Helping Hands

Brothers in Arms

When the asian tsunami hit the sri lankan coast, jake and aleksis zarins went into crisis-management mode

On the morning of Dec. 26 last year, Jake and Aleksis Zarins were lying in their beds at the Rock House hotel in Unawatuna, Sri Lanka, nursing heavy post-Christmas hangovers. For the past month the English brothers had been lounging around the palm-lined village on the country’s southwest coast. At 9:25 a.m. the Indian Ocean tsunami hit the tropical retreat, and that long holiday came to an abrupt end. “I heard a loud rumbling outside the hotel,” Jake remembers. “I looked out of my window and there was water as far as I could see.” He woke Aleksis, who was stunned by the devastation: “There was rubble everywhere. Buildings that were there the night before weren’t standing anymore.”

The tsunami left 300,000 people dead across Asia, including at least 60 in Unawatuna, and turned hundreds of ordinary holidaymakers into heroes. Jake, then a 27-year-old aquarium designer, and Aleksis, a 25-year-old festival stage builder, were just two of them. On the day of the disaster, the brothers waded through the wrecked streets of Unawatuna with other hotel residents, helping wherever they could. They built stretchers from bed frames and sun loungers and hauled the injured up to Rock House, which sits some 10 m above Unawatuna bay. At night they comforted the wounded and commiserated with the traumatized, passing around bottles of duty-free whiskey salvaged from the ruins. “I’m very proud of the way we reacted,” says Jake. “But we were lucky to have a lot of people with us who were willing to help. It was a real team effort.”

On Dec. 28, the brothers were evacuated to the country’s largest city, Colombo. “I was glad to get the hell out of there,” says Aleksis. “But I felt guilty leaving my Sri Lankan friends.” When they arrived back in Britain, the brothers, together with other Rock House survivors, formed a charity to help rebuild the wrecked resort: the Friends of Unawatuna (www.friendsofunawatuna. org.uk). Within a month, the group had raised $36,000. Jake quit his London job in February and moved to Sri Lanka to work full time for the Friends of Unawatuna and another relief group, Project Galle 2005.

Eight months on, the Friends of Unawatuna has collected $360,000 and carried out dozens of essential projects. Rubble has been removed from the resort’s golden beach so that the tourist industry can get back to normal, a village school has been refurbished and grants have been handed over to local businesses affected by the tsunami. “What happened on Dec. 26 was awful,” says Aleksis. “But a lot of good has come out of the disaster as well.” —By Theunis Bates

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