Victims and survivors of Boxing Day tsunami remembered 20 years on

Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Mr Poole, now aged 44, said: “I leapt out of bed to the window and pulled back the old bit of fabric serving as a curtain to see a great wall of white water, as tall as our single-storey building, rolling up over the wave we surfed and then crashing up the beach.” “It wouldn’t stop,” added Mr Poole, who lives in Perranporth, Cornwall. “It was just white water and chaos.” Mr Poole said he and his partner managed to get out of the water after scrambling on to a pile of debris wrapped around a tree. “I climbed up to her, and we watched as all that was once a dense jungle became the sea.” In the days that followed, Mr Poole and other tourists who had survived the tsunami worked together to reach embassies in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, and return to their home countries. Now an emergency co-ordinator with disaster relief charity ShelterBox, Mr Poole said the Boxing Day tsunami had a significant impact on how non-governmental organisations and governments deal with disasters.