Original subtitles

[footsteps in water]

[♪ ominous music playing]

-I just love Thailand.

We had breakfast in the hotel restaurant.

It was a gloriously nice day.

No clouds, calm wind, sunny.

I would say that Phuket is, like,

one of the more touristic places in Thailand.

Good food.

Very, very friendly people.

[speaking in foreign language]

[honking]

[overlapping chatter]

[ocean water rushing]

-Yo, buddy, come on, come on.

[thud]

[screams and traffic]

[♪ dramatic music playing]

[♪ theme music playing]

[low-frequency roar]

-We managed to get into the hotel.

It was chaos.

From the balconies,

we saw that just masses of water was just floating in.

I had been working very hard ten years as a police officer.

So, now I think I was, like,

ready to, um, to build a family, and I just met Sarah, um...

...I was really looking very much towards having

a nice holiday.

[rushing water]

My first thought was bit foolish,

but poor owner of this hotel with all this water damage.

Then I heard someone shouting for someone.

[overlapping chatter]

-Jessica. Hey!

-So, I just said to Sarah,

"You stay here, and I will go down and

see if I can help some people."

[speaking in foreign language]

The first floor was filled with water.

-It was overwhelmingly frustrating because,

by the time we had a tsunami travel time

plot to work with,

the tsunami waves had already inundated Thailand.

But we had no reports on the ground.

We were flying blind.

We were not only flying blind,

but we were flying without contact points.

There we go.

The energy released by this earthquake

was so huge that it had to have been slowly building up

for hundreds of years.

An energy equivalent to

23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs.

When the wave gets towards the shore,

the shore bottom gets shallower and shallower.

It changes from a very fast-moving,

deep column of water to a much slower-moving,

very high column of water.

But, on reaching shore,

tsunamis can be very difficult to predict

because the topography of a coastline has huge effects

on the severity of the tsunami.

It could kill relatively few people in one area

but kill thousands a matter of miles away.

[splashing]

[♪ suspenseful music playing]

[overlapping foreign chatter]

[rushing water]

[overlapping chatter]

-We go to Thailand on a yearly family trip,

and, um, it was that time again.

There are seven of us,

my brother and his girlfriend,

my two younger sisters,

and then my mom and my step-dad,

so that makes quite a big family.

The relationship with my mom has always been two extremes,

ups and downs, over the many years.

I was actually in an argument with my mom on the boat.

[overlapping chatter].

[Olivia Soo] We reached the Emerald Cave.

You're supposed to swim in together,

and then it's this beautiful beach on the

other side of the tunnel, and my mom said,

"Maybe I should stay on the boat."

To me, she was just making a fuss.

And I said,

"Mom, come on, you know, we're here.

I mean, like, there,

you know, just jump in.

You know, like,

don't spoil it for everyone, let's just go."

And I convinced her to go.

[overlapping chatter].

We were the last few ones at the end of the rope.

[overlapping chatter].

And I told my mom, like,

"See, right?

I told you it's gonna be nice!"

[overlapping chatter].

The first group of people made it to the beach area.

[overlapping chatter].

But we were still inside the tunnel.

And then something felt off.

I turned around, and I saw this huge wave.

And you just assume it's normal,

and when it hit, it's definitely not normal.

It hit, and you just,

you can't control anything else after that.

It's as if you're going through a washing machine,

just spins and spins, and the rocks,

it was painful because they were so sharp.

I heard my mom,

I heard my mom, she was shouting,

"I don't wanna die!"

She said, "I don't wanna die."

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

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

[overlapping chatter].

I couldn't hold my breath anymore.

And I got hit really bad on my head.

And I opened my eyes,

and there, I saw people, you know, um,

I saw light.

And my mom was there, but she wasn’t talking.

She wasn’t crying.

But I was relieved, like,

oh, thank goodness, you know, she’s alive.

[overlapping chatter].

But then someone was floating up.

My step-father.

He's just not moving and not breathing.

We really did not know whether anyone would come

for us because we were so far out.

[birds chirping]

[Barry Hirshorn] We were experiencing a

once-in-a-lifetime disaster, and it was not over.

Tsunamis are rare,

but they're incredibly destructive.

As the initial wave spreads out from the source,

it separates.

The further you go, the more it spreads out,

and so instead of being one wave,

you'll get a series of waves,

which could last for hours.

And there is an element of horror to that.

It's almost insidious.

It's almost as if it's trying to tempt you to think

that it's over.

But the second, third wave could be the larger wave.

-I had just gotten out of the shower,

and I'm just kind of,

you know, planning what are we gonna do for the day.

My husband, Scott, and I went to Phuket,

and we arrived there Christmas night.

My husband's a scuba diver,

he was gonna go scuba diving.

I had things that I wanted to do,

cooking classes, we had a busy day planned.

But when we open up the door,

we can see, holy smokes, like,

there was water.

So, Scott and I were making our way,

I don't know, maybe 40 yards,

and I didn't know what I was seeing.

You know, people were dealing with, apparently,

a first wave that we hadn't seen.

So we're just kind of standing there, dumbfounded.

And there was a backpacker,

kind of booking away from there really quickly.

And he said, "Get out of here!

There's a tsunami."

And in the back of my mind,

I thought, tsunamis are in, like, Japan and,

you know, on big oceans.

I just didn't, it did not make sense.

And as I’m looking up, I can see, like,

here comes another wave.

And as I’m doing that and I’m popping off

a couple of pictures,

I can see it’s moving really fast.

[screams]

[Frederik Bornesand] We heard screams again,

like terrible screams from the beach.

-It's coming again.

-It's coming again?

-Yeah, it's coming, a new wave.

[Frederik Bornesand] I saw a elderly couple,

so I thought that, oh,

I have to go down there and to help them.

[panic screams]

-That wave... -Oh, my God!

-...Is a good 15, 20 feet tall... Easy.

Get in, get in, get in!

[Frederik Bornesand] This elderly couple were hanging

onto a railing.

I tried to reach them.

And they just disappeared.

[water rushing]

[water rushing]

[water rushing]

Suddenly, I was just pushed into a corner of the hotel.

And then I thought that I will die,

I will die young,

I will not have any children, my time is over.

[wave crashing]

[water rushing]

[Chris Xavier] My husband was closer to the ocean than I was,

and I was trying to yell to him to look out.

And then I heard my husband...

[gasp]

...And he was swallowed up first,

and then here it comes, and I was underwater.

In that time under the water,

it was the longest, shortest time of my life.

I could think through tons of stuff.

I'm thinking about my dog,

the dog's with Dad, oh, that's good.

You're upside down, topsy-turvy,

and it really hurt.

And then I hit the wall.

I can feel my leg,

and it's bending the wrong way around this wall.

I'm pinned, I'm stuck.

The water had me fully enveloped.

And I'm thinking, I can't get out.

And, like, I need to snap this leg off so I can get up,

is what's happening in my head.

And then, all of a sudden,

the force of the water stopped.

And I'm standing up,

there is no other person there but me.

And I know that my husband's died.

You know, he must've died, he's not here.

I start making my way.

I don't even know where I was going.

And then somebody came up and said,

"Are you Chris?"

and I said, "Yes."

And they said, "We have your husband."

And it was just total relief.

And they lay him next to me,

and we just kinda held hands.

And I remember,

like, looking up at the sky and being thankful

that we were alive.

[overlapping chatter].

[Frederik Bornesand] I think what saved me is that

I stayed calm.

I must have found a hole in the glass and was washed away

by the flood.

I was thinking about could I have done anything more to

reach this elderly couple.

Should I have gone after them into the water?

And then I went out to the pool area,

and there I saw a man with his face down,

floating in the water.

-I recognized him as the man that I tried to help just

a few minutes earlier.

I thought I have to help them.

And together we managed to get this man out from the water.

it was very, very heavy.

[overlapping foreign chatter].

And our idea was to bring him up the stairs,

but the stairway was just filled with furniture.

[overlapping chatter].

And when we started to remove furniture,

we heard screams again that a new wave was coming.

[screaming]

We realized that we would have to leave this man

behind to rescue our own lives.

[screams]

[wave crashing]

[water rushing]

[♪ dramatic music playing]

[overlapping chatter]

But we worked really, really fast, and we managed

to get this man up to the second floor,

and it was just, um, just in time.

[overlapping chatter]

-We just did the best we could.

And then he started to wake up,

and I realized that he was alive.

He was starting to ask questions about his wife.

But I didn't know,

so I couldn't say anything about it.

[speaking in foreign language]

[Olivia Soo] My mom is breathing,

but very shallow breathing.

We had to just sit and wait for help.

My brother came over.

I said, "How's Mom?"

He said, um, "Unfortunately, she had her last breath,

and she's no longer breathing."

And I'm like, "What do you mean?

You just told me she's breathing,

she's alive, and I didn't get to say goodbye and...

[sobbing]

And now you're telling me she's dead?"

Her last words, "I don't wanna die."

You know, that stuck with me.

I started feeling this trickle down my face,

and then, when I wiped, I realized it was blood.

And then it just wouldn't stop.

So, I just sat there and tried to put pressure.

And I was, like, telling my brother,

"I'm just so sleepy.

I wanna sleep, I just wanna lie down,

and I just wanna sleep."

You're on a island, you know, and it's in the open sea,

and I was thinking to myself,

how are we gonna get out of here?

You look at the sky, waiting for it to turn dark.

And then we hear people start, you know, like,

[gasp]

So then you're, "Oh, what's everybody getting

all excited about?"

you know, and then you turn around, and it's...

[gasp]

[overlapping foreign chatter]

[speaking in foreign language]

[overlapping foreign chatter]

[overlapping foreign chatter]

[Olivia Soo] Me and my sister we were on a jet-ski.

Going through that tunnel, you know,

and you just close your eyes.

And the moment you exit from the tunnel and out into

the open sea, it's like...

[inhale]

You know, to, you just feel so relieved.

You're out. You're actually out.

My mom and my stepdad died that day.

It was just so unexpected.

I was the one who convinced her to go in the water.

I was the one who was making a fuss.

Like, was it me?

Like, did I cause her to die?

It took me many, many years,

many years to accept the fact that it was not,

it was not my fault.

But now definitely,

you know, being a mom myself, right, um,

I would say if it was me,

I would have also given up whatever it is to

make sure that my kids are fine.

[♪ somber music playing]

[overlapping foreign chatter]

[speaking in foreign language]

[overlapping foreign chatter]

[overlapping foreign chatter]

[Frederik Bornesand] I really wanted to know the fate

of this older man.

Did he survive?

So we went to the hospital, and they showed us his room,

and, and there he was.

He immediately recognized us from the day before.

He asked us a lot about his wife and her fate.

We couldn't tell him.

And afterwards, I heard that she didn't make it.

[Barry Hirshorn] We were in an impossible situation.

We’re trying to understand the scale of the disaster,

but there’s no way to check, no water level gages.

Very frustrating.

And then, we received notification from a group

at Harvard indicating that this earthquake was

a magnitude 8.9.

That's really big, that's huge.

Now, when you get to 8.9,

we're up in the top earthquakes of recorded history.

And it lasted for eight minutes, just the earthquake.

Just the ripping of rock.

Now, to give you some idea of the maximum possible

size of an earthquake,

by the time you get up to something like ten,

the only way to get that much energy and

get that large a magnitude would essentially

be to shear the earth in half.

And now, at 8.9, we're thinking,

oh, boy, okay, maybe this isn’t just a locally dangerous event.

Now we're talking about distant coastlines.

We're talking about just massive damage and fatalities

across the entire Indian Ocean.

[♪ suspenseful music playing]

Captioned by Cotter Media Group.