The BBC maintains a reporter’s log covering certain news events. This week, after the tsunamis in Asia, several reporters have been writing dispatches posted online.

A reporter in Phuket, Thailand, wrote that a German tourist, Winfred Parkinson, said the following:

“Everyone who wanted to take something out of their house must have died. The people who ran and did nothing else but running, only they had a chance.”

Another reporter, in Aceh, Indonesia, posted this:

“The true horror of what happened here Sunday morning is slowly being pieced together.”

Dead bodies, the stranded, the injured, the hopeless. As it sometimes happens, the true horror of real life has far surpassed the viciousness of any imaginary tragedies we may have encountered in our books, movies, and other forms of fake drama.

Vinnee Tong