Man who lost his partner in the Indian Ocean Boxing Day tsunami waited six months to be told of her death

A man whose partner died in the Indian Ocean Boxing Day tsunami recalls waiting six months to be told of her death and witnessing the devastating aftermath of the disaster.

Andrew Chaggar and his partner Nova were caught in a tsunami in Thailand that happened on Boxing Day 2004. Around 230,000 people died as a result of the earthquake beneath the Indian Ocean, which also affected Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka.

On the morning of the tsunami, Andrew recalled waking up to the bungalow shaking and an unusual noise, which he compared to ‘a jet engine building up for take-off’.

“I literally had just enough time to get up out of bed when the first wave of the tsunami struck the end of the bungalows we were in. It just literally took them down like dominoes,” he told Minutes With... LADbible Stories.

"Ours was probably about the third or fourth along. I literally remember being in the bungalow and, the next minute, basically waking up in the water.”

Andrew Chaggar and his partner Nova were caught up in the devastating Boxing Day tsunami while in Thailand (LADbible)

He painfully shared: “It was almost like being in a washing machine full of nails.”

The ordeal was far from over, as Chaggar was swept along and eventually saw the surface before an oil drum hit his head, causing a scar and knocking him back under the water.

After surfacing again, a wave started washing his inland.

“I was swept through this building site, and my left leg was trapped against one of the concrete pillars. A lot of the wreckage in the water pinned my leg against the column. That's what caused the worst of my injuries.

“But I think it's fundamentally what saved my life, because if I hadn't been pinned there, I probably would have - as the wave had been pulled out - I would have been pulled out into the bay.”

Chaggar didn’t realise how bad the tragedy had been until he was rescued, describing the scene in Khao Lak as a ‘war zone’.

Andrew Chaggar said it took six months to be told Nova had died (LADbible)

“There were bodies and body parts all over the beach,” he shared. “At one point, we had to stop because there was a body in front of us, and I couldn't step over it.”

After reaching the hospital, he saw the heartbreak aftermath. “It was just like a war zone. Again, it was overwhelmed. There were literally patients on stretchers in every corridor, with people walking around trying to help.”

The emotional pain soon outweighed the physical pain from his injuries as he had no idea where Nova was, with all signs pointing to the worst outcome.

"I was in incredible pain. I was on morphine for quite a long time in Thailand, a few days at least. They were giving me that to kill the pain.

“For me, the emotional, the mental side was much, much worse. I was increasingly thinking about Nova and didn't know where she was.”

Tragically, Chaggar’s partner Nova died during the tsunami and it took six months to be told of her passing.

He was assigned a family liaison officer whose task it was to keep him up to date. They had taken a description of what he and Nova had been wearing when the tsunami hit and got a DNA sample from an old hairbrush and Nova’s dental records.

“About six months after that, I got a call saying they wanted to come around and speak to me. I had a fair idea of what it was going to be about,” he shared.

“They came around and basically told me that there was a partial dental match. They also had a photograph of a necklace I'd described to them, and I was able to verify that it was what she'd been wearing on Boxing Day morning.”

He added: “It was through that combination of things that it was eventually confirmed that she had been killed.”

Chaggar has since married and has welcomed two children, while he also remains 'incredibly close with Nova's parents'.

"I'm in this position now where my kids call Nova's parents Grandma and Granddad," Andrew added. "That, to me, is just amazing. I feel incredibly lucky that they're family.