Original subtitles

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

On the morning of Boxing Day, 2004, I woke up

thinking something was going on outside,

and I could see that there was some water coming in through our door.

I looked out the window and I could see a bit of a commotion

and people panicking.

Then I heard some screams. SCREAMING

I remember seeing a father that we knew was staying

in our accommodation, he was running past with his toddler in his arms.

SCREAMING

I remember seeing the fear on his face,

thinking, "What the hell's he seen?"

And then within two seconds the wave came flying,

and smashed the door down.

SCREAMING

It was an endless wall of water, just coming at you.

SCREAMING

Keith and I had been together for about five years,

when we decided that we were going to get married.

We decided that we'd like to go to somewhere nice

and hot. So we chose Sri Lanka.

Are you happy? Yes.

Sri Lanka was everything that we could have dreamt of.

Keep tight. LAUGHTER

The beaches were so clean,

so sandy and the water -

warm, blue, gentle waves.

Paradise.

We were staying literally right on the beach at

the Hotel Tangerine.

You really would have thought that you were going onto

a movie set when you first saw it. It was like,

"Wow! This place is amazing. We couldn't have picked better."

And you sort of go, "Yes! We've cracked this.

"We've done this. Somewhere really nice."

The wedding was absolutely beautiful.

Absolutely beautiful.

The signing of the register, actually putting my name down

and then being called Mrs Lister.

It was out of this world.

I was now Mrs Lister.

We had about ten members of our families from both sides,

and my sister brought my little son, Bradley,

which at the time was seven.

After the wedding, all the family went home

and Keith and I were there on our own

to have our honeymoon.

Spend time on the beach, relaxing. Sit round, drink cocktails,

lounge around the pool.

In Arugam Bay, I have a hotel called Galaxy Lounge,

situated right on the beach.

The view of the sea's outstanding.

It's a real place to unwind.

Wayne is my husband. He grew up in Brisbane, Australia.

I met Wayne in April, 2004, when we opened.

He'd come to Sri Lanka to go surfing.

He was our first guest.

And we quickly got into a relationship.

We fell in love. We decided to get married,

and we got pregnant all in the space of about six months.

Christmas, 2004, I remember the hotel was very full.

I was three months pregnant, and my friend Annie's come to stay.

Annie I met at university. We also lived together in London.

We became very close. She's like my family.

And, yeah, life can be better.

I went to Sri Lanka on holiday with my dad.

It was my first trip to Sri Lanka as an adult.

And I was really excited about going back

to somewhere that was culturally significant for me.

My parents are originally from Sri Lanka.

And it was a chance to see my dad's side of the family,

who hadn't seen for a long time.

The first part of the trip was with my dad's family,

which... kind of duty I had to do.

And then on Boxing Day, the plan was to catch

the train down to Hikkaduwa, a beach party scene,

and spend three or four days there, letting loose, seeing

a different side of Sri Lanka.

My train from Colombo to Hikkaduwa was quite early in the morning.

I think it was about 8 o'clock.

So I woke up early and then went to the train station with my uncle.

The first challenge was trying to find a seat on the train.

The train was especially busy because there was

a lot of people taking advantage of the bank holiday

to see their friends and families.

VENDOR SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE It was standing room only,

and it was uncomfortable standing room only.

So you had armpits in your faces.

It was hot, it was sweaty. It was really uncomfortable.

I just wanted to disembark, check into my hotel,

have a shower, get something to eat, go and see the beach sort of thing.

What nobody realised is that at 7.59,

there had been a massive earthquake in the Indian Ocean

about 30km underneath the sea floor.

Here, two tectonic plates had been pushing up against each other

with one riding over the top of the other.

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

Instead, they get stuck, building up stress.

And 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 per hour.

Boxing Day morning.

Wayne and Annie had been up late the night before.

They all slept in.

But I was up quite early because I was pregnant. I didn't go out.

I was in the restaurant serving breakfast,

and I looked up at the ocean

and I saw water seeping through the gate...

..which was really unusual.

And one of the guests, just shouted, "Oh, my God. It's a tidal wave."

Wayne grabbed my wrist and screamed, "Run."

I looked back, and it was like a wall of white water chasing us.

I was thinking, "I have to go and get Annie

"who's asleep in her room." So I was saying, "No, no."

And he was very insistent, screaming, "Run now."

FAINT SCREAMING

So I ran.

SCREAMING

SCREAMING

We were sucked under and tumbling,

like, spinning and spinning in the water.

And then Wayne managed to pull us out of the water so we could

get a breath, but then we just got dragged back down again.

I just had this voice in my head just telling me what

to do. And when Wayne pulled us out of the water, he said...

Yeah. He said, "Just know I love you."

And then we got dragged down again.

And the voice said to me, "Wayne thinks we're going to die,

"but we're not. We're not going to die."

FAINT SCREAMING

The tsunami struck Sri Lanka's eastern side first.

The wave then refracted around the country's southernmost tip,

inundating its southwest coastline.

Anyone who hasn't already made it to higher ground is in grave danger.

Back in 2004, I was 17 years old. My dad wanted

to explore somewhere new, so we went away with my parents,

Sandra and Kevin, and then my younger siblings,

Paul, Mattie and Rosie.

And we set off on our way to Sri Lanka.

The accommodation was 20 feet from the beach.

Beautiful white sand and palm trees everywhere.

I was in a room with my brother Paul.

I woke up thinking something was going on outside.

I heard a bit of a commotion. SCREAMING

Then I heard some screams.

SCREAMING

And then within two seconds, the wave came flying,

and smashed the door down, smashed the window.

It was an endless wall of water just coming at you.

I remember just pulling my brother out of the room

and then trying to push him up onto the roof.

We just needed to get to higher ground.

I was extremely disorientated...

..but at the same time, I also just remember thinking,

"Where's everyone else?

"Where's my younger siblings? Where's my parents?"

We were in the final leg of the train journey,

and then it just stops.

And as you can imagine, I'm hot and sweaty...frustrated.

I just wanted to get off the train.

And then I kind of heard a noise.

And it sounded like a waterfall.

And then that noise turned into people screaming.

SHOUTING

And then I saw, like, a load of people coming in from

where the coast was...

..towards the train.

I remember a lady actually having a real look of terror...

..and I just didn't really know what was going on, right?

And then that waterfall noise that I described suddenly got louder.

It was like a shelf of water coming across.

And I actually thought the water

was going to pass underneath the train...

..but then the actual carriage I was on...

..tipped over.

So the carriage is sitting like this.

It tipped over at a 45-degree angle.

Water then started rushing into the train.

So, 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.

Sometimes it can act like a surge tide.

Other times, the sea will recede before the wave strikes.

On Boxing Day, in the morning, I was cleaning the room

and Keith had gone downstairs to the pool beach area,

and I said that I would meet him downstairs a little bit later.

I tidied the room up a little bit,

and then I'd gone out onto the balcony.

The tide had gone out...

..and I hadn't seen that at any point during our holiday.

It literally just, just kept going out and out and out,

and you saw things on the seabed - rocks and things -

that we hadn't seen our entire trip.

And the whole sea just seemed to lift...

..and started coming in.

Closer it got...

..the faster it seemed to come in.

Then it crushed through the fence...

..lifting up deckchairs...

..into the pool.

You get caught in this, you've got no chance.

You're just going to be crushed and just swept away.

I'm thinking to myself, "My husband was on the beach."

The thought of not ever seeing him again...

..was just unbearable.

All of the people that were in the train managed

to get on top of the roof of the train.

I was able to take some pictures of the surroundings

just because I thought this is quite a surreal moment

that I needed to document.

I do remember seeing someone climb into the water...

..and some guy with a suitcase

looking a bit frustrated on his phone.

I think he was probably going to a business meeting or something.

I actually took a picture of a house where

the water level came up to where the window frame was,

and I thought I should take a picture of this

to kind of give people reference

and perspective as to how deep it was.

The water level started receding quite quickly.

It was almost like watching a sunset.

You could see it going down and down and down and down.

The water - it started to level out,

and it wasn't pushing as hard.

I was looking everywhere.

On other roofs, on palm trees, just scanning,

trying to see if I could see anyone, whilst yelling out.

And then I could see my younger brother, Matty.

He was in the top of a coconut tree, just clinging on for his life,

and I could see, you know, blood coming from his head.

I could see he'd been hit in the head.

So I swam across to him,

kind of wading through all the debris.

And then that was it. The water started pulling back out.

I had to swim with all the power I possibly could.

When the water started receding and going back,

it was taking all the rubble -

chairs, people's belongings.

And when it got so far out,

I knew then I had to go and see if I could find Keith.

I needed to know...if he was safe.

I left the room and went downstairs...

..but my stomach was churning.

I felt sick.

I'm going down the stairs.

My heart is pounding.

I've reached the bottom.

I'm sweaty, clammy.

And then I look up and over and I see Keith.

When I'd seen Francis, it was very, very emotional.

I mean, we were both...

She was in floods.

She really thought something bad had happened to me.

She thought I'd been swept out.

I was down towards the beach,

and that's when I realised that there was something not right with

the sea, cos the sea had started coming in.

The sound of the water - it's really loud,

and you've got people being hit by things that were screaming.

SCREAMS

People falling over in the water.

Got into the main foyer area.

The rate of the water coming through there was just...amazing.

And then, all of a sudden, everything just seemed to stop...

..before it started rushing back out again with

the same force as it came in with.

That's when I seen Frances come down.

I just wanted to cuddle him.

I just want you to feel him.

I just wanted to make sure that it was him

and that I wasn't dreaming,

I wasn't making things up,

he's actually standing,

he's there with me.

And then Keith said to me,

"We need to get a few bits and pieces together,

"because we need to leave."

Once the water started receding,

I climbed on top of this half a wall.

Everything else that was in the water was just being

sucked back out to sea.

And I heard Ani's voice.

And I just couldn't believe it.

At first, Sri didn't even recognise me because I was covered in mud

and twigs all over me.

My first concern had been,

"Oh, my God, Sri. What about Sri and the baby?"

And so when I saw them standing there,

I had this great sense of relief of,

"OK, she's alive. Hopefully, the baby is also alive."

So I had been fast asleep in the hut when, all of a sudden,

my door to the hut just flung wide open,

water started to flood in.

Within seconds, I was underwater,

drowning and fighting for my life.

Eventually, the hut began to disintegrate,

and little shards of light began to peek through.

I was very lucky, and I got thrown into the path of a tree...

..and I held onto that tree for dear life.

Every now and again, there would be a lull in the water, in the wave,

and I could get a gasp of air, and then I'd be underwater again.

Then, eventually, the water begins to subside...

..and it kind of comes down to about chest height.

My arms feel like lead,

but I could see Sri and Wayne in the distance.

And I called out Sri's name.

We kind of embraced.

I sort of, like, allowed myself to let go at that point,

and I started to cry hysterically.

And, you know, we were so confused.

We didn't know what had happened.

The behaviour of a tsunami is unpredictable.

There are often multiple waves

and the second wave can be more powerful than the first...

..so although the water has receded, the danger is far from over.

We're all massively in shock, with no clue as to what's happened.

Then we hear these people shouting, "Water, water, water..."

..and we see another wave...

..and so we start running inland again.

Some local people said, "This way, this way,"

and they led us to this small mound.

There was one German guy,

and his face was frozen in shock.

And I went up to him, and I said, "Are you OK?"

And he said, "My girlfriend, my fiancee."

And he said, "I had her hand, and now she's gone."

And the look on his face

of sheer overwhelming shock,

despair, grief, terror.

I never forget his face,

and it always gives me chills thinking about him

and looking at that scene.

I realised how lucky we were to have all survived...

..and to have all found each other as quickly as we did.

Must have been sat on top of the train carriage for half an hour.

Thought to myself, "Right, whatever's happened is now finishing.

"We're coming to the end of this."

Kind of assumed somebody was going to come and help us,

get us off the train...

..and then I heard screaming again...

..and I actually felt the ground shudder.

And then that's when I saw this huge wall of water coming towards us.

I would say it was probably about the size of like

a three-storey building.

I could see it basically swallowing all of the things in its path,

so there were houses that were consumed in the water,

trees were being taken down.

Water hit my carriage,

but rather than tilting my train over and forcing me over,

it kind of pushed my train carriage neatly along.

It almost felt like we were surfing a wave.

And then it wedged my carriage up against the house.

But as it pushed the carriage up against the house,

I jumped onto the house. And then, at that point,

the water started to rush over the train carriage.

And the water was rising and rising and rising,

so that's what motivated me to, like,

climb up the side of a wall up to the third storey.

And then that's when you kind of looked out,

and it was, basically, it felt like I was in the middle of the ocean.

There was a lot of people on the top of the carriage with me.

The number of people that made it on to the top of the house

I can count on one hand.

I can only assume that

a lot of those people didn't make it and fell into the water.

And then it started receding.

I remember looking back and seeing the devastation beneath me.

Could see the bodies of just animals and people and all the debris.

I kind of thought, "Hang on, this is pretty serious."

There was lots of people with injuries.

There was lots of people that just, you know...

It was distraught.

I rallied up my two younger brothers,

and we went back to my parents' room looking for them,

couldn't find them.

Everyone's clothes in bits and pieces.

Everything's everywhere.

I then thought, "OK, I'd better get further inland

"in case this thing comes back again."

And I remember asking everyone we saw,

"Has anyone seen a young girl?

"She's eight years old or so and she's," you know,

"this high, and she's got brown hair, etc."

And then, you know, a few people have said,

"We think there's a girl down," you know,

"a few hotels down that is without her family."

That was it.

I remember making my way down to where everyone had said to get to,

to this hotel.

And we're yelling out for her. And then...

..I remember kind of thinking, "I can hear her."

I heard her voice, and then that was it.

It was a stairway that was so filled with all

the debris and junk - suitcases and everything.

It was just, you know, carnage

trying to climb up or let her climb down, and we were trying to meet,

and I remember literally jumping through a glass frame door

that had smashed in, and we just both just jump through it.

The moment in my life I'll never forget, this hug,

just finding her and realising that she was still alive.

My foot was in pretty bad shape,

and I remember someone cleaning it and tying something around it.

So I was just sitting there feeling a bit isolated and thinking,

"What am I going to do next?"

I just remember a Red Cross vehicle turning up,

and they were like, "We're heading to Colombo.

"We found a route. Jump in."

It was extraordinary driving through the devastation.

I hadn't really realised the scale of it.

Seeing the destruction everywhere,

and everyone else was injured,

and there was obviously so many casualties.

It was like literally like a football pitch of bodies

with, you know, just sheets over them.

You could see that this thing didn't discriminate.

Yeah, it was a thing I'll never forget.

And then we realised that we were going to have to try

and hitchhike our way back up to Colombo, to the capital

because that's the only place that there's an international airport

to get out of there.

Everyone's extremely fragile after everything they've just experienced.

I just remember thinking my parents would want me to get them home.

And then we ended up getting some truck,

but I just remember being in that vehicle crammed up with my siblings.

Everyone absolutely shattered and distraught,

and younger brother and sister asking, "Where's Mum and Dad?"

And I just remember having to tell them that they're going to

meet us at home and we'll see them on the other side.

It was about two days later we were taken to the airport.

Getting on the aeroplane, initially, felt great.

We were going home.

I was going to see my family,

and I was going to see my little boy. Amazing feeling.

But then, when we actually started getting everybody onto the plane,

and you saw the sad faces, the crying, the tears...

..the just, the blankness in people's eyes.

They should have had their sons, their daughters...

..their husbands, their wives sitting next to them.

They're never going to have them sit next to them again.

It's just so unbearable to think about.

All those poor souls lost in Sri Lanka.

They can never hold their loved ones.

They can never hold, love their children.

Keith and I can.

We can do that.

Both Keith and I were really lucky that day.

Really, really lucky.

I remember walking through the airport of Colombo

and there was a New York Times journalist,

cos he told me he was a New York Times journalist,

and I remember him saying to me,

"Are you by yourself?

"Where's your parents?"

And I just remember, looking back and giving him an evil,

as if to say,

" BLEEP off, I'm just, I'm not answering that."

And, "Leave us alone."

I remember walking into my house,

and I was so shocked and surprised

to see everything exactly where it was, as I'd left it,

because, in my mind,

the world had been turned upside down.

"How come I've just come from this scene of Armageddon,

"of the world ending,

"and then everything is so ordered and neat and tidy

"and normal here?"

It was incredibly difficult to decompress and to adjust.

I had so many nightmares...

..so many flashbacks...

..of drowning, of being in a tsunami.

I would wake up screaming.

This gave me this sense of,

"You need to make the most of your life as a result.

"You need to make your life mean something,

"because you've been given a second chance when

"so many people have died."

This was an article that was written about me soon after tsunami.

It was on the 6th of January, 2005.

And I think this headline encapsulates

the points I've been trying to make.

"I feel like the luckiest man on the world."

I was fortunate that my particular train carriage got disconnected

and tipped over, and I climbed to the top.

I was fortunate that I got pushed up against

the house where I could climb onto it.

I do think if I stayed on the house

and not go into the water and headed inland,

that could have been... that could have been it for me.

It was a pretty, you know, pretty humbling experience.

So it took a few months

to finally get confirmation that my parents had deceased, unfortunately.

As a family, it was challenging.

Everyone was distraught, everyone was upset,

and life was not going to be the normal again.

Suddenly, now...

..a load of siblings without your parents,

and they've just been taken away from you overnight and...

..in a horrific context. And now we've just got to try

and work out how we're going to rebuild our lives

and group together to focus on moving forward.

That was why I came up with the idea for Gandy's,

which is a lifestyle brand that builds kids campuses around

the world.

And we've helped over 40,000 kids now

with nutrition, medication, education, you know,

people that have been in harder situations than ourselves.

That's our way of handling the situation we were put in.

I don't really talk about it with people

because I don't want it to be, to kind of define me.

For me, it was...

It's obviously changed my kind of attitude to things,

even like day-to-day decision making.

I mean, I suppose what it's done for me,

and I don't think this is particularly positive,

is like I'm always thinking about what could go wrong.

I'm kind of a bit more paranoid about stuff.

In terms of parenting, I'm, you know, I'm kind of conscious of that.

My way of processing everything was to return to Aragum Bay

as soon as possible to just...

..carry on, like, just continue.

After the tsunami, I managed to have an ultrasound...

..and found out that my son had survived.

My name is Luke Gunasena Pagel.

My mum kept telling me this, that she was afraid...

..of having me because she was...

She was afraid that other people in

the bay would be jealous that I was the only baby born.

"Why is he allowed to live and my child is not allowed to live?"

What actually happened is, as soon as I was born,

everyone was so happy for my mum and her family,

and everyone was like,

"Wow, Lucky Luke, Lucky Luke. He survived."

And everyone, yeah,

loved the fact that a baby was born after the tsunami.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media