Sisters see spouses die; mom makes wrenching choice
 |  Suerna Sebastian Francis, left, and Mariana Sebastian Francis recount how their husbands died. |
| |
|  VIDEO |
 Aerial pictures show massive damage, few signs of life on western tip of Aceh province
 Sri Lankan officials are asking people to stay calm
 CNN's Atika Shubert visits with grief-stricken survivors in Aceh, Indonesia.
 Why wasn't a tsunami warning system in place for the Indian Ocean?
|
| HOTLINE NUMBERS | India: +91 11 2309 3054
Thailand: +66 2643 5262 and 2643 5000; Phuket enquiries call +66 076 240 729; +66 076 216 118; +66 076 223 141
Sri Lanka: residents: +94 11 536 1938; tourists: +94 11 243 7061
Maldives: +44 20 7224 2149
Seychelles: +248 321 676
Hong Kong residents: +852 2829 3010
|
|
(CNN) -- The white flags signal death. Where those pennants hang outside Sri Lankan houses, the dead are still inside.
But Mariana Sebastian Francis is one of the more fortunate mourners on the Indian Ocean island where a tsunami killed at least 41,000 people. Her husband's body isn't among the corpses rotting beyond recognition. She's already buried him.
Her sister, Suerna Sebastian Francis, 40, has done the same. Widowhood is the latest event in their tandem lives.
As they'd done for almost four decades, the Francis sisters celebrated Christmas together. Marriage hadn't separated them because they chose to live next door to each other in the village where they were born. And on December 26, they shared a traditional Sri Lankan breakfast of rice and dal, or spiced legumes.
Hours later they watched their husbands drown saving their children.
"When the second wave came, we were looking for our son, and my husband went out to search for him and found him in a tree," Mariana Francis, 39, recounted. "He rescued him, and both of them were running for their lives. Later, my son was found alive, but my husband was missing."
The two sisters charged to safety as they lost everything within 20 minutes.
"The water was rising and the sea was coming. We ran for our lives, but it caught us, and the water almost came up to our necks," said Mariana Francis, who has a 19-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter. "We managed to escape from the first wave which destroyed our house. The second wave came and took us by surprise."
Mariana Francis' hands are bandaged. But her wounds are from the funeral. After carrying her husband's coffin, she refused to stop gripping it. Fellow mourners pulled it from her grasp.
Suerna Francis, whose husband saved their one child, is not sure what the future holds. Dodangoda, their fishing community, was deprived before the tsunami lashed its shores. Now it's more vulnerable.
"We don't know what to do next," Suerna Francis said. 'We don't have a source of income."
Leaving home
A thousand miles away, across the Bay of Bengal, hundreds on the Nicobar Islands endure the same despair as the Francis sisters.
Last night, Kanaka Vassan planned to use the remains of her house as firewood to cook a meal for her family. Vassan, her husband and two children stayed in the forest for two nights without food, and she said her "children just cried and cried."
The Vassans might rebuild the house and gift shop the tsunami destroyed early this week, but many more already have decided to turn their back on home and move elsewhere.
At least one of every four of the nation's 31,000 or so citizens is dead, wounded or missing a relative. And government officials say it would be inhumane to force anyone to remain in the midst of that suffering and trauma.
With the help of the Indian military, pilots are working at all hours to take in supplies and take out survivors who want to leave. So many people have left that there aren't enough hands available to unload food, water and medicine. In exchange for a ride off the island, evacuees must unload the cargo.
Mud to his ears
The Searle family, Australians vacationing in Thailand when the tsunami struck, bolted from that country as soon as they found their oldest son.
Jillian Searle and her sons Blake, 20 months, and Lachie, 5, were finishing breakfast poolside at the Holiday Inn in Phuket. Her husband, Brad, had just gone to their hotel room for a diaper when towering waves sent her running.
From the balcony, Brad watched Jillian clutch the boys and lose her strength. Hotel fire escape doors were barred shut, and he couldn't reach his family.
The water's force ripped Jillian's clothes off her, she told The West Australian, but she didn't notice she was naked until much later as she focused on saving her sons.
"I had both of them in my hands -- one in each arm -- and we started going under," Jillian recounted. "I knew I had to let go of one of them, and I just thought I'd better let go of the one that's the oldest."
And she did.
Jillian Searle asked a young woman to take hold of Lachie who has always feared water, cannot swim and was pleading for his mother to keep holding him, she told The West Australian.
Brad Searle opened a blocked door with a crowbar and reached his wife just before a second wave struck. When that deluge subsided, the parents found the stranger who told them she had been forced to let Lachie go.
They found Lachie two hours later in a flooded room. The boy had mud marks up to his ears. Lachie told his parents that he'd dog paddled as fast as he could, then caught hold of a door handle and held on as water rushed passed him.
Jillian Searle choked down tears remembering the ordeal. "It was so horrible. I'm just so thankful that I've still got my two kids because I never thought both would survive."
Correspondents Sanjay Gupta, Suhasini Haidar and Kim McCabe contributed to this report.
