Six SA Tsunami survivors arrive at Lanseria

Six injured South African survivors of the tsunami in Thailand arrived at Lanseria airport on board a rescue flight from Bangkok. The tsunamis were set off a week previously by a massive earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, west of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. They have left about 125 000 people dead along the shorelines of the Indian Ocean. Sixteen South Africans were still missing at that date, fourteen of them in Thailand and two in India. In a joint operation involving government, Netcare, Discovery Health and the SA Jewish Board of Deputies, a planeload of medical officers and Foreign Affairs consular officers had been sent to Thailand to evacuate the trapped South Africans.