Gearhart family receives news that their daughter is aliveA Gearhart family whose daughter is living in Thailand has learned the girl was unharmed by the tsunami that devastated much of south Asia Sunday.

Patrick Morrisson said hundreds of people have been calling to inquire about his daughter, Maria, 16, a junior at Seaside High School who is studying in Thailand through the Rotary Club’s foreign exchange program.

Maria is living in Rayong, a resort town on the northeast coast of the country about two hours from Bangkok, that was unaffected by the disaster, Morrisson said. But it took the family awhile to get through to confirm that she was safe, he said.

The official death toll in Thailand from the tsunami was 2,500 today, but is expected to grow much higher. Large numbers of people remain missing, including hundreds of foreign tourists visiting popular resorts on the coast and islands in the southern part of the country. A Portland resident vacationing on the island of Phi Phi was among the many people injured in the disaster. Morrisson said he first read news of the tsunami on the Internet early Sunday morning.

“The first reports said about 4,000 people died. As the numbers started rising, I found maps of Thailand and tried to figure out where she was in relation to the tsunami,” he said.

He found that Rayong lies on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand, which was protected from the wave. While he was confident Maria was likely safe, he and his wife couldn’t get through to her on the phone. The family eventually e-mailed the local district Rotary representative, who was able to phone them minutes later with the news that their daughter was safe.

On Tuesday they were finally able to talk to her directly, and the hour of the call seemed to be what most bothered her, Morrisson said.

“She said ‘Mom, it’s five o’clock in the morning here!'” he said.

They were not able to speak long, but Maria didn’t indicate that there was much disruption or turmoil in Rayong from the disaster, Morrisson said, or that anyone she knew had been in the affected areas.

The family had last spoken with Maria on Christmas Day, just 12 hours before the disaster, when they learned she had just returned from the hospital where she had been treated for an infection, Morrisson said.