Original subtitles

-Hello, ladies, what day is it today?

-It's Christmas! -Christmas.

-Alright, can we sing,

"We Wish You a Merry Christmas"?

-I’ll do it.

-Okay, you do it, Danielle,

you're the one with the voice.

-You join in.

♪ I wish you a merry Christmas. ♪

♪ I wish you a Merry Christmas and ♪

♪ a Happy New Year. ♪

-Keep singing.

I'm gonna show everyone where we are for Christmas.

♪ To you and your kin ♪

-It's about 6:30 at night.

It is, this is our balcony.

♪ Good tidings for Christmas and a ♪

♪ Happy New Year. ♪

-Hello. Hello.

-The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was like no other.

None of us had ever seen anything like this before.

It was the largest rupture in history.

-A catastrophe is unfolding in Southern Asia right now.

The strongest earthquake in four decades.

-The tragedy of staggering proportions.

-I can see it's moving really fast, and then,

I heard my husband...

[gasps].

...And he was swallowed up first.

-I heard my mom shouting,

"I don't wanna die."

I said, "Yeah, okay, let's swim."

-I forgot about my fear.

I could not say no to anyone calling for help.

-Yeah, you don't cry,

you're a good girl, you're a strong girl.

-Wonderful people stood up and were counted,

they were able to become a hero for a day.

[♪ theme music playing]

-We arrived in Khao Lak a few days before.

And I remember it being very, very hot,

and we had a, a long walk with these big backpacks.

And, after that long, dusty walk,

getting those bags off and getting in the sea

for the first time was incredible.

Mai's Quiet Zone was lovely.

Very hospitable and welcoming.

It had lots of little huts just set back from the water line.

Tourists loved it.

The morning of 26th December,

we had breakfast with our parents.

I was 15, and my brother Theo was 11.

Mum and Dad, from very early age,

would love to explore.

They'd both done a lot of traveling.

And then, once they were together and had us,

they wanted to instill that in us and,

and get us exploring.

Theo, as the younger brother, would be by my side,

follow me along.

Back then, we were best friends,

and we just did everything together.

We just had a bit of time before we were heading out

on a snorkeling trip just out off the coast.

And it was another glorious day in Thailand.

-At the time, this region was at war.

There was a lot of violence.

There were rebels who wants to have independence and

fight with the Indonesian government.

I'm a cameraman and filmmaker,

and my job is to show what happens in Aceh.

Me and my wife just married for three months.

We still are living at my mom's house.

I was very close with my mom.

-They closed the border,

all foreigners were stopped from coming in.

So, I was told I could stay as long as I stayed within the

confines of where I am here, so that was fine.

Surfing's been a big part of my life,

and surfing in the tropics is as good as it gets.

Oh, it was a beautiful day, but then the earthquake started,

and it was massive.

-People were already on the street,

And I tried to stand, but, but I can't.

I see my mom,

and she said to me that,

"Can you just be with me this time?"

And I just said, "No, I really need to film this,

and I'll be back soon when I finish everything,"

and my mom said that,

"I'll be home when you finish."

-In 2004, I was working at the

Pacific Tsunami Warning Center,

and I was on duty.

I had just laid down for a nap,

and I was sort of on that edge of grogginess,

and the alarm went off.

And I can get some idea right away looking at the pager...

this could be a large earthquake.

We came up with a magnitude of eight,

which is quite large.

And we figured out the location,

which was about 150 miles off Banda Aceh in

the Indian Ocean.

That spiked my adrenaline because an earthquake that

occurs under the ocean actually lifts the ocean bottom.

Imagine a line of 1,000 kilometers of water being

lifted vertically, and then the water,

of course, peaks, and then gravity pulls it down.

When the gravity pulls it down,

the wave separates and spreads out in

two different directions.

And, as you get near a coast,

you're not gonna see what we think of as ocean waves,

I think of it as more like a steamroller of water

just shearing its way inland.

But we're the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center,

so our focus was the Pacific,

which, in this case, is the wrong ocean.

And we sent out essentially a message saying,

"There's no threat of a dangerous tsunami

in the Pacific."

But, in the Indian Ocean, tsunamis are rare,

and so there was just no system at all,

no warning center,

very few water level recording systems.

There was no way to even contact them,

but even if there had been a means to contact them,

there would have been no way to warn them before the wave.

[Dendy Montgomery] We jump to our car,

and I give the camera and tripod to my wife.

I can see so many collapsed building,

and so many injured people.

But I'm thinking that maybe it's over.

I'm not sure.

-After the earthquake,

all of my family went outside the house.

I just got my birthday present from my father,

a Handy-cam,

so everywhere I go,

I keep, shoot everything that I think

interesting for me.

All my extended family came to Banda Aceh to prepare

for my cousin's wedding.

We already prepare everything with the beautiful dress,

so all the family of the bride is together.

I look at all my family faces, they are not feeling panic,

no panic.

[David Lines] It was eerily quiet,

very dense feeling,

and then we heard this, "boom, boom, boom"

coming from the sea.

Now, it sounded like bombs, and my wife goes,

"That's gotta be waves."

And I kind of didn't think it was waves, like,

it didn't sound like waves to me, like, at all,

but she was right.

It was, like, white water,

and it was just full of brown and white, yellow foam.

Stuff in it.

It was quite creepy, and I didn't know what

was gonna happen.

But I knew I had to go.

[honking]

[overlapping chatter]

We got into our car,

so we just floored it and went straight up.

So, as we turned the corner away from the beach,

I look in the side mirror,

and that's when I actually saw the wave.

Get to a hill, and we were completely surrounded by

raging water within seconds of arriving.

[Dendy Montgomery] So, we're filming at the Grand Mosque.

And then suddenly, my wife yells to me.

-And, it's already, like, I'm confusing me a lot.

And then suddenly I can see the first water coming.

And the direction is going to my house.

[♪ suspenseful music playing]

So, I jumped in the jeep.

And then, people started to climb on the back of the Jeep.

I can see two old women in the middle of the street,

confused and scared,

and I can see one of them is blind.

So, I jump out from the car.

I did it.

I jump off of the car and then grab them, like,

really quickly, maybe took one minute,

and then we go.

[Dendy Montgomery] I remember my mom.

I already tell her that I'll be back.

I'm gonna start crying, man.

I'm so sorry.

I just remember that... I really need to save her.

She is the only one I have after my father died.

And, um...

...we keep driving to my house.

[Dendy Montgomery] It's already chaos.

People running in panic.

And I can hear, "Air laut naik!

Air laut naik!"

"The water is coming from the sea!"

[crying]

We finally arrive to the entrance of my village.

Like, everybody try to coming out from the village, like,

really chaos and panic situation.

Do I wait for my mom?

Or keep driving to save so many lives in my Jeep?

So, I stop for a while.

The water is really already close to us.

And suddenly, I see my mom.

I meet her finally.

That's the happiest time of my life, man.

And then we keep driving, but I can feel the water,

and I can see on the mirror of my car it's really high water.

And I just, like, what is that?

[overlapping chatter]

[honking]

[rushing water]

[Cut Putri] My father yelled to us,

"Go to the second floor!

Everybody!"

[speaking in foreign language]

-I saw everything because I want this recording

to be a gift to the world if I die today.

[rushing water]

From the balcony, we saw a lot of people

who were asking for help

[speaking in foreign language]

[Cut Putri] We cannot help them.

It's so far away, and the water is so fast.

[crying]

[speaking in foreign language]

[crying]

-That's why I say, "Please forgive me,

I cannot help you."

There's nothing we can do.

[overlapping foreign chatter]

[sobbing]

[Barry Hirshorn] We're still flying blind,

and at this point,

we can't actually observe the tsunami because

we don't have any water level data.

So, we start looking more closely at

the earthquake source itself, and we thought, okay,

we have a magnitude eight,

and we're trying to reanalyze the magnitude

with more data.

And then, we got a magnitude 8.5.

And, although you think of 8.5 versus eight...

...so what, .5, right?

The earthquake magnitude scale is a logarithmic scale,

and each difference in magnitude is about a 30-time

increase in energy.

So, we called the director at the warning center and

basically said, "Hey Chip, this is significantly larger than we

had thought."

-The world had not seen an earthquake as big as

an 8.5 in 39 years.

And so, we knew there's almost certainly was a pretty

destructive tsunami there in Indonesia.

And at that point,

I decided I had to get back to the center.

We were thinking, well,

what is it that we could do in the absence of

any tsunami warning system?

And we made a few phone calls to try and spread this

information around.

We have phone numbers for key contacts in every country

in the Pacific,

but none of that existed in the Indian Ocean.

And imagine at the far end receiving a call from someone

you don't know, who doesn't speak your language,

and then asking them to evacuate their coasts,

and hoping they just believe you.

[Barry Hirshorn] I believe we reached out to Australia.

My colleague, Stuart Weinstein,

was trying to get through to Indonesia,

but nobody was answering.

We are realizing that this could affect many, many lives,

in the thousands potentially,

and it's kind of a combination of horror and frustration.

And now, there could be a much larger area affected

by the tsunami.

Instead of just affecting the local coastlines,

we could now go 300, 400, 500 kilometers...

...or more.

[playful screams]

[laughter]

[playful screams]

-Theo and I were, were sat on a little veranda

outside our room playing a bit of cards and

listening to some music.

And our dad rushed over to where we're

sat outside and just said,

"Come have a look here, there's something,

the locals are looking at the water line and,

and they're not sure what's going on."

[overlapping kids chatter]

-So Theo and I had followed Mom and Dad to the waterfront.

At this point,

the beach had expanded by hundreds of meters and

the water had withdrawn.

And you could just see blue sea with a little bit of

a wave in it.

It was just water on the horizon that looked unusual.

[overlapping kids chatter]

[Louis Mullan] There were lots of people just lined up

along the front,

people asking each other what was happening.

[crying]

[Louis Mullan] It was a curiosity.

It certainly wasn't a danger.

But very quickly,

that sort of curiosity turned to, to panic.

[screams]

[Louis Mullan] And everyone was rushing

in the other direction, away from the sea.

And Theo and I just joined the rush.

[heavy breathing]

[Louis Mullan] As we were running, we were holding hands.

I do recall Theo saying, "What about Mom and Dad?"

And I kind of, didn't have an answer, really.

I very much felt like I had to step up and be

the older brother.

We didn't know where our parents were, and, yeah,

I needed to be the one that kept him safe and protected him.

-Go! Go!

[screams]

[Louis Mullan] The water then reached us and

knocked us off our feet and was just moving us inland.

Theo and I were holding onto each other.

The water was just rushing around us.

And then, Theo and I couldn't hold onto

each other any longer.

We were pulled apart.

And then, once I resurfaced,

I couldn't see Theo anywhere.

And then someone reached out a hand and pulled me

into the building.

Once I got up into that building,

I remember just throwing up.

I remember the view, the pure carnage of rushing water.

[speaking in foreign language]

-And I was looking out back towards the sea,

but there was no sort of line where the sea finished.

The water was everywhere.

And I just screamed out.

The only thing I could do.

I screamed out for my Mom and Dad and Theo,

and and just heard nothing.

[♪ ominous music playing]

[honking]

[speaking in foreign language]

-I tried to escape from the water.

I remember I have to keep recording everything.

When I arrive in the bridge,

I saw everything was flattened.

I was really shocked.

This is the moment that I realize this is a disaster.

There must be a lot of people dead.

And then, from the top of the bridge,

I see people standing on the top of the debris.

They try to escape.

Some people lived,

but some fell and never came back again.

Gone forever.

It's very traumatic for me because there's nothing

I can do.

But, when the water slow,

I saw someone shouting very loudly asking help.

[shouting in foreign language]

-I saw people try to pull something.

I, I don't want to miss the moments,

so I keep rolling and keep recording it.

[overlapping foreign chatter]

[♪ inspirational music playing]

[overlapping foreign chatter]

[speaking in foreign language]

[Cut Putri] When the tsunami stopped,

I heard my father and my brother looking for something.

I came inside the house.

I said, "What is it?"

[speaking in foreign language]

[Cut Putri] My father say,

"There's somebody yelling for help."

[Cut Putri] I’m the first one who saw the man under stairs

[Ahmadi] Help

[overlapping foreign chatter]

[footsteps in water]

[♪ somber music playing]

[♪ somber music playing]

[speaking in foreign language]

[Cut Putri] A lot of my family don't survive.

They all came to Aceh to attend a wedding,

and suddenly in seconds, they're gone.

We don't even find their body.

[Dendy Montgomery] Everybody lost somebody.

Myself, I lost 50 member of my family.

Sorry.

[speaking in foreign language]

[♪ somber music playing]

[♪ suspenseful music playing]

[Louis Mullan] Once the water had retreated,

I climbed out and went onto the road.

There's a large part of my brain that still thought,

this is just a dream, this is gonna reset itself,

and we'll go back to normal,

and I'll find Mom and Dad and Theo,

and life will be fine.

And at that point,

I remembered my brother, Theo.

I did feel like I should have protected him,

I should have kept him closer.

But, unfortunately,

the sheer power of the water and what happened is

out of your hands.

[speaking in foreign language]

[Louis Mullan] I met this French family that I'd

recognized from the hotel,

so I kind of tagged on to them.

[speaking in foreign language]

[Louis Mullan] Everyone was trying to get to higher ground.

[speaking in foreign language]

[Louis Mullan] And then there was another group coming up.

[overlapping chatter]

[Louis Mullan] And they had a young boy with them.

And then, they came around the corner,

and I recognized immediately that it was Theo.

-Someone asked me, "Do you have a brother?"

And I said, "Yes, yes, his name is Louis."

[Louis Mullan] I remember, like,

seeing him for the first time, and I was, yeah,

just overwhelmed with, with joy...

...and relief and love.

And, as soon as I saw him, I screamed down to him and

then rushed out.

Just couldn’t, couldn’t let go of him.

[Theo Mullan] I just remember being so in shock.

I, I don't think I said an awful lot,

but it was okay 'cause I had Louis.

[overlapping chatter]

[Louis Mullan] Theo and I flew back to the UK

without our parents,

and for a while, they were classed as missing people.

But, after six weeks or so,

their bodies were discovered and identified.

Couldn't process it,

it was shock, it was disbelief.

It was just a very dark period of time.

But then, Theo and I were adopted by a

family in Cornwall,

and for such a terrible event,

losing your parents at that age,

we couldn't have been more fortunate to join the family

that we have afterwards.

Since the tsunami, the relationship with my brother

has become the most important relationship.

He is the most important thing in my life.

[Barry Hirshorn] At this point,

we have seen no water level data.

We have not seen a tsunami on a measuring device, period.

But, about this time, something really helped us.

Chip had a code on his laptop, and he brought it up, and he...

...built created a travel time plot for the Indian Ocean.

This was groundbreaking because now we could

see the tsunami.

And now we got it, the pieces all fit,

and we realized that there are a lot of places not

hit yet that can be warned.

We've gotta do what we can for the people

ahead of the wave.

Captioned by Cotter Media Group.