Original subtitles

It was a picture-postcard perfect day,

sort of like today.

You know, another day in paradise.

It was Boxing Day, and it was a Sunday.

That day, I'd been invited on a boat.

I'd get to take the kids along as well.

They loved to go out on Sundays on a boat.

I noticed the water starting to recede...

..and then it just kept going and kept going.

I really started to panic then...

..cos it was a tsunami.

When you lose someone, you've got your memories.

We're quite a close-knit family,

and we're a family that keeps hold of things like this.

And we were very lucky to find this.

It was actually 85 metres off the shoreline, underwater.

It's a bit tatty and a bit salted.

But all of the contents of his bag are here.

Piers was reading a book at the time -

he was reading The Lovely Bones.

And...

And his eyesight wasn't great, so here's his reading glasses.

His camera, that was part of it as well.

We weren't able to get anything developed

because it's just too perished, sadly.

And then... this shows the date of it all.

A nice Walkman.

He was listening to U2, the album All That You Can't Leave Behind.

And then this, rather sadly, is, erm...

a selection of Christmas cards that he had taken out to Thailand

to open on the Christmas Day morning.

These are just wonderful possessions of a brilliant brother.

And it happened at a very poignant time of the year,

when families were all together and celebrating.

There's a lot of people

that can take themselves right back to that day -

they know where they were, what time it happened.

There's a lot of people my age. They remember it all.

At least 11,000 people dead in South Asia

after the biggest earthquake for 40 years.

Thousands are swept to their deaths

by huge waves triggered by the quake.

Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and the Maldives

have all been badly hit.

MARK AUSTIN: 'It was the day that death came from the sea.'

That's the picture of Piers when he was five days old.

Oh, good lord. Gosh.

Oh, dear little fella.

And that's with Great-Granny when he was christened. Yeah.

Yeah, Great-Gran, yeah. And that's...

I think that's when he was about a year old there.

Yeah, learning to swim. Yeah.

THEY CHUCKLE In a paddling pool.

But I love this one of the boys mucking out in the yard. Look.

SHE LAUGHS

Oh, so they are. With a great big yard scraper.

A lot of people said to us, "They're a bit like twins."

They got on as close as brothers could be. Yeah.

And it was great.

So, they would always be scheming to do stuff.

Piers had gone out to meet Luke,

and they were gonna spend Christmas on Phi Phi.

I remember giving him a hug and saying, you know,

"See you on the 31st. Have a good time."

The phone went Christmas Day, and it was Piers,

and he said, "Hi, Mum!" He said, "Happy Christmas."

"I hope everything's OK at the farm."

He said, "Mum, you're gonna love Phi Phi. It's paradise.

"You're gonna love it."

And I said, "Oh, that's brilliant, can't wait,"

sort of thing, you know, and just chatting generally.

Put the phone done, and, of course, the next thing,

I wake up to the news on Boxing morning, seven o'clock.

WOMAN: 'A violent earthquake

'has triggered devastating tidal waves in the Indian Ocean.

'Thousands of people have been killed across a huge area.'

And that's when my heart fell, you know.

"Oh, my gosh, the boys are there."

In my heart, I knew that they might be in trouble.

I was 22 years old in 2004 and had been living on the Gold Coast.

The lifestyle at the time totally revolved around surfing.

You know, what's going on with the surf,

and when's the next swell coming. Yeah, that was our thing.

I had always dreamed in high school

of going travelling and having adventures.

I got to that ripe old age of 22,

and I saved enough money so boarded a flight to Phuket.

The Aman resorts are this, like, premium, boutique resort.

I wasn't getting paid,

but I was very happy, you know, working for free,

and everything was covered, and I ate the same food

as the guests that were paying 1,000 US a night 20 years ago.

And did all the same activities,

so I was, like, just feeling very satisfied.

WOMAN: Hey, look, there's Richie! G'day.

Hey, Richie! RICHIE CHUCKLES

I guess you could say it wasn't hard work,

sitting on the same beaches where the guests are.

I would take them skiing, water skiing,

sometimes snorkelling and stuff like that, around the point.

If they wanted to do any sort of, like, boat tour

or something like that.

And also, there's the lifeguard tower there,

and, you know, we were responsible, while you were on the beach,

for looking after the safety of the guests as well.

It was Boxing Day, and it was a Sunday.

I got up in the morning, had a shower.

And while I was in the shower, Carolyn was in bed,

and she said, "Did you feel that?"

And I said, "What?" And she said, "That was an earthquake,"

she shouted from the bedroom.

And I said, "Oh, I didn't feel it."

I must've had my head underwater or whatever.

And she said, "No, that was a real earthquake,

"that was a serious earthquake!"

I hadn't heard of any earthquakes in the past anywhere around here.

So when Carolyn said, "That was an earthquake,"

I thought, maybe, you know... a truck went past or something.

My name is Widari.

I live in a village in Banda Aceh...

..very close to the beach.

Around 2004, I was a housewife,

staying at home a lot with my family.

My father, my mother, my sister and two brothers, and my husband.

It was Sunday, 7:58 here.

I felt a very big shake.

I said to my husband, "Wake up. It's an earthquake".

And then the second earthquake happened.

COMMOTION

It was bigger than the first one.

We have a computer shop at that time.

So my husband decide that he need to see our computer shop.

So I said, "Just go, see it. We have to make sure."

Probably five minutes after he left,

we saw people running.

That day, I'd been invited by a very close, personal friend

on a boat that I'd built him,

and he'd invited me and three of the kids to come with him and his wife

to drop them off at the Sheraton in Krabi.

It was more fun than work that day for sure,

and get to take the kids along as well.

They loved to go out on Sundays on a boat.

Tim, he was 12, Bronty was ten, and Meg was five.

It was a beautiful day, hardly any clouds in the sky.

ENGINE STARTS

Five knots of breeze from the north.

Pretty warm. Pretty hot, actually.

OK, how you doing?

Dead flat, calm seas. Dead calm.

I arrived here in 1987.

I got employed to be the boat guy at Amanpuri,

which is a little high-end hotel

that was very famous in the late '80s, early '90s

as being the best hotel in the world.

Lots of movie stars and rock stars and lots of glamour.

I ran all of the boats for them,

so I had the best job in the world, really.

It just looked like every other day.

You know, blue skies, the water's totally calm.

And everything is just looking perfect.

And I'm up there in the tower, you know, just looking out,

and notice the water starting to recede,

and, in my mind, I thought, "Oh, a little bit of a wave here."

And then it kept going,

and one of the boats is on the dry sand,

which straight away makes it stuck.

And it kept going, and I was like,

"Oh, wow, this is gonna be, like, a surfable wave."

But still, I couldn't see anything out on the horizon.

And then it just kept going and kept going.

And it went past the second boat.

I just thought, "This thing is gonna be bigger than a palm tree."

I mean, I still get goosebumps with it now.

I just knew that there was a massive wave coming.

When we arrived here in 2004,

we'd already been travelling for quite a few years.

Our parents just said, "We've had enough,

"let's go and explore the world,

"and why can't we do that with a family?"

I'm one of six kids.

The youngest ones were with us, permanently travelling.

My older sisters would come out and visit,

whether it was in India, whether it was in Sri Lanka.

So it was just myself, my parents, Sandra and Kevin,

and then my younger brother Paul, Mattie and Rosie.

An alternative way of bringing up kids,

but we've ended up being a very close family unit.

They're quite unique buildings, so you don't...

You don't forget them.

I saw it as soon as I was walking in round the corner.

I knew exactly where we were.

And the blue and white. It was blue and white back then as well.

So, just, yeah, it's quite distinctive,

the shape of the building.

And that was the one my parents were in.

Down there.

And I was just behind that building there.

It's obviously built back up over the last 20 years or so,

but this is exactly how it was before, and the beach.

That was probably one of the first times I'd tried surfing,

and my dad was trying to surf as well.

Not very well, but he gave it a shot, like anything.

The irony was I do remember my mum actually joking to all of us that,

"The only thing that will your dad in is a tidal wave."

Just normal, innocent family fun that everyone has.

And then, obviously, it turned into complete destruction

that literally shook the world.

I just knew that there was a massive wave coming...

..and so I jumped straight off the tower.

I ran straight over to the first guests and just said,

"Hey, look, you've gotta get off the beach right now,

"you've gotta go up to higher ground."

At this point, I'm trembling

cos the sea is still going further out...

..much past the second boat, and I'm just thinking, "Oh, my God."

I ran back to the watch tower and got my phone,

and at that time, I had this little old-style Nokia phone where,

if you wanna type, you know, if you wanna type B or C,

you're tapping the button three times for that one and then...

And I was like, "God, what am I doing? Just call."

RINGING TONE

We were heading out of the little channel,

and I got a phone call

from Richie, Manfred Neustifter, who was working down on the beach.

And he's like, "What? What? What's going on?

"Like, what can you see?"

And I said, "Well... Oh, it's the strangest thing.

"The tide has gone, you know, all the way out.

"The whole bay is getting sucked dry right now."

And he said, "The swim platform's high and dry."

I said, "Has the swim platform come off its mooring

"and it's on the beach and high and dry?"

He said, "No, no, no.

"The water's gone out, like, 600 metres."

And I said, "What?"

For whatever reason, I wasn't able to put two and two together

till a few minutes later.

You know, the process of,

"Oh, Carolyn had said there was an earthquake."

And then it hit me.

And that's when I really started to panic then,

because it was a tsunami.

And I said, "Get everybody off the fucking beach."

And I'm like, "Yeah, that's why I'm calling.

"Nobody will react, no-one will listen to me."

He just said, "Use force if necessary."

Drag them by the hair if you have to.

And he said, "You'd better not be wrong about this."

It's, like, one of the last things he said when he hung up the phone,

and I said, "All right, well, call me back."

Patcharee cafe here is sort of on the seafront.

You're one street back from the beach.

We arrived here on Boxing Day morning at about 9am,

and the plan was that we were going to leave Phi Phi.

We'd done four days here, had a brilliant time,

but we were going to go and chill out a bit.

My brother, Piers, was three years older than me.

I was 30 at the time, he was 33.

My good friend Ben was out with us

and my girlfriend at the time, Sophie.

And then we were with a guy called Nick,

who'd joined us the day before.

Sophie and I had gone to bed relatively early.

I think Ben and Nick had been out till the early hours,

and Piers had stayed out the longest,

so he was probably the most tired of all of us.

And so on that Boxing Day morning, we were all a bit sleepy.

The first thing that we knew that something wasn't quite right

was that people came running in from the entrance here,

screaming and just knocking people and tables and chairs over.

And it all happened very, very quickly.

You don't really have a chance to process.

At first, I thought there was maybe someone out in the street

with a knife, or a fight had broken out.

But it was more vivid than that,

and there was much more intention in their purpose

in getting away from it.

So instinct takes over, and you follow.

'For me, there wasn't any fear. It was just all too quick.'

SCREAMING

So, having come through the bottleneck of the cafe,

we reached this point where we fully expected to sort of regroup

and gather, but actually, it was chaos.

There were people running in all directions.

Nick asked a guy who was stood here, he said, "What's going on?"

and the guy said, "Water come, water come,"

and that's when it changed.

This was not as built-up as it was.

But for the first time, we could actually see the horizon

and could see what was coming towards us.

We saw people running.

At first, I only saw one person.

He said, "The water is going up."

"He must crazy." That's what I thought.

And then, more people.

All of them were scared.

SCREAMING

They are screaming...

..like they just see a ghost or something.

And then, suddenly, my brother, he just ran with the people.

I want to chase him,

but then my father said, "No, we just go to the second floor."

I felt that there's nothing else to do but accept whatever happen next.

We were still in the river.

Do we make a decision to go out to sea or go back

and get in a car and... get back home?

And my friend asked me, "So, what do we do?"

He said, "Let's go back." I said, "No, let's go out."

Cos I did know enough about waves at the time

to know that you're safest from waves in deep water.

It's a pulse in deep water. Waves only crash on the beaches.

I just knew we had to be in deep, deep water.

Everyone's looking at you as the master and commander,

and if you panic, everyone panics.

But it's pretty hard not to panic.

I was making a call to put all our lives at risk.

If that was the wrong decision, you know,

like, everyone would be killed.

We had like, by that time, maybe a few minutes.

And so we started calling everybody we knew

who was on the west coast of Phuket

and telling them to get all their guests off the beach.

"A tidal wave's gonna hit.

"Don't know how big it's gonna be, but it's coming."

And then hang up, call the next one. Hang up, call the next one.

Many of them were like, "What, are you kidding?

"Bullshit. It's not April Fool's Day," you know?

And we were like, "No, I'm as serious as a heart attack, mate."

By this time, more people had come down onto the beach,

people had... It was just like a magnet.

I ran straight over to our beach boys first and said,

"Khun Bill said everybody off the beach right now, everybody."

Then they all sprung into action.

By this time, somebody had started to walk out over the reef.

He'd got right the way out, and he's standing on exposed rock.

I didn't know that I'd be able to make it down there in time.

In my mind, that massive wave could come at any moment.

I used to love sprinting in school, and I'm running for my life.

You know, I'm telling him, "We gotta go back, we gotta go back,

"there's a big wave coming right now."

And then I just grabbed him under the arm and said,

"Fucking run!" You know, just right in his face.

And as we're running as fast as we could run,

the water was keeping up with us.

I just thought we were just gonna be clobbered at any moment.

As we get up the stairs,

the first wave, it was just like a big surge...

..and I just couldn't believe it.

I'm still waiting for this massive wave...

..the thing that drew all of that water out,

to come back in, and that surge wasn't it.

Tsunamis are relatively common here in the Pacific,

averaging eight a year over the last century.

They're largely generated by underwater volcanoes

and earthquakes.

The reason you don't hear much about them

is that there's a sophisticated warning system throughout the ocean.

The main centres are in Alaska, Washington State,

California and here in Hawaii,

and there are many others scattered throughout the ocean.

Contrast that with the Indian Ocean.

Tsunamis here are a lot less common,

and that's why only last year, governments bordering the ocean

decided not to put an expensive warning system in place.

NADUNI: If I was not lucky,

this train would have been my coffin.

I mean, it has been a coffin for a lot of people, actually.

There must be...

..hundreds of stories...

..buried in this train compartment.

Yeah.

Sisterhood is a very special kind of bond.

That bond that comes from a sister...

..cannot be replaced by any friendship.

My sister's name is Hiruni.

In 2004, I was 14 years old,

and she was seven years old.

Even though we had a seven years gap,

we were so close.

All the birthdays we spent together, all the parties we had together.

Those kind of memories are very cherishful.

For grade-two school children, they have a project to go by train

and write about the train ride.

So we decided to go by train on 26th of December, 2004.

My mother, father, myself and my younger sister.

We were so excited.

It was her first train journey.

Little by little, when the train was passing the stations,

the train got packed with a lot of people.

People are travelling

to meet their relatives after the Christmas period.

They were standing, not only seated.

We were able to see the sea.

Suddenly, the train stopped just next to a... a school.

My father saw that sea is coming,

but he took it as a very natural thing.

"See, look at the sea coming in a normal wave.

"That's how it happens some days," he was telling us.

But when it come, it was very strong.

PANICKED CHATTER

Very muddy water.

It just went through the train.

WATER ROARS

Everyone was scared.

CAROLYN O'LEARY: Merry Christmas, Meg.

Ooh! Thank you.

EXCITED CLAMOUR

Look, you got Santa's Rockin'!, The Wiggles!

Mum, can we open the ones that are underneath the Christmas tree?

Oh, look, Meg. What is it?

It's Garfield. Garfield?

I was 43, you know.

Had a great life up till then.

But the kids, you know,

they would come out on the boat with you.

So if anything happened, then it would be on me.

Up ahead here is the sand bar

that comes off the north-eastern corner of Koh Yao Yai.

So that's where I had the boat just standing by, engines running.

At about five past ten, you could see the wave

as a very, very thin white line above the sand bar.

And as it approached,

the line got thicker and thicker and thicker.

Whole schools of birds were on the front of it,

like, getting a lift.

Like a dolphin on the front of a bow wave or something like that.

And as it started to break on the other side of the sand bar...

CRASHING

..we could see how big it was.

It spewed up across and over it

and pulled out about a half a dozen coconut trees...

CRASHING

..like they're candles out of a cake.

You know? MIMICS THUDDING

The power to pick them up and throw them into the water,

you know, that's something you never forget.

PANICKED CHATTER

I remember the room was full, full with people.

The house was shaking.

RUMBLING

I actually wanted to say sorry to my father and my mum.

So, it's a kind of habit here, er,

when we feel that we don't have much time any more.

RUMBLING INTENSIFIES

My sister said, "Look, the water is coming. There's water."

And then I look at the window.

I saw a group of birds flying

through that window there.

And then I saw the wave.

We were trapped, we were trapped in the house.

There's nothing we can do.

I heard a big crack sound.

The floor went like this. From like this to like this.

And then suddenly, we were in the whirlpool.

Palm trees were being bent over and snapping.

The horizon was just boiling in front of us.

You know, our party was being segregated and bumped into,

and Sophie was sort of being taken off down here.

We managed to get Sophie back as a five,

and we all held hands together.

And we knew that the danger was coming from there,

so it's that point we then took a 90-degree turn

and made our way down this road here.

SCREAMING

You know, we were moving very, very quickly

but I was aware that what was coming was behind us because of the noise.

We could hear it, and by the time we'd run to this point,

I could sense it was right behind us.

It was here that I said,

"We just need to get off the ground."

And there were some plastic petrol containers just on the floor,

so I used one of those as a leg up

and then got onto the building, pulled myself up.

Piers, Ben and Sophie came round to the side here.

So, I was on the roof trying to pull her up,

and Piers was beneath, trying to sort of hoist her up.

The wave had come through all the debris.

These avenues and these pathways

were like sort of supercharged canals.

All the moving debris had arrived and sort of pinned her to the wall.

So I was pulling at her,

but the water was just going up over her body.

And in the end, I was just pulling at her arms that were underwater.

And at that point, I shouted to her

to try and go down because I couldn't get her up.

And then she popped up.

I got Sophie onto this roof here.

And it was only when we got on the roof

that I could see Ben was still at water level.

Nick had gone a different way, and he was on a different route.

And it was only when we sat on the top,

I realised that Piers wasn't with us.

By that point, everyone could see that that was deadly, you know.

If you're caught up in that,

it's Russian roulette whether you're coming up.

Around the headland,

I actually lived with two of Bill's employees.

They were like my Thai mum and dad.

I was like... really wanted to get around there

and try and make sure that they were OK.

I jumped on my bike and started to go around the headland.

And everybody's coming the other direction.

And I mean, there's, like, you know,

birds, lizards, chickens, women with babies,

people crying, people limping.

Everything was headed up to higher ground.

And then I got around to this area

where it had been sort of cordoned off.

And I jumped off my bike,

and I took no more than, you know,

a few steps towards where I wanted to get

and see if I could, like, get through.

And then you just hear the cracking...

..of the, er...

You just hear the... CLEARS THROAT

SNIFFS, CLEARS THROAT

You hear the cracking of the palm trees.

WAVE ROARS, CRACKING

The second wave had started just coming through,

just crushing, bringing everything with it

and just crushing as it came through.

And you can just hear, like,

all the animals again just screeching.

WATER ROARS, SCREECHING

I just jumped on my bike and...

..went straight back around, er, up to the safety of Amanpuri.

WOMAN: No! Go! Get out.

Go now. Quick! Go.

SCREAMING

TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH:

MIMICS REVVING

CREAKING

I can remember a lot of people started to scream...

SCREAMING

..saying that there is a big wave is coming.

I saw the height of the wave.

It was huge...

..the height of a coconut tree.

And I can remember there was a rack.

So my mum kept my sister on top of the rack.

It is the most highest place.

More than the sound of the wave,

I heard the screaming of the people who were inside the train.

They were all praying.

"Save us, save us."

And then that wave came through.

The compartment, it was, like, vibrating.

And it just turned like this.

And then within a second, we just turned like that.

And then we were all under the water.

The whole ocean was up.

And there were whirlpools everywhere.

Everywhere on the ocean top was whirlpools.

It felt like a ping-pong ball on the top of a washing machine

but with the powerful under-churnings going on underneath.

We were definitely at the mercy of the conditions.

Bizarre.

Might live, might die, don't know.

Yeah, I-I prayed. I prayed.

I don't know what to, but...

certainly asked if, you know...

Throw me a bone here, Hughie.

ROB: We didn't have a chance to think about it.

Minutes later, it could've been seconds,

it's all a blur when you're in that situation.

It was right upon us.

MAN: It's coming again! It's coming again!

MAN: It's a big one. Stand up. Oh, my God!

It was a brick wall at 200 miles an hour.

The power of it, you know, is like nothing you can imagine.

I often remember seeing that scene in Titanic

where they're kind of being submerged underwater,

and they're trying to get out.

That's literally what the room's like.

And then Paul was fighting to get there as well,

and I was lucky enough to be able to grab him

and hold onto him to pull him out.

I managed to scour off onto, like, a roof,

kind of like that high up there.

And before we knew it, two minutes later,

the water came in,

and it took out the wall we were stood on.

And I was holding onto just literally an iron rod

that was running across the building

and trying to pull my brother up out of the water

and get him up onto the roof.

You don't wanna lose your brother,

so you'll just try and fight your way through it.

I couldn't breathe any more, so then I knew that...

..my time was here.

So I said to God, "I'll accept it, I'll accept it.

"But if you give me one more chance...

"..I'll be better."

And then suddenly...

..I came up of the water.

I realised that I was in the sea.

I couldn't swim at that time, and I still cannot swim right now.

I was helpless.

I felt that it's, like, the end of the world.

TRANSLATION:

I was 17 when I was here.

You know, I was barely an adult,

but at the time, all I kept trying to do was just go,

"Oh, what would my dad do now? What would my dad do now?"

My brother Mattie was 11.

When I saw Mattie, he was in a tree.

And I could see a cut on his head.

He wasn't in a good place.

I needed to just get across to him and see if I could help him.

The water was horrible.

All the dirt, all the mud, glass,

electrical cables everywhere in the water. There was all sorts.

Then the water just started to fall back out.

Trying to swim against the tsunami...

..it's a battle, erm, to say the least.

But it was that or, you know, goodbye.

And you're just thinking, "How am I gonna get out of this?"

WIDARI: Hours after that,

God actually sent an angel in a small boat.

He had a big heart to help me.

My hero.

His name is Hamid. He was a fisherman.

At that time, he had a wife and a son.

So he and a group of fishermen with small boats,

they were looking for their family.

And I remember it was Hamid who said,

"It's better we save these people,

"and then we can continue to look for our family in the land."

He threw a rope at me,

so I catch the rope, and then he pulled me.

It was his decision then that saved me.

MAN: Did he find his family?

No. Sadly, no.

We were all under the water.

A lot of dead bodies.

I saw one dead body of a little child.

She was wearing a little frock and, er...

her dead body was just moving closer to me.

That feeling was terrifying.

I actually thought that the next minute, I will die,

the next second, I will die.

Suddenly, I heard someone is calling my name.

MUFFLED SPEECH

My father is at top of the train.

He put some wooden pole through the window.

I just grab it, and he took me up.

When I got out, I just asked the question...

.."Where is my sister?"

We had to get off the roof because it was so hot.

And the water had receded at that point,

so that gave us a degree of safety, I suppose.

We had one mission, and that was to get to higher ground.

And when we got up in the hills, people just shut down.

Nick and Sophie almost went into standby mode.

Whereas I felt my thought processes were different

because Piers was missing, and I had a job to do.

I had to try to find him.

I still had my mobile phone in my pocket,

and at that point, I was able to get a text through to my dad.

And it just said, "Four of us OK, we've lost P."

We had a text from Luke saying, "We've lost Piers."

So "lost" meant, you know, he's gone missing or died.

We-We didn't... We didn't know.

I just screamed. I just thought, "Oh, my God."

And I just didn't wanna stay in the house.

I just wanted to get outside,

so I went and sat up by the pond.

We've got a seat up there.

And just prayed, and I thought, you know,

"Just bring them back, just bring them back."

I always had hope. I had to have hope.

Piers was a triathlete, he was a strong swimmer.

I thought he had a pretty good chance.

My parents emailed me a photograph,

and we made some very crude, mock posters.

A picture of Piers, his details, his height, weight.

So I started plastering Piers' posters around.

And it sort of set a trend

because other people started to do it, you know,

and suddenly, there were lots of missing person posters around.

The Thais did something really very clever.

They opened up online channels

where people could register friends they knew who were missing,

and that was worldwide.

So I had friends in the UK who were scanning these lists.

And we got a phone call from a friend saying,

"There's this guy,

"he's checked into one of the makeshift hospitals

"in the hotel in Krabi.

"Called Piuz Simmows...

"..spelt P-I-U-Z S-I-M-M-O-W-S.

"He's 33, and he's from England."

Now, things are phonetic in Thai. It's spelt as they sound.

So we just thought, "That's... That's P."

"That's-That's Piers."

You know, he's all right, and he'll get in contact with us.

And we waited, and we waited.

And the call didn't ever come.

CELIA: We had hoped...

Because we'd had these two cases, we thought it was Piers.

That gave us hope, didn't it? Mm.

And then when they said, "No, it's not,"

then you sort of go down, "Oh, no," you know.

Then it goes up again, and it goes down again.

NEWSREADER: The quake, measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale,

struck just off Indonesia's north-western tip.

Just had to rely on watching the news all the time.

The quake triggered a giant wave of water

which sped across thousands of miles of the Indian Ocean.

Yeah, it was...

Yeah, it was quite horrendous, really.

Coastal villages, paradise islands

and tropical beaches turn into hell on earth.

ROB: Rosie was only eight at the time.

There was hours and hours of not finding her,

so there was an element of fear that she had gone.

And you're yelling and yelling at the top of your voice, and you...

..just can't comprehend the carnage we were in.

I then eventually came back here in the afternoon

and found my little sister.

And I remember breaking through a door.

It was all smashed up, all the glass,

and it was just the wooden frame.

She literally run at me and just jumped up in the air

and literally legs round, arms round,

just hugged me and wouldn't let go.

It's still one of the most incredible moments ever in life.

For me, obviously I didn't wanna leave my parents behind.

I'd got my siblings to safety,

and I then went back looking for them, going,

"They've gotta be out there somewhere."

And I was just, you know,

hoping that it was a case of they would pop up somewhere

and we'd all be going home together.

I ended up finding out that my dad had passed,

which obviously I didn't wanna believe.

Then it was a case of, "Well, OK, what about my mum?

"I don't wanna leave her out here alone."

We saw a bus, and we thought we saw her on it.

And Paul and I were just chasing this bus, going,

"We're not letting it get away."

And then we got on it...

..and then realised she wasn't on there.

Whether it was, I don't know,

some kind of hallucination-type thing.

That was one of the hardest calls in life,

having to decide whether you push on to get home

and get your siblings to safety,

or... do you continue to try and find your mum?

But ultimately, I knew that they would want me to get them home.

When we arrived in Sri Lanka, we flew into Colombo,

and then from there,

we worked all the way down the coast.

The trip we did was a couple of hundred miles.

So, after the tsunami,

to actually then go back up was a huge journey because...

..the roads were destroyed.

It was carnage everywhere.

We were literally in the swim shorts that we woke up in.

No shoes, no T-shirts.

And they kept asking, "Where are Mum and Dad?"

And I had to just keep saying they'll meet us back in the UK.

MAN PRAYS IN ARABIC

WIDARI: I went to the big mosque

because the mosque is the centre of when you want to find your family.

There were bodies as well in the mosque.

Sitting, and a lot of people are comforting each other.

And then I saw people with family.

They are not alone. Right?

EXHALES

TEARFULLY: And then I was thinking...

..I was alone.

MOTORBIKE PUTTERS

I wanna be with my family.

And then after I said that to myself,

suddenly my husband passed me on a motorcycle.

And just after I... I thought that I was alone.

And then he came.

And then I ask him, "What about my mum, my dad?

"My sister, my brothers?"

And he said, "No."

MARK AUSTIN: It's from the air

that the scale of this disaster is most apparent.

The wave washed away everything in its path.

Houses were thrown like matchsticks, trains tossed like toys.

People, thousands of them, were washed out to sea.

Exactly how many may never be known.

My father started to look around the compartment,

inside the compartment.

My father went to check whether my sister is under the train.

We couldn't find any dead body of my sister.

Then my father started pasting posters all around the place.

One or two days later only, we got the call from Mr Sirithunga.

TRANSLATION FROM SINHALESE:

REPORTER: And still they come to the tsunami crisis centre in Phuket

to identify from photographs relatives and friends they've lost.

I'd had a few requests from media channels saying,

"Can we interview you?" And I just said, "No, too busy."

But then I thought, "Gosh, if Piers is alive,

"but he... he doesn't remember who he is,

"actually, we need to get his picture out,

"you know, to as many people as they can."

REPORTER: Luke Simon from Somerset was separated from his brother

on Phi Phi Beach.

Maybe, just maybe, someone will recognise Piers' face.

And the last thing I saw of him, he was between a wall and a...

and a building, a concrete building, which was about four feet wide.

And then that filled up with water quite quickly,

so I have reason to believe that he just got swept away somewhere.

LUKE, PRESENT DAY: And then the Thai authorities

started to bring bodies from Phi Phi,

and they started to photograph them.

So those boards then actually became boards

where they photographed the deceased.

And bodies that had been in water for three or four days

don't look like humans.

They look like swollen pigs.

And because I knew what Piers was wearing,

if that body wasn't wearing a red T-shirt or blue shorts,

you just didn't look at it.

And then I got a call from my friend Randall, who was on Koh Lanta.

REPORTER: Yesterday, we told you of the search

for Piers Simon from Somerset.

Today, his brother Luke heard

that one of the bodies at the Krabi morgue

was wearing similar shorts.

He said...

.."There's a body that's come in, body 199.

"It's wearing the shorts

"that I think you've described Piers as wearing."

At the moment, we can't distinguish

any of Piers' sort of bodily features on this...

on this body in the morgue,

so I have to go down and double-check.

LUKE, PRESENT DAY: We went to this Chinese temple,

which had now become a makeshift morgue.

We looked at body 1199, it was clearly a Thai person.

The shorts were navy blue, not sky blue.

So I had to phone home to Mum and Dad,

and I explained that body 199 wasn't Piers.

I could hear there was a crowd in the kitchen.

They all cheered, and it was sort of euphoric.

And then we settled down to watch a slideshow

of dead bodies, you know, on a computer.

And I must've done that four or five times over a couple of days,

looking at these bodies of various states.

And then body 348 came up,

and there was a photograph of a red Oakley T-shirt.

The T-shirt Piers had bought in Bangkok

before we'd come to the island.

And I just said, "That's Piers."

There was an Israeli forensic team who then took the dental records.

So I said, "Can we go and identify the body?"

And the Israeli lady wouldn't let me do it.

And I got a bit cross, and I said, "Look, I want to see my brother",

and she was adamant.

Piers' body was about four feet off the floor.

He was just so... bloated with water.

She said, "Luke, this doesn't need to be the last image

"that you have of your brother."

I then had to make that call back home.

And luckily, my dad picked up the phone.

And I just said, "Dad, we've found Piers."

When Luke rang up and said, "Mum, we've found him,

"and the next thing is now

"we've got to decide what we're going to do."

And he said, "I'm gonna bring him back, Mum."

And, of course, that was lovely, wasn't it? Mm.

Because that's really what we wanted.

TV: And relatively quickly, because earthquake waves travel...

Oh, what a day! Boxing Day, tidal wave day.

Daddy! BILL: How are you?

Look what I've got!

Are you OK from the tidal wave today?

Yeah. But look what I've got!

Tim, you OK from the tidal wave today, mate?

Dad, look what I...

In the afternoon and the days ahead,

we realised we really did dodge a bullet.

BILL: Get it, get it. But just be careful, hm?

This is the damage from the tsunami...

..in one town.

Back of our house and at my office, you know, there were dead bodies,

there were people walking around shouting, "It's the end of times."

BILL ON VIDEO: Look at this bike wrapped around the tree.

Look at how much force must've been there.

How can a person survive that?

What's been seen can never be unseen.

OFF-CAMERA: Hey, Richie!

The smell of death everywhere.

TV: Well, let's get an update on the situation

on the Thai island of Phuket.

The journalist Colin Hillis is there.

Colin, welcome to BBC World. Tell us what you know.

COLIN: Darkness has now fallen over Phuket...

We're getting the...

the constant images of what had really gone on that day.

BILL: When the tsunami hit the... the tidal wave.

We were on a boat in the middle of the ocean

experiencing it all and jumping the waves.

It was incredible, huh?

Meg, were you on board that boat, too? Huh?

Were you in the big ocean today on this big tsunami waves? Yeah.

Were you scared? Yeah.

Who was the captain?

You.

I didn't feel good about it at all.

At that time, I thought, "Well... you know,

"here I am, telling these stories."

"Oh, you were out at sea,

"and you jumped the tsunami and all of that..." Well, yeah, but...

You know, people are dead, their families are dead.

It was a lot of people's worst day they ever had

and the worst day that they'll ever have.

And there's some peacock crowing,

"Oh, look, I saved a bunch of people."

You feel like a fraud.

Survivor's guilt, I think they call it, something like that.

I was numb.

It was a low-grade depression.

TRANSLATION:

So...

This was our bathroom,

and, er, we still have her toothbrush in our washroom,

the one which she used when she was seven years.

So it was, like, 26th of December, 2004.

That was the last time she used it.

Keeping those little, little memories

keeps that feeling that she's still around us.

I have heard so many stories that small children have been taken

to different countries or different places,

and when they have come to a certain age,

they are going to search for their real parents.

So, with those stories, I feel that miracles do happen.

Still the hope is there.

But for sure, I can say that waiting is not easy.

It's not easy.

It's kind of a prayer that I do on every day

that I would be able to see my sister one day before I die.

If I can give one chance for my mum to see her younger daughter,

it would be the best gift I could have given to her.

So...

..if she sees this,

I mean, I would like to say that

your elder sister and your mum and your dad are still alive, and...

We still believe that you got survived from tsunami like we did,

and I'm really sorry

that we couldn't find you on that same day,

or I'm really sorry that we couldn't hold you tightly.

Call us and tell that you're still alive,

and... we will be so happy to hear that.

WIDARI: The feeling's very strange.

It's like a dream.

I was never alone.

I mean, I was always with family,

and suddenly, I lost five of them at the same time.

We found the dead body of my father in the 15 days after tsunami.

We bury him in the same day, in the afternoon.

I was grateful that my father was found, so...

I have a place to go

every time I feel that I want to talk to him again.

In the night, I cry a lot. A lot. Yeah?

I always thought maybe my sister has amnesia,

maybe my mother lives somewhere, but she forgot who she was,

something like that.

But... no.

There was a time when I dreamt I saw my mum and my sister

cooking together in a kitchen wearing white.

The white colour represent when somebody is in heaven.

Like angels, something like that.

It's a message for me, I guess,

that they are safe in heaven, they are happy in heaven.

I think that's the time when I suddenly stopped crying.

I can continue my life.

ROISIN: I met Rob on Bumble, a dating app.

I do remember thinking on the first date,

and I know it does sound cliche, but I remember thinking,

"I don't really feel like I've ever met anyone like you before."

And I just felt so drawn to him, and I felt very safe with him.

He's always thinking of new things,

whether it's new things to do, new places to go.

He's always planning, planning, planning.

So it makes life quite fun because you don't...

..you don't ever know quite what's gonna happen next with Rob.

But it's normally...

it's normally a fun journey, wherever he takes you.

We spent the first part of last year travelling around the world.

We'd taken a sort of long honeymoon

because we'd just got married the year before.

We spent, yeah, several months

going around places like India, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand,

and we're really excited to get back to the UK

and start the next chapter of our lives.

Six weeks after we got back, everything just changed.

Completely out of nowhere...

..Rob got very sick one day.

I did think I... I might lose him.

ROB: I ended up having two life-saving operations.

I've caught sepsis twice as well.

Stress and everything I've dealt with over the years,

had it just brewing.

It came from nowhere, a bit like the tsunami,

and it's just a bit of a weird timing that,

20 years later, that's kind of then came back.

I watched him be so brave and so amazing in the last few months.

I have so much respect for what he's done

and how he's managed to get through it all.

I couldn't love him any more.

It's inevitable in life that you will face challenges.

Whether that's a lost loved one, a health issue...

..losing your job, whatever it may be.

But ultimately, for me,

it's a case of just persevering and picking yourself back up.

Take it small steps at a time,

and before you realise, you'll look back round and realise

you've come so much further than your lowest point.

BILL: It's my firm belief that there was a few hundred people

that were directly saved by Manfred's call that day.

Definitely. Maybe more.

For a beach boy, 20 years old in Phuket,

really, he was amazing.

He deserves a lot more recognition than he's ever gotten.

Bill-o!

Hey, Richie, how are you? Hello. Hello, mate.

Good to see you. Yeah.

Look at you. How are you?

You're looking good, mate.

BILL CHUCKLES Likewise.

A few wrinkles here, though, eh? Yeah, yeah.

Sneaking in.

But you're looking good. You're in good nick, eh? Yeah.

Can't fatten a thoroughbred.

THEY LAUGH He's got us...

He's got a good one for everything, eh? What a legend.

Hey, have a seat, mate. OK. Good on ya.

Good to see you. Yeah, likewise.

I've been thinking about you a bit lately, actually.

You're the guy that saved all those lives on that day 20 years ago.

And you never really got the full credit for it at the time.

Yeah, it's a hard thing.

It was a hard thing to even wanna, you know...

..er, you know, just try and take any credit

for anything at that point.

Yeah. You know, erm...

People around you really are...

..devastated and really suffering.

I mean, I don't know how it was for you,

but for me, it was so much mixed feelings

because while I didn't really lose anything,

except maybe some travel plans and some board shorts,

you know, the feelings are just so funny

with like, I guess, PTSD

but then also, like,

that's spiked with you did something amazingly good.

Yeah, yeah. You know? And so it was like...

It's not just the bad parts. It's the good parts, and...

And that is just a...

A roller-coaster. An extraordinary...

That day, and that call you made so early,

you know, when you saw that going on,

was profound for a kid of your age, you know?

20 years old, were you?

Yeah. How old?

23 then, yeah. 23.

You acted like you were 20, but...

BILL LAUGHS Yeah, I sure did! Probably.

Not even that, probably. Worse sometimes.

Yeah, but I've always sort of wanted to catch up with you

and let you know that, er... Yeah.

..you were the reason everybody sort of survived.

You honestly don't look like you've aged 20 years, so...

Really? Yeah. Oh! Yeah.

You sugar-mouthed bugger. You must...

THEY LAUGH

All that clean living, mate. Oh, right! Yeah, right (!)

THEY LAUGH

TRANSLATION:

FLORE: Oui.

Bronty O'Leary reporting on O'Leary News.

It's Mia's birthday, the 2nd of November.

BILL: How old is she? She's turning two.

BILL: I've got a good friend, Funeral Phil, on the Gold Coast,

and I said to him, "So, how many funerals have you done?"

And he said, "Oh, thousands."

And I said, "So what's the one takeaway from...

"..you know, doing all those funerals?"

And he said, "The only thing that goes in the box

"is the love that others had for that person

"and that person had for others."

TIM: Hey, hello, Dad! Hey, hi. How are you doing?

BRONTY: One, two, three!

One more, Mia.

CHEERING

If you can go out of your way to be kind, patient, tolerant

and loving with other people, that's what the tsunami taught me.

Huh! My God, what's happening here?

MIA: Papa!

You don't know how long you've got,

so you've gotta live every day as if it's your last.

And one day, you'll be right.

If you're lucky enough to survive these kind of things...

..pay it forward, do something good in the world.

ROB: Hi!

CHILDREN: Hi! ROISIN: Hi!

THEY SPEAK SINHALESE

Twenty-eight.

Oh! FLORE LAUGHS

Hello. How are you?

LUKE: It's a good feeling when you help people.

You know, that's a very powerful healing process that we were given.

CELIA: It's just nice to just come down

and spend ten minutes down here.

Losing a child, it's a hard thing.

And every day, you have to cope with it,

which, hopefully, Henry and I do.

I think, ultimately, it all just boils down to love, doesn't it?

We've always been a family that love one another.

And Piers, really, was at the forefront of it all.

Shall we head on back? Yeah, we'll go back.

Come on, then. Have a cup of tea?

Yeah. OK.

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