‘It was white water and chaos’, recalls Boxing Day tsunami survivor 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. Read our privacy policy A survivor of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami has recalled the moment he was awoken by “screaming and shouting” – two decades on from one of the deadliest disasters ever recorded. 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.” We watched as all that was once a dense jungle became the sea Daniel Poole “It wouldn’t stop,” added Mr Poole, who lives in Perranporth in Cornwall. “We’d lost all our belongings and our passports so it made everything tricky – but we hadn’t lost our lives, unlike a lot of other people in that area,” Mr Poole said. “They will have the best handle on what they need at the time that support is available, and we really do need to listen to them.” Ms Harvey added that the lessons learned from the response to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami are all the more important now that the number of people forcibly displaced around the world – a staggering 120 million – is higher than ever.