Caitlin and Roger are "Missing" in Thailand

Wow, it's amazing what a Google News Alert can deliver... I'm not so sure I wanted to know this.

My undergraduate adviser, Caitlin Griffith, and her husband, Roger Yelle, are traveling in Thailand and haven't been heard from since the tsunami ("UA profs in Thailand stir concern" from The Arizona Daily Star).

Two faculty members in the University of Arizona's department of planetary sciences who are on a cycling trip in Thailand have not been heard from since a tsunami hit southern Asia last week, killing an estimated 150,000.[...]

Roger Yelle, a UA professor of planetary sciences, and his wife, Caitlin Griffith, an associate professor of planetary sciences, left Tucson at Christmas, flew to Bangkok and took a bus into rural Thailand. [...] They are scheduled to return Jan. 17, but colleagues would like to hear from them sooner.

"We've confirmed that they were planning to be in the north of Thailand in the interior, far away from the problems, but we've not heard from them," said Joan Weinberg, manager of academic affairs for the department of planetary sciences and the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. I just hope they didn't change their plans at the last minute (I know Caitlin loves the beach and scuba, etc.). I hope they were more fortunate than many over there, and that this fortune sees them home safely.

(I guess, neither of these two planned to be in Darmstadt for the Huygens probe descent on January 14... other LPL faculty (Lunine, Lorenz and Tomasko) will be there.

UPDATE [2005-01-11 08:42]: Yay! Caitlin sends an email:

Yes, indeed all is well. We've been biking the northern hills of Thailand where there are a lot of "tribes" or villages of different ethnicities and cultures. It's pretty remote (no coffee, no flush toilets, no english and no email). In fact, we only found out about the tidal wave several days after it happened.

And they will both be in Darmstadt for the Huygens descent.