All language subtitles for Tsunami.2004.The.Day.the.Wave.Hit.S01E02.1080p.ALL4.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-RAWR_track4_[eng]

This programme contains real life
accounts from the day the wave hit

I woke up to this sound,
a rattling sound.

The glass, the window of the
bungalow was,

it was shaking.

I stepped outside,

and the silence...

..was...

I remember the silence.

No birds, no animals,
nothing, apart from this...

..deep hum.

It was very eerie.

I could see through the trees

where there used to be the ocean.

It was gone.

There were people walking
being completely gobsmacked.

They had no idea,
where did the ocean go?

All of a sudden, I see my parents,
and they are shouting,

"Joel, keep running up. Go up."

SHOUTING

They were shouting at me

because the entire
ocean was coming back

with all of its mass.

Spinning everything in its wake...

SCREAMING

..crushing everything
with its mass.

I remember there were some...

..some screams.

SCREAMING

I remember that very well.

So in 2004,

my ex-wife decided that she was
going to take her two little girls

to the States to see her sister.

And my partner, Nickola, and I

decided that we would go
away at the same time.

We did some research

and then decided that Khao Lak in
Thailand would be the place for us.

When we arrived,
it was just absolutely perfect.

It was blue sky,
white sand and a turquoise sea.

And I just thought, this is...

..this is better than
I actually expected.

Our bungalow was about
50m back from the seafront.

It was just a really peaceful place.

And we kind of laughed about it,

and we laughed about how
lucky we were to be there.

My ex-husband, Simon, and I
had decided very last minute

that I would join him on holiday
for Christmas with the kids,

Lucy, Charlie and Georgia,

in Khao Lak.

It was going to be
a fun beach holiday

somewhere we hadn't been to before.

And our rooms happened
to be on the third level.

Simon was staying in
one room with Charlie,

and I was in another room
with Lucy and Georgia.

In 2004, I was 24 years old.

I was living in Bangladesh
where I was teaching English

with the US Peace Corps,

and I really needed a vacation.

And I'd heard really good things
about southern Thailand,

this little island called
Ko Phi Phi in particular.

When I got down to Phi Phi,

I met some people really quickly,

a bunch of people from
all over the world.

And we were just having
the best time celebrating

that week leading into Christmas.

We got really tight.

We were calling
each other "the family".

What nobody realised
is that at 7:59,

there had been a massive
earthquake in the Indian Ocean.

The earthquake started
on the Sunda Trench,

about 30km underneath the seafloor.

This is where we have
two tectonic plates,

one is being pushed down
underneath the other.

But these plates don't
glide past each other nicely.

Instead, they get stuck.

Eventually that stress is then
released very, very suddenly.

This created a tsunami,

which was now travelling
across the Indian Ocean

at speeds of up to 850km/h.

I woke up in the late
morning on December 26th

because we'd been celebrating
out very late on Christmas.

I just kind of rolled out of bed.

I was just wearing
a sarong that I'd been sleeping in.

And as we're sitting there,

there were some strange noises.

And there was some
people that were shouting

and moving quickly.

And I thought,
"That's kind of weird."

And I looked again,

they were just screaming

and kind of out of
their minds with fear.

We were just putting sun cream on

and getting ready to go to
go back down to the beach.

And we heard some
screams from outside.

SHOUTING

They were quite distant initially,

and then the screams got
louder and there were more,

I heard more people screaming,
and I thought,

"There's something not right."

And there was a distant rumbling,
a distant...

I would describe as like thunder

approaching,
like an approaching storm, almost.

That's what it sounded like.

What struck me was that the
thundering sound, the rumbling sound

was just getting louder and louder
and having no idea of what it was.

I was thinking of maybe a storm,
or a tornado, or I couldn't...

But I didn't know what it was.

And I saw this dark body...

..this just grey mass.

And at that point,
all of us in the guest house

decided to stand up.

And we didn't know
where people were going...

SHOUTING

..we decided to run with them.

VIDEO: Holy crap!

John and I had three
children,

Robert, David and Kate.

They always love the beach.

The morning of Boxing Day,

while they were playing,

the water just receded into the sea.

John and Robert was very curious,

just went out to see.

And then I sensed something
that wasn't quite right.

People start running.

SCREAMING

We heard the water coming.

It was like a, a thunder.

And I said to John and Robert...

.."We need to go."

And we started to run.

And then,

all of a sudden...

SCREAMING

..the water came behind my back.

David cried out
and tried to grab me.

But I was dragged into the water.

The instinct was just to survive.

SHOUTING

A puddle appeared
on the floor, a really,

really slow moving puddle from
the back of the bungalow.

I remember looking at the floor

and looking at this puddle

and being just absolutely baffled,

and then the bungalow exploded.

I remember my feet
leaving the tiled floor,

and then it was dark.
Then I was underneath the water.

I wondered what the noise was,

and then I realised
the noise was me screaming

under the water.

And that's the noise
I'll never, ever forget.

I don't know how long
I was under the water,

but I popped to the surface,

and I tried to call out Nick's name.

And I couldn't because I don't
think had any air in my lungs.

And I managed to get a breath,
and I called out again,

but I couldn't see her.

Every time I slid under...

..every time I slipped under,

it got a little bit easier
to be under the water.

It just felt like
I was falling asleep.

Then I thought of
my girls, Sarah and Emma.

And I told them I loved them,

and I apologised for not going home

and seeing them after Christmas,
and I said goodbye.

I then popped to the surface,

and to this day,

I think it was the thought of them

that got me to the
surface that last time,

and I saw a tree.

The water took me straight
to the top of that tree.

I looked over my
shoulder at one point,

and I saw Nick, and she was,
she was on the surface.

She was about 30m behind me.

The water was rushing back out.

I've no idea what
speed it was going,

but it felt like being in
a rapid, is what it felt like.

I've re-adjusted my hands

and looked over my shoulder
again and she was gone.

Just, she was just
nowhere to be seen.

The exact size and
behaviour of a tsunami

can depend on lots
of different things,

the topography,
the depth of the sea,

and also the orientation
of the coastline.

We ran towards this
two storey building.

And on the second floor,

I could just see
this wave coming in.

This kind of dark...

It almost looked like a forceful
high tide flooding everything.

It was just this dark,

murky mass of water
that just kept pouring in.

We managed to get up on the roof.

There were a lot
of people who were in pain,

people who were bleeding,
people who were screaming.

SHOUTING

There was just
so much noise going on.

It was, it was chaotic.

There were a lot of people who were
separated from their family members.

I saw Georgia and Lucy,
and obviously I was, you know,

very happy that they were,
we were together at least.

I didn't even have time
at that point to stop

and think about where
Simon and Charlie were.

It was just pandemonium and chaos.

There will be a point where

the tsunami reaches maximum
inundation into the land.

And that's essentially when
a tsunami runs out of energy

and can't go any further.

And at this point,
the water stops going inland,

and, actually, it starts receding

and flowing back
out towards the ocean.

We kept moving up,

eventually reaching
the concrete area.

And from there, we could
finally see the entire ocean.

And that was the moment when
my father took his camera out.

I still remember this one
man who was hanging on to,

I think it was a blue
container or something like that,

a plastic container,

to make sure that it was
not sucked under the water.

People struggling,

they were trying to swim.

They were fighting for their lives.

As it as it subsided,
we trudged through this thick,

murky water...

..that had all sorts of
broken glass and shards of metal

and other uncertain things in it.

It was really perilous
to walk through.

VIDEO: Jeez.

We walked towards the beach.

And we didn't go more than a block

before we came across
our first injured person,

and they had been
lacerated in several places.

So we put this person
on top of a door

and started carrying
them up the hill,

out of the path of
any potential future waves

that might be coming through.

I managed to pick myself up.

And then I was
looking around for Robert,

David and Kate.

I was shouting,
calling out their names.

But I didn't hear them.

As the water began to drop,

I opened my eyes
and I was at the bottom of the tree.

I've realised quite quickly
that my right leg

had struck a kind of bamboo
spike that was sticking out

the bottom of the palm tree.

It's hitting my shin,

punctured the skin and
gone up inside my right leg

by a couple of inches.

So it was kind of stuck,
it was kind of impaled.

But I got up and
started walking inland.

Although the water has receded,

the danger is far from over.

In a tsunami,
there are often multiple waves.

And there are more heading
towards the Thai coastline.

I return to the guest house

to try to get some things together,

try to get my glasses
and some clothes.

I see that my room is
totally destroyed.

VIDEO: Shit.

I'm just starting to
get my bearings,

when suddenly I
hear more screaming and yelling.

SHOUTING

And I look, and there's people
running from another wave.

VIDEO: It's coming again. Yeah.
It's coming again? Yeah.

It's coming again.

I didn't hesitate.

I just took off and ran
away from that second wave.

On the roof,

after about an hour or so,

I wasn't starting
to get worried or panic,

but I started to
kind of think, well,

what has happened
to Charlie and Simon?

And then,

Charlie came through
the hatch into the roof.

It was just an incredible feeling
of relief and disbelief.

My name is Charlie Stannard.

I vividly remember that morning,

my dad and I got up,
and he just grabbed me and said,

"Hey, let's go get some food."

I think we were about halfway
through the meal, and, um...

..just suddenly,
everything sort of stopped,

and it was really strange.

Everything, everyone just
stopped what they were doing.

I just remember focusing on the
white line that was on the horizon.

And he grabbed my arm and pulled me,

I remember him just yanking me
and running towards the staircase.

As we were going up those stairs,

I remember just suddenly
being taken out by the water.

SCREAMING

I was separated from
my dad at that point,

and he wasn't able to hold on to me.

I remember waking up in this room.

There was broken furniture
and broken glass everywhere,

and the water was slowly
rising and bringing me with it.

And then I saw my dad's
arm pop underneath the door,

and he brought his
head underneath the door

and just shouting, you know,

"Charlie, Charlie, Charlie," just
shouting.

VIDEO: Charlie!

I remember just looking down at him
and he had a gash on his head,

and you know, he'd lost his glasses,

and he obviously
couldn't...clearly couldn't see me.

But I remember him looking up at me.

And he said to me, he shouted,

"Charlie, you're a very brave boy."

And in that moment that
I made eye contact with him,

the second wave
just slammed into us...

..and that was the
last time I saw him.

I sat on a bench,
and I think it was outside

a little chemist's called
Doctor Chu Sykes,

I remember, and then I think
someone gave me some water.

I pour some water over me,

and then I got put in
the back of a minibus.

I said to the driver,
we need to get up high.

We started to drive
up towards the hills.

And there was a little
200-metre-long path he's driven down

and stopped the minibus.

As I sat there,

I kept looking down to the initial
drop off point, if you, like,

or the rendezvous point
where I had been dropped.

And my eyes were full of
grit and sand and stuff,

but I could see well enough,

and I saw a pink top.

And then I said, "Nick,"

and she turned round
and realised it was me.

And then we just hugged.

We just hugged.

When I saw Steve,
it was just relief.

Just utter relief that he
was OK and that he was alive.

I think we just cried.

We'd lost everything.
All of our physical belongings.

We had nothing.
We had absolutely nothing at all.

And that that didn't really matter.

None of that mattered
because we'd found one another.

I remember, all of a sudden,
I was under the water.

And then by chance,

there was another woman
in the water very near me,

so we swam to one another.

And we introduced one another.

She was Sabine,
and she was from Austria.

And then we found
an empty fridge to hold on to.

I turned to my left and I was sure,

absolutely sure
that I could see Steve

clinging to a tree.

So I started swimming frantically.

But the sea was pushing me back out,

and when I turned around Steve,
I couldn't see Steve anymore,

and I didn't know where I was,

and I turned around
and I could see Sabine,

and she told me to swim back to her.

So I swam back to her,

and we both held on to the fridge

and any debris that we could find,

and decided that we were
going to swim inland.

After waiting
several hours in the jungle,

eventually police
officers came to us,

and they told us that,

"You are going to be
sent to this local..."

it was called police box,
kind of a police station,

"..and you'll be,
you'll be accounted for."

Then we started to kind of descend

from this kind of
mountainside level.

Once we entered the village...

..the death and
the destruction was...

..it was overwhelming.

You know, we could see this
village that was familiar to us,

but you couldn't
recognise it anymore.

It was just mud, and wood,
and concrete, and...

..and full of dead people.

In the early afternoon,
we started walking down

towards the centre of the island.

It's close to where ferry boats
would come

and pick up and drop people off.

About that time,

the first helicopter
from the mainland came in.

And they took a handful
of injured people on board

and promised that more
helicopters would be coming back.

I was taken to one of the temples,

which I believe it was
high up on the ground.

There were a lot
of people there already,

a lot of people crying for help

and some of them look
very badly injured.

There was one paramedic there,

and he tried to
help everyone he could.

I was just hoping that John

and the children would come
to that place as well.

It was a very hard night
in that temple.

I heard,

it sounds like John calling me,

and so instead of looking around,

I looked up and I saw a bright star.

And I said to them,
"Well, are you there already?"

So just wait for me.
I'll find you tomorrow.

So please don't go there yet.

On the morning of the 27th,

at first light,

people often say that things look
better in the cold light of day.

It didn't that morning.

I think we both,
we just felt really numb.

We were worried that...

..we didn't know how we were going
to get out of there.

But I was frightened for,

if anything, for Steve,

because I knew that he needed
hospital treatment on that leg.

I was worried because of infection,

and I really wanted to
get him to hospital.

Eventually,
a doctor looked at my leg.

And there was a young
French guy sitting next to me,

and I asked him if he was OK,

and he said,
"No-one asked what happened."

And he was with his wife
and their six-month-old daughter,

and...

..he told me that they'd
seen the tsunami coming,

they were on the beach and
they'd seen it coming, and they ran,

and they ran as far as they could

until the water caught up with them,

and they stopped by a tree.

And he put his arms around his wife,

and she was holding the baby.

And when the water hit them,
the baby went under first.

The baby disappeared,

and he said his
wife looked into his eyes,

shook her head and let go.

And this...

It's quite rare for me
to be lost for words,

but I didn't know
what to say to him.

Didn't know what to say.

I didn't feel I had a right to
say to him anything.

We had one another.

Yeah, we had one another.

TANNOY: We have a helpline call
centre. Helpline call centre.

193-199.

When I got to the hospital,

there was a board
listing the name of the survivor.

So I looked at the names
and there was one said David,

but they've got no surname.

So I went over to the reception.

Asked, "Was David a man or a boy?"

And, she said, "Oh, a man."

My hopes start fading away.

And then I said where they
normally keep the bodies...

..and they said
there was a temple nearby.

They put a lot of bodies there.

In the temple, I recognised him
straight away.

I said, "David, mummy's here now."

Eventually we got put on a bus

and bussed down to Phuket airport.

We just sat on the bus in silence

because we felt so numb and in
shock, and tired and exhausted.

We just couldn't speak.

And then we arrived
at Phuket airport,

they dropped us off.

And I think we just sat
on the floor and we cried.

Because we didn't
know what else to do.

I think someone then
came over and said,

if you go to this desk, they'll give
you some boarding passes.

And then we got on the plane.

It was quite emotional
leaving because...

..it was the last
time we'd seen Simon,

so, we were leaving him behind.

We didn't know where he was.

We didn't know what happened to him.

And, you know,

I had to keep telling the kids
that he would be fine, he'd be OK.

When we got back to the UK,

I was told that they had
24 hours to get the infection

in my leg under control or
they would take the leg off.

And what was really odd
about that was I didn't care.

I didn't care whether
they took my leg off,

but I think I just shrugged,
was like, "OK, whatever."

Because I was alive.

That that was, that was the thing,

I was alive.

Shall we look in the box?

Is that the watch you had on?
Mm-hm.

I remember using afterwards. Yeah.

In the aftermath,
try to work out what time of day

and night it was and stuff.

Oh, look, that's all cards, look.

To Nick and Steve, wishing
you a full and speedy recovery.

Aw.

I think looking at these now,

the print's faded.

It makes it feel like
a very long time ago. Yeah, it does.

It's 20 years old, but
it doesn't feel like that.

For us, it could have
only been yesterday,

the memories are that strong.

It's quite upsetting.

It's creating distance, I think.

It feels like it's creating...

You OK? Yeah. It's creating
a distance that I don't want,

I don't want to be there,
I don't want it to be.

I don't want it to be old. No.

Too many people didn't
have the luck that we had,

too many people didn't make it.

And I don't want the memory of it,

any of that, any of
those people to fade, really.

Certainly not fade as quickly
as the writing on those cards. No.

That's what's got me with that.

I've become a very religious person
through my experiences

in the tsunami.

In fact, I'm a deacon or a
clergyman in the Catholic Church.

And I credit that...

..through that
experience of suffering.

It sounds weird to say,

but I feel incredibly
grateful that I was able to,

to be there to
help people on that day.

That was a transformative
experience for me.

It took a long time to be
able to tell the children

that the likelihood was that
Simon wasn't going to come home,

because we never found his body.

To this day, we've never found him.

He's one of a few hundred people
who are still missing.

I didn't quite realise
or accept that he was gone.

I was holding on to
this belief that my father

was going to turn up,
like he used to.

He used to go off on
tours and, you know,

do security work, and he'd come
back, and he'd always come back.

I don't think I'll ever get over it.

I suppose there's one part
of me that will never will.

The only thing I do know
is he's still with me,

and he always will be.

He was a good man, and a hero,

and you know he saved my life.

I wouldn't be here without him.

Around the end of January,

I was told that
Robert's body was found.

I just...it was heartbreaking.

And then,
on the 24th of February, 2005,

I was told from the embassy
that John's body was found.

My heart is just breaking every time
I think about that day.

We were in the wrong
place at the wrong time.

I bought a restaurant
in London in order

to keep myself busy,

because every time
that I was on my own,

I can't help thinking of
John and the children.

I just make each day go
past with something to do,

rather than, you know,

sitting in front of their photos.

I don't know how long that
I'll be living in this world,

but I'll make the most
of it while I am still alive.

Not a day has passed
when I don't think about

the people that didn't have that
huge chunk of luck that we did

on Boxing Day 2004.

We now have a much better
early warning system in place,

so that when a future event
does happen,

that information
should be communicated

to local communities much, much
quicker

and much more effectively
than it was in 2004.

Steve wanted to go back to Khao Lak.

He needed to see how
he could help anyone there,

because the Thai people
there lost everything,

you know, families, businesses.

So we started making a plan of how
we could raise some money.

We raised about £10,000.

And on the first
anniversary in December 2005,

we took the money back,

and we distributed it
to all the projects

that we thought needed it most,

to give something back
to the Thai people.

On the first-year anniversary,
I got a tattoo on my back.

That's an outline of the island.

I did that as a memorial for all
those people that died that day.

And it helps me...not to forget.

In May 2006,
he got down on one knee

and I said, "What are you doing?"

And then he said,
"Will you marry me?"

Obviously I said yes.

It just felt,
if we could survive that,

we could survive anything.

We found Sabine, the Austrian woman
that Nick was in the sea with,

and we invited her over to the UK.

And we got married in
a castle in Scotland.

And we partied and we laughed,

and we danced and celebrated life.

Because that's what it is for.

That is what it's for.

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