Posted on: Thursday, December 30, 2004
Kaua'i man died building home
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer
Friends and associates of a former Kaua'i resident yesterday were piecing together information about how he was killed in Thailand by Sunday's devastating southeast Asian tsunamis.
The U.S. State Department has a hotline for information about the welfare and whereabouts of American citizens in tsunami areas: (888) 407-4747.
.com. In 2001, Sammann moved to Thailand with his wife, Baurapaporn "Ouy" Sammann and the couple's small daughter, May.
"What I heard was that he and his worker were working on the house he was building in Khao Lok," Black said. "They were in the yard when the second, much bigger wave came in, and the worker started running. Dave jumped into his truck and the wave slammed it around the trunk of a tree."
Black said the worker returned to find that Sammann had been killed.
Please let us know if you have loved ones or friends in the areas affected by the tsunami. E-mail us at hawaii@honolulu "Right now, the situation is that we're trying to locate David's body, and Ouy is in Bangkok at the embassy," Betty Sammann said yesterday in a telephone interview.
"It's a very big hassle there right now, and everything's a mess. We have a call in to the Red Cross, which is referring us over to the State Department, and we're just waiting to hear from them."
Sammann said her stepson's wife and 5-year-old daughter were away when the tsunami struck and were unharmed. She said that after they leave the embassy, they'll head back to where the family had been living in Phuket.
"It's a very bad time for them right now," she said.
Another local tale of the impact of the tsunami is that of Nurhayati Idris, who left Honolulu on Tuesday to find the bodies of her mother and two sisters, friends said.
East-West Center student colleagues of Idris, 41, communicated via e-mail and pooled money to help defray expenses for Idris, who lost her mother and two sisters in Aceh, Indonesia, her home.
Aceh was one of the locations hardest hit by the tsunami.
"She took a flight back on Tuesday — hoping that she can even get there," said Karen Knudsen, East-West Center director of external affairs. "I mean, I don't even know what she's going back to. Fortunately, her children are safe, I think they were in Jakarta. Her husband called, and he was safe, I think, in Aceh."
Idris had been in Honolulu on a Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program, which brings in students who are in ethnic minorities and other groups under-represented in higher education.
East-West Center spokeswoman Susan Kreifels said Idris has one surviving sister. In addition to money collected by friends, Kreifels said, the Ford Foundation provided money for airline tickets.
Reach Will Hoover at 525-8038 or whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.
Kaua'i dentist John Black said he used contacts to Thailand and the U.S. Mainland to glean information about the death of his friend, David "Taxi Man" Sammann, 53, who had operated the North Shore Tour and Limousine service on Kaua'i.
Finding the missing
Sammann's father and stepmother, Herschel and Betty Sammann of San Diego, said they were communicating with Sammann's wife in Thailand via cell phone.
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