ROSS COULTHART: A tourist boat approaches a luxury beach resort off the coast of Thailand. It's the 26th of December. A little before 10:00 in the morning. Unknown to everyone there's a countdown running. Death and destruction on an unimaginable scale is now only a few minutes away. These people on Phi Phi Island will soon be fighting for their lives. Like hundreds of thousands of others across the region, the day the wave comes they'll be on their own.
KIRSTY BRADY: Running from the beach, the feeling of absolute terror that goes over you and I remember screaming, "We're going to die, we're going to die."
WAT THONGLIM (TRANSLATION): Most of the white tourists went down to have a close look at the wave. All the hotel security guards were blowing their whistles and warning everyone to get back but they were ignored.
TASHA BUSSELL: I just remember being totally scared and not knowing whether this was going to be the last moment and I was totally alone, like, I had no-one around me.
ROSS COULTHART: Banda Aceh, Indonesia. University lecturer Rajibussalim starts the day with great hope. He and his wife Sarwati and their two children are planning a move to Melbourne where Raji will continue his academic studies.
RAJIBUSSALIM: Me and my wife we have a long chat about our future talking about our plan when we arrive in Australia
ROSS COULTHART: At 7:58, Raji's family home is shaken by a massive earthquake.
RAJIBUSSALIM: The whole family comes to the front door. And we sitting in the footstep. We are praying that the earthquake will stop soon but it last around two or three minutes longer and it big shake.
KYLIE VAN UDEN: When I woke up I just said "this is going to be another beautiful day".
ROSS COULTHART: The Van Uden family from Perth are in their hotel room at Phuket in Thailand.
WAYNE VAN UDEN: The bed was moving away from the wall, probably a good foot. And the pictures on the wall were shaking. The curtain was moving and that's when I realised it was an earthquake and my first instinct was to get out and get the kids out, get everybody out.
ROSS COULTHART: The Thai capital, Bangkok where the the former director-general of the meterological department, Smith Dharmasaroja, wakes to reports of an earthquake.
SMITH DHARMASORAJA: It's my experience and my commonsense that this height of magnitude of the earthquake will create a tsunami wave. I tried to call the radio stations and the newspaper. Tried to give them to issue a warning.
ROSS COULTHART: 100km off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the largest recorded earthquake in 40 years - Nine on the Richter scale. A 1,300km stretch of a faultline moves. Shockwaves race towards Sumatra at 760kph. Within minutes the tsunami hits. Approaching the coast, it rises to become a 20m wall of water.
RAJIBUSSALIM: We start to see people running in front of my house and shouting that "water coming, water coming" We can't imagine how can the water come. It sunny day. No rain. No cloud. I try to look outside my home to see the water coming. And what I see I couldn't believe at that time. Is a very huge wave.
ROSS COULTHART: Raji's wife, Sarwati, and daughter, Felza, run inside their home.
RAJIBUSSALIM: I can't see them anymore and then only left is Anas, my son, in my arm and my younger sister And we take a decision to run outside the home but water getting closer and closer. Not far from my home the water smashed me and I directly fall down with my knee with Anas in my arm.
ROSS COULTHART: In Bangkok, the duty Government seismologist, Mr Burin, still has no inkling of the disaster about to hit Thailand.
MR BURIN: At that time I didn't think about tsunami because as I know the historical record, there's no tsunami in this area. The possibility is almost zero.
ROSS COULTHART: In Banda Aceh tens of thousands of people are already dead or dying. Raji and his 2-year-old son Anas are now clinging on to a coconut tree.
RAJIBUSSALIM: After hit by very strong water, we got struck there and suddenly many other wood and tree coming from my back and Anas was under the tree and many woods. And I couldn't keep my hand on his body anymore. So then he, Anas, was lost from my arm.
ROSS COULTHART: The World is still oblivious to the unfolding tragedy in Aceh. All except for the retired Thai meterologist Dharmasaroja. He's sure a tsunami has been triggered. So you know this wave's coming towards the coast?
SMITH DHARMASAROJA: Yes, I know. I know, I know. Exactly, I know.
ROSS COULTHART: So, there's still time to warn people?
SMITH DHARMASAROJA: Oh, a lot of time. At least 45 minute or one hour. ROSS COULTHART: And you weren't able to get your warning?
SMITH DHARMASAROJA: No, I can not even get to warn anybody.
ROSS COULTHART: Dharmasaroja remembers how he warned the Thai authorities of the danger of tsunamis seven years before.
SMITH DHARMASAROJA: Some of them believed me but some of them think that my issue, early issue of a natural disaster in this area will create panic to the people and destroy the tourism industry.
ROSS COULTHART: So what action was taken after you issued your warning in 1998?
SMITH DHARMASAROJA: No, no action had taken at all.
ROSS COULTHART: At 9:04 Phuket time, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii warns of the possibility of a tsunami. But no-one in Thailand is monitoring these alerts. When did you first hear about the tsunami? MR BURIN: Around 9:40 because my boss call me and tell me that there's a very big wave hit Phuket. Just only one tourist lost.
ROSS COULTHART: Those first reports are hopelessly wrong. At beaches all along the Thai coast, few people realise what it means when the ocean rolls back a kilometre.
SIMON LEE: It was so low that we saw that we saw fish flicking on the sand. So people went down to the seabed to collect fish.
ROSS COULTHART: Simon Lee, a policeman from NSW. He's taking photos on Patong Beach with his family when it dawns on him that this is more than just a low tide.
SIMON LEE: My heart was pounding because I remember an incident at Papua New Guinea a few years ago where a similar thing happened and I thought 'it must be an earthquake out there in the ocean'. and we had to get out of there so we ran. If we had been any slower we would have certainly died. It's a matter of life and death.
ROSS COULTHART: And for those people behind you?
SIMON LEE: Yes, same fate. I fear the worse for them, they would have drowned.
WAYNE VAN UDEN: The water had gone. There was nothing in the bay. There was just the sand and coral sticking out. I looked out further, I could see a white line and you could see a white wall of water. Raced down the stairs. By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, the water was already going past the building. And all I knew was that the girls were by the pool.
SARAH VAN UDEN: We were just having a good time at the pool, and then people were running back and they're screaming, like saying, 'the sea is coming, 'the sea is coming'.
KYLIE VAN UDEN: I saw a man run back to the hotel and I said to Sarah 'grab your clothes and just run'.
ROSS COULTHART: The Van Uden family flees back up to their sixth floor hotel room as the second wave approaches Patong. West Australian couple Terry and Marjorie Harris. They sprint off the beach in front of the oncoming surge of water. After clambering up a wall, they try to help a woman trapped below them.
MARJORIE HARRIS: As we went to grab her just the force of the water just took her and she was still alive when she went around the corner and we just hope that maybe she got onto the wall. But that was when I thought to myself "I don't want to die like this".
TERRY HARRIS: I looked out to sea and I could see the next wave coming and it was huge and I saw this gentleman laying on the ground, and his, I presume his wife, because she was the one that was screaming. And I went over there, and I felt his pulse, felt his heart and he was dead. And I feel sick even now thinking about the fact that I didn't know what to do. I tried to get her to come with me but she was hysterical and she wouldn't come with me. I reckon she would have definitely got killed in that particular wave.
ROSS COULTHART: Simon Lee and his family seek refuge on a first floor balcony. He's hoping it doesn't collapse in the flood. What are the children doing?
SIMON LEE: They were asking me "what's going to happen, papa, "what's going to happen?" And I said to them, I said to Nadine, I said "I'm sorry I take you here, we might not survive this but please, stay together. Hold hands, stay together and if we have to go, we go together."
ROSS COULTHART: Ian Dick is riding a scooter into Patong unaware the first wave has just gone through. He finds a man trapped in an overturned car.
IAN DICK: He's saying "Get me out, Get me out". I said "I'll get you out". And I grabbed him by the arms and he moved and I moved and I managed to pull him out through the windscreen, got him out. And his words to me when I'd pulled him out, his first words were "I didn't even see it coming, I didn't know what hit me".
ROSS COULTHART: Do you think he would have survived if you hadn't rescued him?
IAN DICK: No. Not after what I'd seen. I seen 10m waves later on and then I just said, "we've gotta get out of here" and I just snapped them all out of their trance, all the people around me, just screamed at them to run.
ROSS COULTHART: Sydney couple Nick and Kirsty Brady are honeymooning on Phuket.
KIRSTY BRADY: And then all of a sudden it just started racing in and it started blowing the deckchairs. I mean, big heavy wooden deckchairs were just flying up into the air. The people on them were just getting tossed about and we realised that the water wasn't going to stop and so we turned and started running.
ROSS COULTHART: Caught by the waves they are swept against a concrete column. It stops them being dragged out to sea. NICK BRADY: The water just streamed past us, nearly going out as fast as it came in and that's when, we were lucky, the column was in front of us it was pushing us hard up against the column and we couldn't move.
ROSS COULTHART: Australian restaurant owner Richard Anthony watches from above Kamala Beach on Phuket as tourists and local people are swept into the ocean.
RICHARD ANTHONY: My initial thought was go down there and do what you can and then something just held me back, I am not too sure why, but my initial thought was hang on a second just wait.
ROSS COULTHART: And of course if you had gone down there, in all likelihood you wouldn't be here now?
RICHARD ANTHONY: Yeah probably.
ROSS COULTHART: Further north, on the luxury resort strip of Thailand's Khao Lak beach, tourists stand and watch as the waves approach.
WAT THONGLIM (TRANSLATION): I saw all the white tourists running out to watch the wave as it approached. They went down to the beach to have a look.
ROSS COULTHART: Wat Thonglim and his wife Siriwan are on the beach with his niece and sister in front of the Sofitel resort at Khao Lak.
WAT THONGLIM (TRANSLATION): It was so powerful. The current was that strong that you'd be killed if you hit a tree. It just carried me away and I couldn't help myself.
ROSS COULTHART: Hundreds of foreign tourists and local people die around him.
WAT THONGLIM (TRANSLATION): I escaped death only because I was so determined to live. But when I got out I knew my wife, niece and sister had not survived.
ROSS COULTHART: The very thing that made this such a desirable location is also what made it a death trap. The shallow, gentle shoreline with the long reefs just off shore meant that as the tsunami hit the coastline it rolled on top of itself creating a monster 20m wave.
This one stretch of beach was perhaps the worst hit in Thailand. Thousands died here. Some of those dragged out to sea are now caught in whirlpools.
IAN DICK: There was very weird currents happening within the sea. Giant whirlpools that were 50-100m across. And there was cars in the water. There was cars that had their roofs ripped off.
ROSS COULTHART: British tourist Donald Lewis returns to his house on Bang Tao beach after the first wave.
DONALD LEWIS: I'd managed to put the fridge in an upright position. And we had a couple of beers in there. So we had a beer each. And there was fish floating around in the front room and that. And then there was shouting "the water's coming back, the water's coming back, it's coming back" So we had to run.
ROSS COULTHART: Phi Phi Island, a 2-hour boat ride south from Phuket. Luciano Butti is about to open his doors after a big Christmas Day crowd the night earlier.
LUCIANO BUTTI: The restaurant was full, everybody happy. We had a nice menu, special menu, for this night. And also we had many Australian people there.
ROSS COULTHART: No-one knows of the disaster already unfolding in Phuket or of the tsunami hurtling towards this tiny island. People are more interested than alarmed when the sea suddenly disappears from the bay. This amateur video shows what happens next.
LUCIANO BUTTI: I saw the waters go up like a monster. When I saw this I start to run. I start to say, "Everybody run, run away, run away!", in Thai language, in English, Italian, many language. I want to help everybody's gone, gone, gone.
ROSS COULTHART: Did people run?
LUCIANO BUTTI: Yes, someone yes. But many women, they have some children, they can't to go fast, you know. But when I saw the waters going close to the bungalow, is go under the bungalow and pushed the bungalow like the top of champagne. And then the noise, big noise, "Pow, pow, pow!", like that.
ROSS COULTHART: Waves are now smashing in from both sides of the narrow island. Within minutes, the village is destroyed and hundreds of people are dead.
LUCIANO BUTTI: I find a pen on the ground. I write the number of - the telephone number - of my wife in Germany, and send her a message, "I love you", because we don't know.
ROSS COULTHART: You thought you were going to die?
LUCIANO BUTTI: Yep. I want to have somebody to find me here if I die. ROSS COULTHART: Anucha Jangho watches from a nearby hill as the second, bigger wave destroys Phi Phi.
ANUCHA JANGHO: After the first wave come, heard many many voices from many people. "Help me! Help me!" Many women. The second wave come, everything quiet. Quiet. Nothing.
ROSS COULTHART: You think those people have been killed?
ANUCHA JANGHO: Yes.
ROSS COULTHART: The former meterologist Smith Dharmasaroja is still trying, and failing, to get the warning out. He knows this tsunami will keep on killing right across the Indian Ocean.
SMITH DHARMASAROJA: And I don't know what to do but I thought somebody who is responsible for international tsunami warning should do something. Should save the life of people in India, in Ceylon, in Sri Lanka, in Maldives.
ROSS COULTHART: Do you believe a warning could have been issued?
SMITH DHARMASAROJA: Yes, of course.
ROSS COULTHART: The tsunami takes two hours to reach Sri Lanka. Just after 9:00am, in southern Sri Lanka's Weligama Bay, hotel owner Geoffrey Dobbs is taking his morning swim.
GEOFFREY DOBBS: Suddenly I felt a current, quite a strong current and I didn't think too much about it. I just tried to swim harder. But then I noticed the waterline on the island. Suddenly I was 25 foot higher than I had been just a few seconds previously. So I thought, well, there's something wrong here. But I still had no idea what was going on. So looking at the coast, the surge hit the coast and then all hell broke loose. Boats were crashing into trees and crashing into buildings and going across the road and the fishermen were all yelling.
ROSS COULTHART: Sulochana Perera, a corporal in the Sri Lankan army, is travelling home on a train packed with more than 2,000 people. It stops near the beachside city of Hikkaduwa when the first wave hits. SULOCHANA PERERA (TRANSLATION): I closed the train door but the other people in the carriage screamed at me not to, so I opened it again and the water rushed in. The first wave came up to the level of the train windows, about 10 feet high.
ROSS COULTHART: Many local people climb on to the train after the first wave. Sulochana is dragging children out of the water.
SULOCHANA PERERA (TRANSLATION): We'd packed the children into the luggage rack. The fathers were trying to save their children. The second wave came and washed our carriage away. The wave was over 30 feet high and there wasn't a single house or tree visible.
ROSS COULTHART: Do any of the children you've helped survive the next few minutes?
SULOCHANA PERERA (TRANSLATION): No. ROSS COULTHART: It's now 9:25am in the southern Sri Lankan city of Galle. Anusha De Alwis comes out of church only to hear screaming in the streets below.
ANUSHA DE ALWIS: The sea is coming up. The sea is coming up. And the screaming was unbearable. Screaming was unbearable.
ROSS COULTHART: Here on Galle's harbour foreshore it's long been the custom for courting couples to take a stroll here in these gardens, known locally as the lovers' park. And that morning there are dozens of couples gathered here along these rocks. They are among the first to witness the arrival of the tsunami on Sri Lanka's coastline, and within minutes most of them are dead. Hundreds of people are killed in Weligama Bay.
GEOFFREY DOBBS: Luckily, a fisherman threw me a line and I just clung on to the line and then what happened is - Weligama Bay is the second largest bay in Sri Lanka after Trincomalee - and the whole bay just emptied of water. In Australian terms, it would be the whole of Sydney Harbour going out.
ROSS COULTHART: At Hikkaduwa, Sulochana Perera is one of only a few dozen people to survive out of more than 2,000 passengers. It's the world's worst train disaster.
SULOCHANA PERERA (TRANSLATION): We went back to the windows to pull out as many living people as we could. But there were old people we couldn't help. Some were women whose saris had become tangled inside the train.
lt was very difficult to get them out. They were screaming at me, "Sister, take me first! Take me!"
ROSS COULTHART: Ajith and Gamini de Silva's father disappears in Hikkaduwa while he's searching for the rest of their family.
AJITH DE SILVA (TRANSLATION): I asked my father not to leave us, but he did. We didn't expect that there would be a second wave.
ROSS COULTHART: The boys' father, their mother, and 9-year-old sister all die.
AJITH DE SILVA: I thought I'd be swept away. When I saw the people getting washed away I started crying. I saw an old man killed. I saw a boy dying, houses being smashed. I saw my house coming down.
RANJIT DE SILVA (TRANSLATION): I saw the tall wave coming. It made a sound like a jetplane landing. I immediately grabbed hold of the nearest tree with my wife, but all my children were swept away.
ROSS COULTHART: Ranjit de Silva loses everyone. His daughters, Dinusha and Nilusha, his 2-year-old son Dilan, his brother, uncle, mother-in-law, aunty and brother.
RANJIT DE SILVA (TRANSLATION): I told my wife that all our children are gone and we had to hang on to that tree. The next moment she was gone, swept away. She just screamed, "Oh, Lord, Buddha!", and in a moment had disappeared.
ROSS COULTHART: Tasha Bussell, from West Australia, is holidaying at Weligama Beach with a friend.
TASHA BUSSELL: He heard the surf really loud out the front of our room Like, he thought, "Wow, the surf's really good today." And he opened the front door and the sea just started rushing in the front door of the room and I was still in bed asleep and he just yelled out to me, like, "Tash get out of bed now! "You've got to get up!" And I opened my eyes and I just saw brown, muddy water sort of through the doorway coming into the room and I just jumped out of bed.
ROSS COULTHART: Tasha later returns to collect her belongings from her hotel to find it's been destroyed.
RASHA BUSSELL: I couldn't believe that the wave I was running from had just done that because when I had run it wasn't that high, the wave wasn't that big. So I'm just glad I got out of there when I did.
ROSS COULTHART: Along the coast, the city of Galle is drowning. Dulip Mahanama, a quadriplegic, is being carried to safety by his father and friends, when the second wave hits.
DULIP MAHANAMA: I thought my life is over. I tell my father, "I must stay and you save your life." ROSS COULTHART: And what does your father say to you as you tell him, "leave me and save yourself?"
DULIP MAHANAMA: My father says, "I am die with you."
ROSS COULTHART: Dulip and his family manage to escape. For Sulochana Perera, still on the train in Hikkaduwa, there are nightmare scenes.
SULOCHANA PERERA (TRANSLATION): I'd escaped death but it was terribly distressing to see people dying alongside us. I saw a little girl caught in the branches of a tree. Her body was in the air but her neck looked broken and her head was under water. No-one was helping her. I asked a guard to go into the water and bring her to me. I squeezed her body and a lot of water poured out of her mouth and she started crying for her mother. I told her, "I can't take you with me. "Stay here." But when I went back later she was gone.
ROSS COULHART: Rizvi Rizfa loses 16 members of his family, including his baby daughter Amani, who is wrenched from his arms by the wave. But Rizvi cannot find the strength to tell his 10-year-old son his sister is dead.
RIZVI RIZFA: He's asking where is sister. but we told him, you know, she was somewhere else. She will come back. Like that, only I am telling him. Every day asking because he love so much.
ROSS COULTHART: So you have not told him?
RIZVI RIZFA: No.
ROSS COULTHART: Later that day on Phuket, Wat Thonglim returns to his family home from the carnage at Khao Lak to tell his daughter her mother is dead.
WAT THONLIM (TRANSLATION): My daughter wanted to know whether her mother's body was smaller when I found it. Her understanding was that when you die your body becomes smaller, that when you are reincarnated you turn back into a child again. I think she seemed to accept what had happened.
ROSS COULTHART: Like so many other children that evening across the region, Ajith de Silva is facing life as an orphan.
AJITH DE SILVA (TRANSLATION): I was all alone. I was crying all night. That was the only night in my whole life I have slept alone, without my mother, father and brother.
ROSS COULTHART: In Banda Aceh, Raji Bussalim will search in vain for the bodies of his wife and children, and he can't stop thinking of the moment he lost his son Anas.
AJITH DE SILVA (TRANSLATION): During the night, or when I saw a father and his son, I will remember my son.
ROSS COULTHART: The end of a terrible day. It'll be weeks until the world realises the enormity of this disaster, that hundreds of thousands of people are dead and missing and at least a million more are homeless. The truth is that the final toll may never be known.
KIRSTY BRADY: Running from the beach, the feeling of absolute terror that goes over you and I remember screaming, "We're going to die, we're going to die."
WAT THONGLIM (TRANSLATION): Most of the white tourists went down to have a close look at the wave. All the hotel security guards were blowing their whistles and warning everyone to get back but they were ignored.
TASHA BUSSELL: I just remember being totally scared and not knowing whether this was going to be the last moment and I was totally alone, like, I had no-one around me.
ROSS COULTHART: Banda Aceh, Indonesia. University lecturer Rajibussalim starts the day with great hope. He and his wife Sarwati and their two children are planning a move to Melbourne where Raji will continue his academic studies.
RAJIBUSSALIM: Me and my wife we have a long chat about our future talking about our plan when we arrive in Australia
ROSS COULTHART: At 7:58, Raji's family home is shaken by a massive earthquake.
RAJIBUSSALIM: The whole family comes to the front door. And we sitting in the footstep. We are praying that the earthquake will stop soon but it last around two or three minutes longer and it big shake.
KYLIE VAN UDEN: When I woke up I just said "this is going to be another beautiful day".
ROSS COULTHART: The Van Uden family from Perth are in their hotel room at Phuket in Thailand.
WAYNE VAN UDEN: The bed was moving away from the wall, probably a good foot. And the pictures on the wall were shaking. The curtain was moving and that's when I realised it was an earthquake and my first instinct was to get out and get the kids out, get everybody out.
ROSS COULTHART: The Thai capital, Bangkok where the the former director-general of the meterological department, Smith Dharmasaroja, wakes to reports of an earthquake.
SMITH DHARMASORAJA: It's my experience and my commonsense that this height of magnitude of the earthquake will create a tsunami wave. I tried to call the radio stations and the newspaper. Tried to give them to issue a warning.
ROSS COULTHART: 100km off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the largest recorded earthquake in 40 years - Nine on the Richter scale. A 1,300km stretch of a faultline moves. Shockwaves race towards Sumatra at 760kph. Within minutes the tsunami hits. Approaching the coast, it rises to become a 20m wall of water.
RAJIBUSSALIM: We start to see people running in front of my house and shouting that "water coming, water coming" We can't imagine how can the water come. It sunny day. No rain. No cloud. I try to look outside my home to see the water coming. And what I see I couldn't believe at that time. Is a very huge wave.
ROSS COULTHART: Raji's wife, Sarwati, and daughter, Felza, run inside their home.
RAJIBUSSALIM: I can't see them anymore and then only left is Anas, my son, in my arm and my younger sister And we take a decision to run outside the home but water getting closer and closer. Not far from my home the water smashed me and I directly fall down with my knee with Anas in my arm.
ROSS COULTHART: In Bangkok, the duty Government seismologist, Mr Burin, still has no inkling of the disaster about to hit Thailand.
MR BURIN: At that time I didn't think about tsunami because as I know the historical record, there's no tsunami in this area. The possibility is almost zero.
ROSS COULTHART: In Banda Aceh tens of thousands of people are already dead or dying. Raji and his 2-year-old son Anas are now clinging on to a coconut tree.
RAJIBUSSALIM: After hit by very strong water, we got struck there and suddenly many other wood and tree coming from my back and Anas was under the tree and many woods. And I couldn't keep my hand on his body anymore. So then he, Anas, was lost from my arm.
ROSS COULTHART: The World is still oblivious to the unfolding tragedy in Aceh. All except for the retired Thai meterologist Dharmasaroja. He's sure a tsunami has been triggered. So you know this wave's coming towards the coast?
SMITH DHARMASAROJA: Yes, I know. I know, I know. Exactly, I know.
ROSS COULTHART: So, there's still time to warn people?
SMITH DHARMASAROJA: Oh, a lot of time. At least 45 minute or one hour. ROSS COULTHART: And you weren't able to get your warning?
SMITH DHARMASAROJA: No, I can not even get to warn anybody.
ROSS COULTHART: Dharmasaroja remembers how he warned the Thai authorities of the danger of tsunamis seven years before.
SMITH DHARMASAROJA: Some of them believed me but some of them think that my issue, early issue of a natural disaster in this area will create panic to the people and destroy the tourism industry.
ROSS COULTHART: So what action was taken after you issued your warning in 1998?
SMITH DHARMASAROJA: No, no action had taken at all.
ROSS COULTHART: At 9:04 Phuket time, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii warns of the possibility of a tsunami. But no-one in Thailand is monitoring these alerts. When did you first hear about the tsunami? MR BURIN: Around 9:40 because my boss call me and tell me that there's a very big wave hit Phuket. Just only one tourist lost.
ROSS COULTHART: Those first reports are hopelessly wrong. At beaches all along the Thai coast, few people realise what it means when the ocean rolls back a kilometre.
SIMON LEE: It was so low that we saw that we saw fish flicking on the sand. So people went down to the seabed to collect fish.
ROSS COULTHART: Simon Lee, a policeman from NSW. He's taking photos on Patong Beach with his family when it dawns on him that this is more than just a low tide.
SIMON LEE: My heart was pounding because I remember an incident at Papua New Guinea a few years ago where a similar thing happened and I thought 'it must be an earthquake out there in the ocean'. and we had to get out of there so we ran. If we had been any slower we would have certainly died. It's a matter of life and death.
ROSS COULTHART: And for those people behind you?
SIMON LEE: Yes, same fate. I fear the worse for them, they would have drowned.
WAYNE VAN UDEN: The water had gone. There was nothing in the bay. There was just the sand and coral sticking out. I looked out further, I could see a white line and you could see a white wall of water. Raced down the stairs. By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, the water was already going past the building. And all I knew was that the girls were by the pool.
SARAH VAN UDEN: We were just having a good time at the pool, and then people were running back and they're screaming, like saying, 'the sea is coming, 'the sea is coming'.
KYLIE VAN UDEN: I saw a man run back to the hotel and I said to Sarah 'grab your clothes and just run'.
ROSS COULTHART: The Van Uden family flees back up to their sixth floor hotel room as the second wave approaches Patong. West Australian couple Terry and Marjorie Harris. They sprint off the beach in front of the oncoming surge of water. After clambering up a wall, they try to help a woman trapped below them.
MARJORIE HARRIS: As we went to grab her just the force of the water just took her and she was still alive when she went around the corner and we just hope that maybe she got onto the wall. But that was when I thought to myself "I don't want to die like this".
TERRY HARRIS: I looked out to sea and I could see the next wave coming and it was huge and I saw this gentleman laying on the ground, and his, I presume his wife, because she was the one that was screaming. And I went over there, and I felt his pulse, felt his heart and he was dead. And I feel sick even now thinking about the fact that I didn't know what to do. I tried to get her to come with me but she was hysterical and she wouldn't come with me. I reckon she would have definitely got killed in that particular wave.
ROSS COULTHART: Simon Lee and his family seek refuge on a first floor balcony. He's hoping it doesn't collapse in the flood. What are the children doing?
SIMON LEE: They were asking me "what's going to happen, papa, "what's going to happen?" And I said to them, I said to Nadine, I said "I'm sorry I take you here, we might not survive this but please, stay together. Hold hands, stay together and if we have to go, we go together."
ROSS COULTHART: Ian Dick is riding a scooter into Patong unaware the first wave has just gone through. He finds a man trapped in an overturned car.
IAN DICK: He's saying "Get me out, Get me out". I said "I'll get you out". And I grabbed him by the arms and he moved and I moved and I managed to pull him out through the windscreen, got him out. And his words to me when I'd pulled him out, his first words were "I didn't even see it coming, I didn't know what hit me".
ROSS COULTHART: Do you think he would have survived if you hadn't rescued him?
IAN DICK: No. Not after what I'd seen. I seen 10m waves later on and then I just said, "we've gotta get out of here" and I just snapped them all out of their trance, all the people around me, just screamed at them to run.
ROSS COULTHART: Sydney couple Nick and Kirsty Brady are honeymooning on Phuket.
KIRSTY BRADY: And then all of a sudden it just started racing in and it started blowing the deckchairs. I mean, big heavy wooden deckchairs were just flying up into the air. The people on them were just getting tossed about and we realised that the water wasn't going to stop and so we turned and started running.
ROSS COULTHART: Caught by the waves they are swept against a concrete column. It stops them being dragged out to sea. NICK BRADY: The water just streamed past us, nearly going out as fast as it came in and that's when, we were lucky, the column was in front of us it was pushing us hard up against the column and we couldn't move.
ROSS COULTHART: Australian restaurant owner Richard Anthony watches from above Kamala Beach on Phuket as tourists and local people are swept into the ocean.
RICHARD ANTHONY: My initial thought was go down there and do what you can and then something just held me back, I am not too sure why, but my initial thought was hang on a second just wait.
ROSS COULTHART: And of course if you had gone down there, in all likelihood you wouldn't be here now?
RICHARD ANTHONY: Yeah probably.
ROSS COULTHART: Further north, on the luxury resort strip of Thailand's Khao Lak beach, tourists stand and watch as the waves approach.
WAT THONGLIM (TRANSLATION): I saw all the white tourists running out to watch the wave as it approached. They went down to the beach to have a look.
ROSS COULTHART: Wat Thonglim and his wife Siriwan are on the beach with his niece and sister in front of the Sofitel resort at Khao Lak.
WAT THONGLIM (TRANSLATION): It was so powerful. The current was that strong that you'd be killed if you hit a tree. It just carried me away and I couldn't help myself.
ROSS COULTHART: Hundreds of foreign tourists and local people die around him.
WAT THONGLIM (TRANSLATION): I escaped death only because I was so determined to live. But when I got out I knew my wife, niece and sister had not survived.
ROSS COULTHART: The very thing that made this such a desirable location is also what made it a death trap. The shallow, gentle shoreline with the long reefs just off shore meant that as the tsunami hit the coastline it rolled on top of itself creating a monster 20m wave.
This one stretch of beach was perhaps the worst hit in Thailand. Thousands died here. Some of those dragged out to sea are now caught in whirlpools.
IAN DICK: There was very weird currents happening within the sea. Giant whirlpools that were 50-100m across. And there was cars in the water. There was cars that had their roofs ripped off.
ROSS COULTHART: British tourist Donald Lewis returns to his house on Bang Tao beach after the first wave.
DONALD LEWIS: I'd managed to put the fridge in an upright position. And we had a couple of beers in there. So we had a beer each. And there was fish floating around in the front room and that. And then there was shouting "the water's coming back, the water's coming back, it's coming back" So we had to run.
ROSS COULTHART: Phi Phi Island, a 2-hour boat ride south from Phuket. Luciano Butti is about to open his doors after a big Christmas Day crowd the night earlier.
LUCIANO BUTTI: The restaurant was full, everybody happy. We had a nice menu, special menu, for this night. And also we had many Australian people there.
ROSS COULTHART: No-one knows of the disaster already unfolding in Phuket or of the tsunami hurtling towards this tiny island. People are more interested than alarmed when the sea suddenly disappears from the bay. This amateur video shows what happens next.
LUCIANO BUTTI: I saw the waters go up like a monster. When I saw this I start to run. I start to say, "Everybody run, run away, run away!", in Thai language, in English, Italian, many language. I want to help everybody's gone, gone, gone.
ROSS COULTHART: Did people run?
LUCIANO BUTTI: Yes, someone yes. But many women, they have some children, they can't to go fast, you know. But when I saw the waters going close to the bungalow, is go under the bungalow and pushed the bungalow like the top of champagne. And then the noise, big noise, "Pow, pow, pow!", like that.
ROSS COULTHART: Waves are now smashing in from both sides of the narrow island. Within minutes, the village is destroyed and hundreds of people are dead.
LUCIANO BUTTI: I find a pen on the ground. I write the number of - the telephone number - of my wife in Germany, and send her a message, "I love you", because we don't know.
ROSS COULTHART: You thought you were going to die?
LUCIANO BUTTI: Yep. I want to have somebody to find me here if I die. ROSS COULTHART: Anucha Jangho watches from a nearby hill as the second, bigger wave destroys Phi Phi.
ANUCHA JANGHO: After the first wave come, heard many many voices from many people. "Help me! Help me!" Many women. The second wave come, everything quiet. Quiet. Nothing.
ROSS COULTHART: You think those people have been killed?
ANUCHA JANGHO: Yes.
ROSS COULTHART: The former meterologist Smith Dharmasaroja is still trying, and failing, to get the warning out. He knows this tsunami will keep on killing right across the Indian Ocean.
SMITH DHARMASAROJA: And I don't know what to do but I thought somebody who is responsible for international tsunami warning should do something. Should save the life of people in India, in Ceylon, in Sri Lanka, in Maldives.
ROSS COULTHART: Do you believe a warning could have been issued?
SMITH DHARMASAROJA: Yes, of course.
ROSS COULTHART: The tsunami takes two hours to reach Sri Lanka. Just after 9:00am, in southern Sri Lanka's Weligama Bay, hotel owner Geoffrey Dobbs is taking his morning swim.
GEOFFREY DOBBS: Suddenly I felt a current, quite a strong current and I didn't think too much about it. I just tried to swim harder. But then I noticed the waterline on the island. Suddenly I was 25 foot higher than I had been just a few seconds previously. So I thought, well, there's something wrong here. But I still had no idea what was going on. So looking at the coast, the surge hit the coast and then all hell broke loose. Boats were crashing into trees and crashing into buildings and going across the road and the fishermen were all yelling.
ROSS COULTHART: Sulochana Perera, a corporal in the Sri Lankan army, is travelling home on a train packed with more than 2,000 people. It stops near the beachside city of Hikkaduwa when the first wave hits. SULOCHANA PERERA (TRANSLATION): I closed the train door but the other people in the carriage screamed at me not to, so I opened it again and the water rushed in. The first wave came up to the level of the train windows, about 10 feet high.
ROSS COULTHART: Many local people climb on to the train after the first wave. Sulochana is dragging children out of the water.
SULOCHANA PERERA (TRANSLATION): We'd packed the children into the luggage rack. The fathers were trying to save their children. The second wave came and washed our carriage away. The wave was over 30 feet high and there wasn't a single house or tree visible.
ROSS COULTHART: Do any of the children you've helped survive the next few minutes?
SULOCHANA PERERA (TRANSLATION): No. ROSS COULTHART: It's now 9:25am in the southern Sri Lankan city of Galle. Anusha De Alwis comes out of church only to hear screaming in the streets below.
ANUSHA DE ALWIS: The sea is coming up. The sea is coming up. And the screaming was unbearable. Screaming was unbearable.
ROSS COULTHART: Here on Galle's harbour foreshore it's long been the custom for courting couples to take a stroll here in these gardens, known locally as the lovers' park. And that morning there are dozens of couples gathered here along these rocks. They are among the first to witness the arrival of the tsunami on Sri Lanka's coastline, and within minutes most of them are dead. Hundreds of people are killed in Weligama Bay.
GEOFFREY DOBBS: Luckily, a fisherman threw me a line and I just clung on to the line and then what happened is - Weligama Bay is the second largest bay in Sri Lanka after Trincomalee - and the whole bay just emptied of water. In Australian terms, it would be the whole of Sydney Harbour going out.
ROSS COULTHART: At Hikkaduwa, Sulochana Perera is one of only a few dozen people to survive out of more than 2,000 passengers. It's the world's worst train disaster.
SULOCHANA PERERA (TRANSLATION): We went back to the windows to pull out as many living people as we could. But there were old people we couldn't help. Some were women whose saris had become tangled inside the train.
lt was very difficult to get them out. They were screaming at me, "Sister, take me first! Take me!"
ROSS COULTHART: Ajith and Gamini de Silva's father disappears in Hikkaduwa while he's searching for the rest of their family.
AJITH DE SILVA (TRANSLATION): I asked my father not to leave us, but he did. We didn't expect that there would be a second wave.
ROSS COULTHART: The boys' father, their mother, and 9-year-old sister all die.
AJITH DE SILVA: I thought I'd be swept away. When I saw the people getting washed away I started crying. I saw an old man killed. I saw a boy dying, houses being smashed. I saw my house coming down.
RANJIT DE SILVA (TRANSLATION): I saw the tall wave coming. It made a sound like a jetplane landing. I immediately grabbed hold of the nearest tree with my wife, but all my children were swept away.
ROSS COULTHART: Ranjit de Silva loses everyone. His daughters, Dinusha and Nilusha, his 2-year-old son Dilan, his brother, uncle, mother-in-law, aunty and brother.
RANJIT DE SILVA (TRANSLATION): I told my wife that all our children are gone and we had to hang on to that tree. The next moment she was gone, swept away. She just screamed, "Oh, Lord, Buddha!", and in a moment had disappeared.
ROSS COULTHART: Tasha Bussell, from West Australia, is holidaying at Weligama Beach with a friend.
TASHA BUSSELL: He heard the surf really loud out the front of our room Like, he thought, "Wow, the surf's really good today." And he opened the front door and the sea just started rushing in the front door of the room and I was still in bed asleep and he just yelled out to me, like, "Tash get out of bed now! "You've got to get up!" And I opened my eyes and I just saw brown, muddy water sort of through the doorway coming into the room and I just jumped out of bed.
ROSS COULTHART: Tasha later returns to collect her belongings from her hotel to find it's been destroyed.
RASHA BUSSELL: I couldn't believe that the wave I was running from had just done that because when I had run it wasn't that high, the wave wasn't that big. So I'm just glad I got out of there when I did.
ROSS COULTHART: Along the coast, the city of Galle is drowning. Dulip Mahanama, a quadriplegic, is being carried to safety by his father and friends, when the second wave hits.
DULIP MAHANAMA: I thought my life is over. I tell my father, "I must stay and you save your life." ROSS COULTHART: And what does your father say to you as you tell him, "leave me and save yourself?"
DULIP MAHANAMA: My father says, "I am die with you."
ROSS COULTHART: Dulip and his family manage to escape. For Sulochana Perera, still on the train in Hikkaduwa, there are nightmare scenes.
SULOCHANA PERERA (TRANSLATION): I'd escaped death but it was terribly distressing to see people dying alongside us. I saw a little girl caught in the branches of a tree. Her body was in the air but her neck looked broken and her head was under water. No-one was helping her. I asked a guard to go into the water and bring her to me. I squeezed her body and a lot of water poured out of her mouth and she started crying for her mother. I told her, "I can't take you with me. "Stay here." But when I went back later she was gone.
ROSS COULHART: Rizvi Rizfa loses 16 members of his family, including his baby daughter Amani, who is wrenched from his arms by the wave. But Rizvi cannot find the strength to tell his 10-year-old son his sister is dead.
RIZVI RIZFA: He's asking where is sister. but we told him, you know, she was somewhere else. She will come back. Like that, only I am telling him. Every day asking because he love so much.
ROSS COULTHART: So you have not told him?
RIZVI RIZFA: No.
ROSS COULTHART: Later that day on Phuket, Wat Thonglim returns to his family home from the carnage at Khao Lak to tell his daughter her mother is dead.
WAT THONLIM (TRANSLATION): My daughter wanted to know whether her mother's body was smaller when I found it. Her understanding was that when you die your body becomes smaller, that when you are reincarnated you turn back into a child again. I think she seemed to accept what had happened.
ROSS COULTHART: Like so many other children that evening across the region, Ajith de Silva is facing life as an orphan.
AJITH DE SILVA (TRANSLATION): I was all alone. I was crying all night. That was the only night in my whole life I have slept alone, without my mother, father and brother.
ROSS COULTHART: In Banda Aceh, Raji Bussalim will search in vain for the bodies of his wife and children, and he can't stop thinking of the moment he lost his son Anas.
AJITH DE SILVA (TRANSLATION): During the night, or when I saw a father and his son, I will remember my son.
ROSS COULTHART: The end of a terrible day. It'll be weeks until the world realises the enormity of this disaster, that hundreds of thousands of people are dead and missing and at least a million more are homeless. The truth is that the final toll may never be known.