“We should always remember”: Brisbane couple on surviving 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami
Twenty years ago Gregory and Deirdre Stegman were scuba diving as the Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed more than 250,000 people, approached.
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Brisbane-born scuba instructors Gregory and Deirdre Stegman were diving in the Maldives when the deadliest tsunami in recorded history hit South-East Asia.
The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami killed more than 225,000 people and displaced more than 1.7 million across South-East Asia and the east coast of Africa. It affected people in some of the world’s most vulnerable communities.
More than 80 people were killed in the Maldives and the destruction of houses, infrastructure, resorts, fishing villages, communication equipment, and water sources cost the island archipelago 62 per cent of its GDP.
Twenty years later the country still feels the impacts of the disaster, and Greg and Deirdre were left with the memory of a beautiful white sand island being desecrated by fatal waves.
The couple - who were holidaying at Club Med resort on Faru island - are some of the handful of people who have reported surviving a tsunami while scuba diving.
Their diving boat alongside one in Thailand were two of the only groups of divers to survive this tsunami.
Greg later found out that his favourite diving site had the water completely sucked out of it before the tsunami hit, and said anyone diving there would have died in seconds.
He remembered on Christmas Day having the most incredible dive as schools of fish darted around but it was less than 24 hours later that the first wave struck Faru washing over the entire island.
The island was hit by three large waves at about 9:30am and several smaller tsunamis in the hours following, destroying everything on the lower level of the resort.
Greg and Deirdre lost all of their possessions and spent the next few days sleeping with their snorkels next to them in anticipation of waves washing them out to sea.
The Stegman’s room which was on the bottom floor had the door ripped off its hinges, windows smashed in, and the heavy wooden bed frame turned upside down.
“If the wave had hit a few hours earlier, we all would have been dead,” Greg said.
“The waves would have crashed, and we would have just drowned in our sleep.
“The watermark inside the room was well over my head, so we would have either been knocked unconscious or would have drowned in the panic of not knowing what had happened.”
But as the couple headed out on the diving boat on Boxing Day with a group of other divers, Greg noticed an unusually strong current.
“I remember the conversation as clear as day. I said to the diving instructor ‘I don’t know why the current is so strong. Maybe there was a full moon last night?’”
This warning sign was dismissed and it was less than two hours later that the first wave hit the island.
After trying a few different diving sites, which were all deemed unsafe due to the unusual currents, the divers finally jumped into the water but the reef that had been full of fish the day before was now desolate.
Greg had done over 500 dives and said the rapidly changing currents were the strangest he had ever experienced.
One minute the current was travelling at one knot and the next second it had picked up to three knots.
The couple - who had decided to stay close to the reef - gripped on for their lives as the strong current pulled them downwards.
“When the tsunami was getting close, the water was being sucked towards the waves, and as the tsunami waves came over us, the current changed direction,” Greg said.
“Nobody had ever experienced a dive where it changed direction six or eight times, and the current was so severe.”
When they finally reached the surface about 45 minutes later the water was littered with rubbish, bits of plastic, coconut shells, people’s clothes and entire palm trees.
The diving boat took over an hour to pick up all of the divers who safely made it back to the island, still blissfully unaware of the overall destruction.
With no communication methods out of the island it was days before they realised how widespread the destruction was.
Despite advice by one of the resort managers for everyone to take cover in the restaurant together, Greg said they would be like sardines if more waves struck, and everyone would be killed.
So for the days following the tsunami Greg, Deirdre and another couple at the resort took shelter in an upstairs room, where they took shifts at night to make sure someone was alert if another tsunami hit.
Days later, a Singapore Airlines flight flew the couple - still in the same clothes - out of the Male airport before arriving back in Australia to their relieved family and friends.
The adventurous couple who go on about three international trips a year, have since seen the lasting effects this disaster had on millions of vulnerable people across the region and wants Australia to remember them today.
“I’ve spoken to locals in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand who have lost their family members, and sadly it was primarily children,” Greg said.
“So many of them slipped out of the arms of their parents or were playing on the beach and their parents didn’t have time to get to them.
“A lot of women perished because of their heavy garments in many of the Muslim countries.
“We have such a large Asian population here who would remember the tsunami and it is out of respect to them and their families that Australians never forget it.
“It’s right on our doorstep and we should always remember the heartache that these people went through,” he said
The Club Med resort on Faru was never rebuilt and was instead turned into a housing estate to accommodate for the overpopulation in Male, as the capital city suffered through the aftermath of the catastrophe.
Despite the tsunami Greg and Deirdre’s love of the ocean has never wavered, and coming back from such a traumatic experience led to Greg becoming an advocate for water safety.
Greg noticed that a lot of immigrants moving to Australia didn’t have access to swimming lessons, and many adults didn’t even feel comfortable swimming in their own pools, so for the past five years he offered water safety lessons free-of-charge.
“I wanted to teach people how to survive in the water and how to rescue other people,” he said.
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