Starnberg: How a tsunami survivor wants to prevent drowning – Starnberg

The night from Boxing Day to Boxing Day was restless on Rai Leh, a heavenly peninsula in southern Thailand. Monika Keck heard loud animals above her bungalow. Screaming monkeys in the trees, rats ran around. She thought nothing of it, woke up only briefly in the early morning and fell asleep again immediately.

It should be a break. The then 35-year-old, like many others, wanted to spend her annual vacation in the warm. So off to paradise for sunbathing, snorkeling, relaxing. On the morning of December 26, Keck went to breakfast later than usual – she had overslept because of the night’s troublemakers. Luckily for her, as it turned out later.

A Friday afternoon at Café Reis on the snow-covered Gilching market square. Monika Keck, 53, short black hair, a dress with tulips. Next to her on the bench is a folder with a newspaper article that appeared shortly after the disaster. In her hand the smartphone with photos of her travels: including a plaque from the Tsunami Museum in Khao Lak, the place where a particularly large number of people died, with the number of deaths. Her story, which ended lightly – and for which she also brought a message for the people of the Fünfseenland.

A particularly large number of people died in the tsunami in Khao Lak.

(Photo: Rungroj Yongrit/dpa)

December 26th. On the breakfast terrace, Keck’s gaze fell on the coast about half a kilometer away. What she saw seemed unusual to her: “I only saw a white stripe and the boats on the water moved strangely,” she says. Then people ran past her screaming. Sheer curiosity drew her straight to the coast – a paradox that many succumbed to: despite unusual waves and capsizing boats, they didn’t run away, but towards the danger. Nobody suspected anything of a tsunami, even Keck himself thought about it much later.

Down on the beach she found sheer chaos: wrecked boats, people panicking, fish wriggling on the sand. “At the time, I thought the waves were simply higher than usual because of the full moon,” says Keck. Today she knows that the first tsunami wave had already hit the coast. Further along the beach she heard a loud noise that still makes her pulse rise to this day. Suddenly she heard some Thais shouting in the local language behind her. They waved their arms wildly and Keck realized: She has to run because a second wave was racing towards the beach. And she ran.

“I had maximum fear of death,” says Keck

She doesn’t remember what happened after that. But Keck knows one thing: “I was scared to death.” Combined with absolute helplessness in the face of the forces of nature, that was the worst. Her memory comes back when she finds herself slightly elevated on a hill. A look back: “The water is standing, it’s not rising any further.”

In the café, Keck pours a spoonful of honey into her steaming tea. Calmly and in a calm voice, she tells of what she experienced 18 years earlier in great panic – you can only imagine the drama, you can’t hear it in her voice. The underwater quake off the northwest coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra had a magnitude of 9.1 and is considered the third strongest earthquake ever recorded. It triggered a series of tsunamis that reached the African coast and Thailand. A total of 230,000 people died, including 537 Germans. Over 100,000 were injured and 1.7 million lost their homes.

On a plateau at the top of the hill, a picture “like in war” emerged, according to Keck: the injured lay all over the place, they screamed, and were provisionally transported on bamboo poles. Completely “in working mode,” as she puts it, she offered painkillers to those already supplied. It took hours for a helicopter to land on the beach to take the injured away. The then 35-year-old was always thinking about the tide. Because aftershocks below the sea surface can cause further tsunami waves. She took that from the signs posted on site: “Next big wave” in English was to be read on it, and a time. So is the water coming up to the plateau? Keck wonders. Would she survive this day? In the meantime she had finished with life – and survived.

Open water buoys: Around 230,000 people died in the tsunami accident.

Around 230,000 people died in the tsunami accident.

(Photo: Rungroj Yongrit/dpa)

The following day, Keck helped clean up. “I had to do something,” she says, and asks the waitress in the café for another cup of tea. Again she lets the honey slowly run into the steaming glass. Although Keck started the planned onward journey to the capital Bangkok, she didn’t really notice anything. At the airport in the city of Krabi in southern Thailand, which has a population of 33,000, she was greeted with joy as a survivor. The 40 missing persons and death lists hanging there make it clear how lucky she was. It wasn’t until she came back to Germany on January 9, 2005 that she realized it herself.

In the café, Keck seems thoughtful. The native of Munich did not really find her way back to life at first. The waves had left their mark. She had nightmares about drowning, feeling guilty about surviving while others were dying. Keck went into therapy and began to work through the consequences of the trauma, suffered from the existential threat of the tsunami.

How could it go on? Keck decided to fight, to make a virtue out of necessity. In 2009 she went to the lifeguard. Keck was supposed to spend a day at the lake with a group of children with whom she worked as a social worker. But there was no lifeguard. Keck took care of this deficiency, she made the lifeguard badge in bronze, silver and gold. For three years she worked as a swimming teacher in Fürstenfeldbruck, among other things with traumatized children. From now on, swimming should be a constant companion in her life.

Three years ago, Keck founded the “5 Lakes Open Water Swimming” initiative. The goal: to create awareness for outpatient hospice work, which enables the dying to be cared for at home and is often paid for by health insurance. During this time, she herself worked as a coordinator in the area. “My mother was an avid swimmer before she died,” says Keck. She wanted to “swim again”. Under this motto, Keck crosses all the lakes in the Fünfseenland once a year with a growing group of 15 people and collects donations for the hospice service.

Open water buoys: Monika Keck founded the initiative three years ago "5-lake open water swimming".

Three years ago, Monika Keck founded the “5 Lakes Open Water Swimming” initiative.

(Photo: Franz Xaver Fuchs)

Always in her luggage when swimming: her open-water swimming buoy, which she also brought to the café for a chat. An orange, inflatable plastic bag that you can strap around your stomach with a belt lies next to her. When swimming in open water, you drag the buoy behind you and remain visible to other swimmers and boaters. But doesn’t that bother you when you’re swimming? “No,” says Keck, the buoy is practically floating behind you. And: “It can save lives.” If someone has a cramp, “then they can lie down on the buoy and not go under,” emphasizes Keck and puts her arms on the orange float, for example. Since her trauma experience in Thailand, she has been campaigning for the use of these buoys in the five lakes. Together with the local lifeguards who accompany the “5 Lakes Open Water Swim”, Keck spreads pictures of the buoys on Facebook. “The lifeguards are happy, they repost my posts,” she says. This is good cooperation and people can see the buoys in action.

Oliver Jauch from the district water rescue service in Starnberg also confirms the benefits of the buoys: “Especially when there is boat traffic on the lake, these buoys are more than helpful,” he says. He is also referring to the dramatic accident in the summer when a swimmer in Lake Starnberg was run over by a motorboat. It took days to locate and recover the 32-year-old’s body in the huge lake.

Open water buoys: "These buoys are more than helpful, especially when there is boat traffic on the lake"says Oliver Jauch.

“Especially when there is boat traffic on the lake, these buoys are more than helpful,” says Oliver Jauch.

(Photo: Franz Xaver Fuchs)

It was far from the only misfortune – because more and more people simply can’t swim or underestimate the situation on the open sea. In May, two pedal boats capsized off Herrsching. The 27-year-old could still be rescued unconscious, his 59-year-old companion drowned. Just like a 90-year-old who went under in Lake Starnberg off Feldafing in June and could no longer be resuscitated. In June, a 77-year-old suddenly went under in the Raistinger quarry pond, he later died in the hospital. “It’s sad that children and young people in particular can no longer swim well,” says Keck. She herself would pull someone out of the water about once a year who was about to drown – in the swimming pool or in the lake.

In 2022 there were nine missing person searches, two people had to be found dead

According to the Starnberg water rescue service, 16 people were rescued from danger areas last year, and there were nine missing person searches. Two people had to be rescued dead. Despite a few particularly serious accidents, the situation this year has “not deteriorated to any alarming extent,” says Jauch. But it is also clear that many deaths could easily be prevented.

In the café, Keck talks about her work in the hospice, where she worked as a coordinator for three years until 2020. During this time, death was omnipresent to her. She reports on people who have only reported their unresolved traumas in the last few hours. The resulting question to herself: “Have I finally worked through my trauma?” was followed by a great dilemma: to return to the scene of the accident in 2004 and finally confront it – that was Keck’s greatest wish and her greatest fear. She had already done part of it. She was able to swim again almost unconditionally and had her nightmares under control. But she hadn’t finally finished with the topic.

She finally decided to do it. She trudged into the travel agency and booked a flight to Thailand. With the breathing techniques she learned to prevent panic attacks, she set out in February 2019. And suddenly she was there: at the site of the accident that had cost so many lives 15 years earlier, almost including her own. How was it? “It’s a relief,” says Keck. No hint of panic, just the feeling of finally being able to work through the trauma. She promptly began to write down her story, while still on the beach in front of her former hotel. By the middle of this year, she had written her second book. The title: “Wave of Change”.

How is Keck doing today with the experiences? “Christmas has changed,” she says. Christmas decorations used to be a trigger for her, and a Christmas carol even triggered a panic attack. Today, Christmas only has “a small aftertaste”. To commemorate the victims of the tsunami, on December 26 of each year, she goes to the Andechs church to light a candle. In 2005 – on the anniversary of the catastrophe – she even organized a memorial service for the bereaved, with Thai food in the church and a picture exhibition. “I worked through my trauma today,” she says. Now it’s about preventing the traumata of others.

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