephants, Thailand's ancient war vehicles, are being brought in to help disaster workers retrieve and transport bodies from tsunami-hit beaches and islands.

About 24 elephants were expected on Phuket and the mainland beaches of Khao Lak where corpses lay buried beneath rubble and tonnes of sand.

"Elephants are better than four-wheel-drive trucks, better than back hoes," Sompast Meephan said as he loaded animals from Ayutthaya, in central Thailand for the 800km ride to Phuket.

Silver lining

The devastation wrought on one of Thailand's island paradises has been a boon to another.

Visitors to the smashed tourist hotspots of Phuket, Krabi and Phi Phi Island, have sought to salvage their holidays by shifting to Samui Island on the opposite side of the Malay Peninsula.

Along the Gulf of Thailand there's no hint of the destruction in the Andaman Sea, as open-air bars pump out pop tunes and Westerners in beachwear jam the streets.

Plague of hoax calls

Friends and relatives seeking news of loved ones have been plagued by hoax emails saying they are dead, say British police.

Messages purportedly from Government officials have been sent to people who placed appeals for information on the Sky News website.

Police said they were treating the matter as a "very serious crime" and have launched a full investigation.

'The Bill' star's loss

The 2-month-old grandson of The Bill star Eric Richard is thought to be the youngest British victim of the devastating Asian tsunami.

The Mail on Sunday reported that Richard, who played Sergeant Bob Cryer in the long-running British TV series, was being comforted at home in Kent following his loss.

His grandson was believed to have been swept out of the arms of the star's son Richard Smith on a beach in Sri Lanka where the family were staying.

Brewer bottles water

Sri Lanka's top brewery has turned its technical might to producing potable water for tsunami survivors.

There was one hitch at the start for the Lion Brewery. The water it produced looked like beer because of the colour and labelling of the bottles.

"So we then made an urgent request to get white glass bottles and they are now coming," Naufar Rahim, a senior company executive, said.

Beer bottling is 100 per cent mechanised, but the brewery found that if they ran the system mechanically, it would also paste the Lion Lager sign on the bottles.

"We needed every hand because the packing of the water bottles had to be done manually," said Rahim

Fishermen want to stay

Fisherman Kathan, his wife and two sons, clung to the ceiling of their house in southern India for hours after last week's disaster.

Yet, Kathan, 50, says he wants to live by the sea, despite Government plans to permanently relocate fishermen to safer locations away from the coast.

Kathan is not alone. Tens of thousands of fishermen living along India's ravaged southeastern coast would be reluctant to move inland. "We cannot survive without the sea," Kathan said. "What will I do to feed my family if I don't fish?"

Disabled children's trial

Screaming with fear, paralysed children at a shelter in Galle, Sri Lanka, for the physically disabled and mentally ill lay helplessly in their beds as water surged into their dormitories during the tsunami.

Some desperate children gripped the rafters as the water level rose inside the one-storey Sambodhi shelter, while others floated away on mattresses to their deaths, according to witnesses. Just 41 of the 102 sick residents of the home survived, caretaker Kumar Deshapriya said.

King forewarned

Former Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk says an astrologer warned him that an "ultra-catastrophic cataclysm" would strike, but that his country would be spared if proper rituals were conducted.

"My wife and I decided to spend several thousand dollars to organise these ceremonies so our country and our people could be spared such a catastrophe," Sihanouk, who abdicated last year, wrote on his website at www.sihanouknorodom.info.

Cambodia was unscathed by the tsunamis.