On Boxing Day 2004, Mark Weingard, best known to Maltese people as one of the judges on reality TV show Shark Tank, was in Thailand celebrating Christmas with a group of friends.
As he woke up, little did he know that he was about to be in the middle of one of the worst natural disasters the world had ever seen.
20 years later, on the anniversary of the devastating tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people across 14 countries, the first moments of that morning in Phuket still stand out in the hotelier’s memory.
“I woke up to the sound of the sea and thought, ‘It sounds really close today.' Then I looked out of the window and saw it coming in. I ran from my room. Actually, I was naked and thinking that I had to cover myself up. When I realised I was safe I put some clothes on, and we all got up on the roof. We had no clue what was going on,” Weingard told Times of Malta.
The disaster claimed the life of one Maltese national. Nancy Woolner, 54, was holidaying with her two daughters across the sea from Weingard on Phi Phi Island when the raging waters tore through their bungalow.
The three were winched to safety, but Woolner later succumbed to her injuries and died in a hospital in Germany.
After the tsunami, Weingard kickstarted a philanthropic project to help coordinate the recovery effort in Thailand, where the waves had completely destroyed 47 villages.
“We set up an organisation called Thai Together, which helped all the different NGOs in the country come together and ensure there was no duplication of efforts. There were hundreds of people coming to help and lots of money being thrown around, so it was important to figure out who needed what.”
The entrepreneur would also go on to transform the house where he and his friends took refuge into a hotel, the Iniala Beach House.
“It’s a very special small hotel with a Michelin Star restaurant. I’m very proud of the place. We made a beautiful thing out of a sad moment,” he said.
The Boxing Day tsunami was not Weingard’s first near-miss with a high-profile tragedy.
Three years earlier, he had narrowly avoided being at the World Trade Centre in New York when it was struck by two planes, after oversleeping and missing a meeting.
Then in 2002, a fight with his girlfriend led to him staying at home instead of going out to a club on the Indonesian island of Bali. A terrorist attack on the island that night killed 202 people, including Weingard’s girlfriend.
“I starting thinking that everything in my life was going to keep going wrong,” he says, comparing himself to Forrest Gump, the fictional movie character who unwittingly finds himself at the epicentre of various world-shaping events.
Since moving to Malta in 2012, Weingard has avoided any further brushes with death.
He has however expanded his chain of hotels with the Iniala Harbour House in Valletta, while also continuing his philanthropic efforts with the Academy of Givers.
Similar to Thai Together, the organisation serves as a platform to streamline corporate donations to charitable causes in Malta.