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This is the first picture of Alfie Cunliffe, the two-year-old boy from Nelson who was swept out to sea by the Samoan tsunami.
Alfie was on the beach with his parents Gill and Garywhen the first wave hit at the Taufua Lodge in Lalomanu, the tourist resort on the island’s southeast coast that was worst affected by the disaster.
Alfie’s mother, Gill, hoped he was with his father, Gary, but discovered he was not when her husband was brought in alone for medical attention. . He was swept back into shore when a second wave struck and taken to hospital in Lalomanu suffering from internal injuries.
Gary Cunliffe had been swept out to sea by the first wave but survived by clinging on to the coral reef.
Ulrich Moritz, the neighbour, told the Daily Telegraph the Cunliffes arrived at different times at the hospital and it was only when they met up there that they realised Alfie was missing.
The family, who had emigrated from Lancashire in Englandto New Zealand, happened to be staying at the same resort as neighbours from the same street in Nelson. She started crying ‘I’ve lost Alfie’,” Moritz said.
”At first only Gill was there. But then they pulled Gary in and he was in quite bad shape. ”So we thought he could be with Gary.”
After arriving back at his home yesterday, Moritz told The Sunday Telegraph that the scene at the hospital in Lalomanu was chaotic and he had not seen the Cunliffes since then. That’s when she realised that no one had Alfie.
Moritz told the Telegraph the families were on the beach after the earthquake when a young couple shouted that the outlying coral reef had gone dry, a sign that a tsunami might be incoming.
The Cunliffes flew back to New Zealand over the weekend. We all yelled ‘The reef is dry, run, run, run.
”I looked out and all the water was gone, sucked out. We ran to a hill, scrambled and scrambled.’
”Everyone just started to run.
”If we had been any slower, we would have been washed out. We could hear it coming,” Moritz added.”
”We couldn’t believe it. We were seconds from death. It dragged everything out like a giant vacuum cleaner,” he said. It dragged everything out like a giant vacuum cleaner,” he said.
Nelson’s Samoan community say they would like to send representatives to any service held for Alfie.