The 20th anniversary of the world’s deadliest tsunami is approaching. (Image: Hotli Simanjuntak)
Rachel and her husband Cici were enjoying a leisurely stroll through a beachside marketplace on a paradise island when the Boxing Day tsunami struck in 2004. It was 9.45am on Thailand’s Koh Phi Phi when the 10ft tidal wave swept in from the Indian Ocean.
It would claim the lives of 225,000 people in 14 different countries.
And as Cici puts it: “It was Armageddon.”
The gigantic wave smashed into the unsuspecting couple, knocking them off their feet.
Cici desperately tried to hold on to his wife by the straps of her bikini, but the brute force of the water propelled them in different directions.
Rachel feared the worst.
In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Express, Rachel, now 61, said: “In my head, I couldn’t imagine how Cici could have survived.
“He’s not a strong swimmer. The last I’d seen of him, he was hanging on to a tree. I had this feeling of utter dread.”
Having been torn from Cici’s grasp, Rachel went through a nightmarish ordeal. The extreme power of the wave sent her cartwheeling through the water, totally out of control.
The trauma is recounted in Tsunami: Race Against Time, a major four-part documentary marking the 20th anniversary of the catastrophe.
As she was plunged underwater, “something incredibly heavy landed on my head. It felt like a block of concrete. I tried to move it, but I couldn’t.
“So I held my breath and I thought, ‘I’m trapped underwater. I can’t breathe. This is it. I’m going to die. What are my family going to be told? Will Cici know what happened to me’?
“But miraculously, I found a little pocket of air and a wave must have dislodged me. I was spat out and came up amongst all this debris. There was an eerie silence, apart from the woman next to me in the water who was screaming.”
In a profound state of shock, Rachel was picked up by a passing boat and taken back to Koh Phi Phi to try to find Cici.
“When we approached the island I saw that it had been completely devastated. I stepped on to the pier with no shoes on and started picking my way across all this debris. I could see there were bodies with sarongs over them. I tried not to look, as I was frightened one of them would be Cici.
Don’t miss…
Cici and Rachel were on holiday when the tsunami struck Koh Phi Phi (Image: National Geographic/Charlie Laing/Alec Davy)
“Then I suddenly saw Cici standing there bossing people around, issuing orders”.
As a psychiatrist, Cici was the only survivor around with any medical training and so had taken charge of the rescue operation.
Rachel says: “I just walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and said, ‘I thought I’d lost you,’ and I replied, ‘I thought I’d lost you, too’.
“And then he said, ‘Right, we’ve got to get to work. Don’t you leave my side’.”
It was, she says, like a scene from a movie.
Rachel describes what she felt when she first set eyes on Cici: “Obviously, there’s that whole emotion of, ‘Oh my God, what’s happened to us? We both survived!’. This enormous feeling of relief floods over you as you realise you’ve actually come through it together.
“Then you get that feeling that you’re not going to let each other out of your sight because you’re so terrified of what might happen.
“Everybody was saying, ‘It’s dangerous. You can’t stay. You’ve got to get off the island because there’s going to be another wave’.”
But the couple decided to stay and lead the rescue. Rachel recalls: “Cici said, ‘If there’s another wave, then at least we’ll die together’.
“I thought, ‘We need to be here together. That’s it’. So we stayed together until we were airlifted off the island a couple of days later.”
Rachel played a crucial pastoral role in helping the hundreds of severely injured victims lying in agony on the beach on Koh Phi Phi, where more than 5,000 people are thought to have died.
“For me, it was very much about holding people’s hands, helping with stretchers, reassuring them help was coming and they were going to be okay. I’m very much an empathy person.” Certain moments are indelibly seared into Rachel’s memory: “I can remember a French lady who had watched her two children being swept out of the room. She was just in a terrible state of shock.
“I also remember a man who said, ‘I’ve just lost my baby daughter. My life isn’t worth living anymore’. Those are the ones that stick in my mind.”
Sri Lanka’s west coast was devastated by the tsunami. (Image: The Associated Press/Gemunu Amarasinghe)
What really impressed Rachel during the rescue effort was the kindness of strangers: “You turn something which is so tragic into something where you have this overwhelming feeling that you need to help. You need to do something to make people feel better, supporting them when they’ve been through the most horrific experience or lost a loved one or are in terrible pain.
“You would see survivors just appearing, to help with a makeshift stretcher, and be overwhelmed by the selfless nature of people. It teaches you a lot about what we are as humans.”
Cici, who is now retired, echoes this sentiment: “Nearly a quarter of a million people left this planet on one day. To see one soul lost is traumatic enough. But to try and contemplate that much is too difficult, too painful to bear.
“But I saw hundreds of acts of heroism that day. When things are at their darkest, when somebody is in trouble, people want to help. That is the wonderful power of the human spirit.”
Rachel said undergoing such a cataclysmic event strengthened her bond with her husband.
“It definitely does consolidate the relationship because we nearly lost each other.
“It’s not an experience we talk about much, but we both know that we acted really well that day.
“I’m proud of the way we responded to the whole situation, even though I just wanted to get the hell off the island as quickly as possible because I had nearly died. We can both hold our heads up high and say that, although it was a horrific tragedy, the fact we demonstrated such human spirit makes it easier to process.” Rachel, who then worked in fashion, explains how enduring such an apocalyptic disaster changed her life.
“It was a pivotal moment for me. Once I’d got over that feeling of, ‘How come I survived? How come I’m the lucky one?’, then I thought, ‘Well, I need to do something with my life that’s a little bit more worthwhile than working in the fashion sector’. I’ve worked in the charity sector ever since and it gives me a huge sense of pride.
“Working for Cancer Research UK makes me feel as though I’m giving something back.
“You think, ‘I’ve been put on this Earth to do something positive, and if I can change things for the better, then that’s what I need to do because I’m so grateful to be alive’.”
● Tsunami: Race Against Time, National Geographic, tomorrow, 9pm, and available for streaming on Disney+.