If I hadn’t spotted that the sea was fizzing then my parents, sister and me would all be dead

TEN years ago today a tsunami devastated south east Asia. It claimed 230,000

lives, including 155 Brits.

Tilly Smith, ten, saved more than 100 people, including her family after

spotting the signs that the giant killer wave was on its way.

On the tenth anniversary of the disaster, she returns to the scene of that

terrible day.

STROLLING along the soft white sand lapped by tranquil turquoise water,

Tilly Smith is remembering a far darker time on this very same idyllic beach.

The 20-year-old can recall every single second of that day ten years ago

today, when a fluke led to her saving the lives of her family — and those of

dozens of strangers.

Tilly’s actions during the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 led to her being dubbed

the “Angel of the Beach”.

She was hailed a miracle child and was even invited to meet former US

President Bill Clinton.

For Tilly, time has not erased the painful memories of that fateful day or

the fears of how close she came to losing her loved ones.

She fights back tears as she stands in the exact spot where, as a ten-year-old

schoolgirl, she realised a tsunami was about to hit the hotel where her

family was staying.

Tilly reveals: “I keep thinking how different it all could have been if I

hadn’t spotted what was about to happen, if I hadn’t started screaming.

“My parents, my sister, me — we would all have been killed.

“And most of the other people here that day would have been, too.

“I am just so eternally grateful things turned out how they did.”

Her story is truly remarkable. As a festive treat in 2004, her parents, Colin

and Penny, had taken Tilly and her seven-year-old sister Holly on the

family’s first holiday, to Thailand.

At just after 8.30am on Boxing Day the family, from Oxshott, Surrey, set off

for a walk along Mai Khao beach in front of their Phuket hotel.

Dan Charity 5

One of the world’s worst natural disasters was only minutes away, but

fortunately Tilly spotted the signs, after learning about tsunamis in a

geography class at her school, Danes Hill, just two weeks previously.

She says: “Normally I was bored during geography but our teacher Andrew

Kearney had shown us a video of a tsunami in Hawaii and it had been really

gripping.

“As we walked towards the beach I started to have a really weird feeling.

“The weather was cloudy and a really vivid memory is a group of Thai girls who

did massage on the beach holding each other, weeping.

“The sea was high on the sand and I noticed waves were coming in but not going

out. The sea was ‘fizzing’ and there was froth on of the waves. I kept

thinking, ‘I’ve seen this, I’ve seen this somewhere’. I felt something

terrible was going to happen.

“I started to say that to my parents but they said, ‘Don’t be silly, Tilly,

the weather’s just bad’ and insisted we carried on. Then I noticed a log

spinning round and round in the sea and suddenly it hit me — tsunami.

“All the things I was seeing had been in the video we’d seen in geography.

They were signs a tsunami was about to hit, and soon.”

Before the tsunami hit Thailand few people in the Western world had ever heard

the word — including Tilly’s parents.

She says: “I started shouting, ‘Tsunami, there’s going to be a tsunami’. Of

course, they didn’t know what I was talking about.

“By now I was in a complete panic, really shouting, ‘We have to get off, we

have to run’. My sister Holly got freaked out and started crying

hysterically. My dad decided to walk back to the hotel with her to calm her

down but my mum refused to leave.

“She kept walking. We were getting further and further away from the hotel. I

was screaming, ‘Please, mum, please come back with me’. I was saying, ‘If

you don’t come back with me you won’t survive.’ I remember seeing people in

the sea, on the beach, and I thought, ‘We’re all going to die’.”

Pointing out a yellow lifeguard hut that is a good half a mile away from the

hotel, she adds: “We’d reached here and I pleaded with my mum to stop.

“I didn’t want to leave her but I started to run back to the hotel.

“When I got to it my dad was stood with a Japanese security guard saying, ‘I

know this sounds completely mad but my daughter says there’s going to be a

tsunami’.

“In Japan they know all about tsunamis and the guard said, ‘I think she’s

right’.

“He then told us there had been a huge earthquake in the Indian Ocean. I said,

‘Yes, yes, tsunami — tidal wave!’ He started shouting to people on the beach

to get off.

“There was a family kayaking in the sea, people in the pool. Everyone started

running, there was sheer panic.

“We started screaming at Mum who was running back, I was praying she was going

to make it as she was one of the last to get off the beach.

“I saw the sea by then had gone completely out and I knew that meant the

tsunami was right on top. I shouted, ‘Run! Run!’ at everyone. I remember

families, kids screaming. There was a wall of water coming towards us.

“I lost sight of my dad and ran towards the hotel lobby which was on a high

floor. Water was flooding into the hotel. There was crashing, banging, the

roar of the sea.

“There were hundreds of people in the lobby, screaming. People just didn’t

know what to do. I knew there was going to be aftershocks and more waves, so

I told people we had to stay on high ground.

“I found Dad and, thank God, Mum was with him. We all hugged each other

tightly, crying.”

It was only later, when the family saw TV reports of the devastation, that

they realised just how lucky they had been.

Tilly says: “No one on our beach died. We didn’t realise that thousands had in

Thailand until we saw the news. My dad was just in shock. He kept saying,

‘What if we hadn’t listened to you?’ ”

It was The Sun that revealed Tilly’s amazing story at the time of the tsunami.

Her courage and foresight made her a global sensation. She was named Child

of the Year by a French magazine and invited by the United Nations to meet

Bill Clinton, then the UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Relief.

But she says, modestly: “I don’t feel I was a miracle child. I’m just so lucky

we had had that lesson. I’m just glad I managed to save my family’s lives

and those of others.”

After the disaster her family wanted to fly straight back home to Surrey, but

they had to stay in the resort for several more days.

Tilly says: “We were moved to a hotel which was on higher ground.

“I remember a little girl being brought there who was battered and bruised.

She was traumatised. She had lost all her family.

“A DNA team from England arrived to help identify bodies and I remember they

would sit at night in silence trying to deal with what they had seen.

“On New Year’s Eve the hotel had a party which we didn’t really want to go to

but staff begged us to, saying, ‘If we don’t go on Thailand will never

recover’.

“One waiter was weeping and my dad discovered all his family had been killed,

but he wanted keep on working saying it was helping him.

“I was only ten at the time, but I can remember all of that.”

When they finally flew home Tilly remembers that many passengers on the plane

were sobbing. At one stage, the pilot asked for anyone who had lost someone

in the tsunami to raise their hand. She says, quietly: “There were a lot of

hands.

“My dad said later that he kept thinking, ‘That could have been us’. I

could be here now with all my family gone.”

a.lazzeri@the-sun.co.uk