http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/02/23/canada.couple.ap/

Tsunami couple's last photos found

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/02/23/canada.couple.ap/

Tsunami couple's last photos found

Thursday, February 24, 2005 Posted: 0346 GMT (1146 HKT)

VANCOUVER, Canada (AP) -- The bodies of a Canadian couple who
disappeared when the December 26 tsunami hit their beach resort in
Thailand have been found, as well as their final photographs stored on
a digital camera.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/02/23/canada.couple.ap/

Tsunami couple's last photos found

Thursday, February 24, 2005 Posted: 0346 GMT (1146 HKT)

VANCOUVER, Canada (AP) -- The bodies of a Canadian couple who

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/02/23/canada.couple.ap/

Tsunami couple's last photos found

Thursday, February 24, 2005 Posted: 0346 GMT (1146 HKT)

VANCOUVER, Canada (AP) -- The bodies of a Canadian couple who
disappeared when the December 26 tsunami hit their beach resort in
Thailand have been found, as well as their final photographs stored on
a digital camera.

Relatives of John and Jackie Knill of North Vancouver say they were
notified about a week ago that the identities of their remains had
been confirmed.

Searchers later also recovered the couple's digital camera and were
able to print its photos, including shots of the huge wave as it
rushed toward them.

The Knills, frequent visitors to the popular Thai resort of Khao Lak,
were apparently on the beach when the first wave hit.

The digital camera was destroyed but its memory card was salvaged.

A shot taken at 8:20 a.m. shows everything on the beach appears to be
normal.

Six minutes later, curious onlookers are shown wandering onto suddenly
exposed tidal flats, a sign of the impending tsunami. A large wave
appears to be breaking in the distance.

Two minutes after that, some spectators appear to realize this is no
ordinary wave.

"I don't know why they didn't run," son Christian Knill told Global TV
in Vancouver. "Either they knew they couldn't or they didn't know the
power of the wave."

A pair of photos taken at 8:30 a.m. shows a wall of water churning up
sand and mud. A final shot a couple of minutes later shows the tsunami
hitting the beach.

In all, 12 Canadians were confirmed killed by the tsunami, most of
them in Thailand, and 13 people remained unaccounted for as of last
week.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20050224-2359-wst-tsunami-lastmoments.html

Discovery of tsunami camera in Thailand comforts grieving Canadian
family

By Melanthia Mitchell
ASSOCIATED PRESS

11:59 p.m. February 24, 2005


Associated Press / Knill family
John and Jackie Knill pose at their Thailand resort in Khao Lak on
Dec. 12, 2004. The bodies of the two tsunami victims have been found
in Thailand, along with their final photos.

{pics at this link}

SEATTLE – In the aftermath of the devastating tsunami in Asia, a
missionary sent from Washington state thought little could be salvaged
from the remaining debris and rubble. But the chance discovery of a
Canadian couple's shattered camera offered a glimpse into the days and
minutes before their deaths and helped bring comfort to their grieving
family.

"There was just so much destruction, and it went on for so long,"
Christian Pilet said Thursday during a telephone interview from his
home in North Bend.

Pilet arrived in Thailand on Jan. 27. As members of the Association of
Baptists for World Evangelism based in Harrisburg, Penn., he and his
colleagues visited several trampled villages, surveying damage and
determining what could be rebuilt. Pilet was responsible for talking
to survivors.

On day three of the visit, he and friend Cameron Craig, a youth pastor
from Mansfield, Ohio, took a break from the group. They walked for
hours along beaches once dotted with restaurants, bungalows and shops
that were littered with crumbling buildings, passports and children's
toys.

As they walked, the first thing they found were the tattered remains
of a child's swimming vest. "You could tell it had been ripped off,"
Pilet recalled sadly. "As a father of five, that was especially
difficult."

Pilet was most struck by the thousands of shoes he found scattered.

"The story wasn't about who had survived, but all the incredible
death," said Pilet, later adding, "There's just no end to the shoes
that were lying all over this beach and will never be needed again."

Near the site of a devastated beach resort, Craig spotted a digital
camera about 100 yards from the water's edge.

It was so badly damaged that Pilet couldn't tell what brand it was,
and suggested they just leave it. Instead Craig pulled out the
camera's memory stick, thinking its contents could be salvaged.

At his hotel later that evening, Pilet used his Palm Pilot to download
the photos from the memory card to his laptop. There were 48 pictures,
the last a sequence of six ominous shots taken Dec. 26 as the gigantic
wave crashed onto the beach.

The first photo of the wave shows a handful of tourists casually
strolling along the waterfront and frolicking in the sea. In the
background a dark line is seen on the water's horizon as the tsunami
rolls toward land.

A subsequent photograph shows the gigantic wave building as it
approaches the shore and thousands of unsuspecting tourists. A person
in the foreground is breaking into a run.

In the final image the wave crashes ashore, churning sand and
obliterating the beachfront. Nearly the entire frame is filled with
the image of a misty blue sky and the quaking waters.

"I just could not believe it. It was eerie, the feeling that you were
seeing somebody standing there recording their last minutes," Pilet
said.

Pilet didn't yet know the photos were taken by John and Jackie Knill
of Vancouver, British Columbia, who had been vacationing in Khao Lak,
one of the areas hit hardest when the tsunami struck.

Pilet assumed the couple in the photos were from Germany or Sweden, as
were many of the tourists in the area. He visited the German and
Swedish embassies without luck.

Determined to return the pictures to the family, Pilet tried a few
searches on the Internet but came up empty.

He returned home Feb. 10 and showed the pictures to his wife, Nicole.
While Pilet slept that evening, Nicole searched the Internet, using
key works like "tsunami, missing persons, German and Swiss."

"The first Web site she opened, almost at random, showed some pictures
and she found who she believed looked like the man in the photos,"
Pilet said. The site had been posted by Patrick Knill, one of the
couple's three sons.

The next day, after e-mailing Patrick Knill, Pilet drove to Vancouver,
B.C., to personally deliver the disk to the family and learn more
about the couple.

John Knill had retired in 1991 from an alarm systems company his
family started. He continued a career as a musician, and owned a
recording studio called DreamMaker Studio, according to a biography
from the family. Jackie Knill was a painter who specialized in
watercolors.

The couple had been on a four-month vacation, Pilet said, and they'd
decided to spend Christmas in Thailand because they'd been there on
four previous occasions.

"In all the places that they had visited, none captured their hearts
and imaginations as much as Khao Lak, and the Thai people of that
lovely community," the family said in a release.

Messages left for the family Thursday were not returned.

"They seemed like an amazing couple. Very gifted. Very talented," said
Pilet, who received one of Jackie's watercolors – a small painting of
flowers – from the family.

He said he plans to attend a memorial service planned in Vancouver on
March 21.

/end