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Alex "Red" Engelsson's story
Ward Dossche - 2:292/854
With help from Carol Shenkenber @ 1:275/100
On December 26th 2004 at 07:58:50am local time in Thailand a massive
sub-seabed earthquake triggered the largest tsunami of modern times
killing around 230,000 people in the Indian Ocean basin.
Fidonet Zone 6 still existed and at 8am this was a valid entry in
the world nodelist:
Host,608,Thailand_Net,Bangkok_Thailand,David_Hanks,
662-2754966,9600,V34,CM
Pvt,323,Vurdalak,Pattaya_Thailand,Alex_Engelsson,-Unpublished-,
300,MO,CM,IEM:
fido6@ua.fm,IUC,IMI
When around 9am the giant wave hit the beach at Phuket, Thailand,
it razed everything as if it were a giant lawnmower. 6:608/323 was
vaporized, nothing of it, nor of its operator, was ever found
again.
Carol tells me that …
… At over a decade later and with no recoverable records, what we
had then was a sysop who had several bars. His common name was
'Red' and I met him once. He was tall (probably 6ft) with red hair
and a complexion that showed he had roseacea (so always looked a
little sunburned). He had a son that looked much like him.
One of their bars was at "ground zero" where the tsunami struck
hardest.
He travelled between sites, with or without his son, managing them.
He had one in Phuket which his son managed mostly I think. That is
where I met 'Red'. He was reading Bluewave packets on a laptop
which is pretty distinctive so I said "hello" and met the only
face-to-face Z6 person. It was summer 2003.
In Spring of 2005, I was again in Phuket and the only thing left
of his place, was gravel from the broken cement floor along the
strip where he was. The only locals who spoke enough english for
me to ask of them indicated both were presumed washed to sea.
David Hanks' connection was lost at the same time but Bankok was
not hit by the tsunami. It cannot be determined if perhaps he was
at the beach at that moment. A vacation to Phuket would have been a
likely spot for a simple family get-away for Christmas, but we
simply do not know.
Whatever did happen that day, we lost Thailand for Fidonet as it
seems the others drew off the one who died.
Alex "Red" Engelsson was the only sysop known to be lost to the
2004 tsunami. He was never heard from again. He doesn't figure in
any of the records or statistics dealing with the disaster. Knowing
that whatever we fling to the electronic world these days becomes
indexed in some way, let this article be Alex' gravesite.
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