ST. LOUIS – Terror in Thailand Friday morning as a massive earthquake shook skyscrapers.
The tremors were strong enough to dump water from rooftop swimming pools.
“The building started really moving. And yeah, a lot of screaming, a lot of panic. People running the wrong way down the escalators,” said tourist Fraser Morton.
Dozens were trapped under the rubble after a building collapsed in the capital city of Bangkok. Rescue workers say the rubble is still too unstable to search for survivors. Twenty-four hours before the quake, Millstadt’s Joe Lamie left Bangkok with his family to travel to a different part of the country.
“We started looking at a lot of the social media posts and realized that some of the areas that were affected badly were right next to where we had stayed in Bangkok. For a guy that’s covered the news for the last 38 years, it was breathtaking to see that we were just in a place that now is just devastated,” Laime said.
Lamie and his family are now more than 500 miles south of Bangkok, in Phuket, a place that knows the devastating impacts of an earthquake.
In 2004, a 9.1 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Indonesia triggered the deadliest tsunami in recorded history.
230,000 people were killed, including nearly 5,400 in coastal Thailand.
“The resort that we’re at has posted no warnings and has told us there’s no concern right now unless there’s a significant aftershock that would alter our plans. We’re continuing with our vacation,” Lamie said.
Lamie worked at FOX 2 for more than 30 years. However, this trip to Thailand is a return to his roots. He lived in the country for two years as a child.
“If people haven’t been to Thailand, it’s an incredible place and the people are the nicest people you’ll ever meet,” he said.
Lamie and his family don’t have to fly out of bangkok for their trip home to St. Louis, which should help ensure their scheduled return.
Sadly, for the people of southeast Asia, search and rescue operations are only just beginning. The death toll is expected to rise.