NZ surfers describe ordeal in Indonesian quake

Mark Thorn, who was on the island of Nias during the quake, could not contact family until four days later.

Surfing is a passion Hamilton friends Bevan Carr and Mark Thorn have shared since high school - a passion that resulted in them running for their lives as a powerful earthquake jolted the Indonesian island of Nias during their surfing holiday.

More than 2000 people died in the magnitude 8.7 quake, which struck three months after the remote island off Sumatra's west coast was devastated by the Boxing Day tsunami.

Mr Carr, 31, and Mr Thorn, 30, were in the village of Afulu, on Nias' northwest coast, when the quakehit.

It took them four days to reach the capital, Gunungsitoli, 120km away, to call their families and let them know they had survived.

This week Mr Carr, back in Sydney with his wife, top Australian surfer Melanie Redman, and Mr Thorn, reunited in London with his New Zealand girlfriend, Megan Hawthorn, told the Herald about their ordeal.

The pair said their experience of earthquakes during previous trips meant they were not too concerned when the quake began.

"The ones we'd felt on previous trips had almost been fun," Mr Carr said.

This time was different.

The pair, who were sleeping when the quake started just after 11pm local time, ran out of their room, down the stairs and out of the house where they were staying - and still the violent shaking showed no sign of slowing.

Around them buildings collapsed and the noise, like a train grinding on a track, was deafening.

People began to panic that another tsunami was on its way, and that fear intensified as aftershocks came every five minutes for the next 12 hours.

The villagers wasted no time fleeing for the hills and Mr Carr and Mr Thorn, wearing only shorts, joined the mad rush along dark, muddy paths.

"It was pretty scary. You just didn't know what was happening," Mr Thorn said. The aftershocks made people "seasick", said Mr Carr. "They were throwing up everywhere just from the motion of the ground."

The pair spent a rainy night on high ground with about 1000 villagers. In the morning the New Zealanders trekked the 3km back to the village, where they learned three people had died under fallen buildings.

They retrieved their passports, a T-shirt each, and some biscuits and bottles of water from the ruined house.

On the beach they found the ground had risen three metres, exposing hundreds of metres of reef.

They spent two more nights in the hills with the villagers and became desperate to get in touch with their families.

Mr Thorn said they were also becoming a burden on the villagers.

"All we were doing was eating their food and drinking their water. It was pointless us being there any longer."

Next day they persuaded a man to give them a ride to Gunungsitoli on his motorbike, a journey that took seven hours.

Bridges had caved in, forcing them to cross rivers on flimsy wooden ramps or boats, and there were huge cracks in the roads.

By the time they reached Gunungsitoli, where most of the deaths occurred, the bodies had been cleared away but the devastation was still apparent.

A four-storey hotel where they were booked to stay on their way home had collapsed.

"We would never have got out of it," Mr Thorn said.

They borrowed a journalist's satellite phone to call their loved ones, and the following day hitched a ride on a cargo plane to Medan in Sumatra and later flew home.

Now the men are concerned about the family whose house they stayed in each time they went to the village of Afulu. They have sent money to the family and plan to get tarpaulins and other goods to them.

Both hope to return to Afulu, but not while they would be a burden to people who barely have enough to eat and drink, let alone a place to sleep.