Clever 10-year-old Tilly Smith
from Surrey in England is acclaimed a hero in Phuket, Thailand after
saving her parents and hundreds of fellow holidaymakers from the tsunami
wave that hit Maikhao beach in Phuket on December 26.
Young Tilly
warned the people on the beach that a Tsunami wave was about to hit the
shores, minutes before the wall of water rolled in on Phuket beach.
Tilly
was enjoying the pleasures of Maikhao beach in Phuket with her parents
Penny and Colin Smith and her 7-year-old sister Holly when suddenly the
sea retreated very fast for several hundred meters and the water began
to bubble.
When the sea-water suddenly pulled back, many foreign
holidaymakers and local Thais became curious and wanted to go look what
was going on, but young Tilly Smith froze in horror as her mind
immediately went back to the geography lesson, her teacher, Mr. Kearney
gave only two weeks before she and her family flew out to the resort
island of Phuket in Thailand.
Tilly started to talk very agitated,
her mother said, she was talking about earthquakes under the sea,
tectonic plates and tsumani ... tsumani. Mummy, we must get of the
beach, a tsumani is coming, Tilly said. Tilly got more and more
hysterical and started screaming Tsunami wave ... Tsunami wave.
We
simply did not understand what Tilly was talking about until suddenly
she started shouting the magic words: Tidal Wave ... Tidal wave, Tsunami
is coming.
Within seconds Tilly's hysterical words, "Tidal Wave",
spread like wildfire on Phuket's Maikhao beach and people started
running inland. Moments later Maikhao beach in Phuket was deserted as
everyone was running to higher grounds.
We ran off the beach as
fast as we could, said Tilly's father Colin Smith, and took refuge on
the first floor of our hotel. Minutes later, a massive wall of water
rolled over the beach, destroying everything in its path.
Later it
turned out that Maikhao beach was one of the only places in Phuket
where no one was injured or killed and Tilly Smith has been locally
hailed as a hero.
Its extraordinary to think that all the people
who were on Maikhao beach escaped because Tilly is a good student and
studies hard at school, said Craig Smith, the manager of the JW Marriott
Hotel in Phuket where Tilly and her family were on holiday.
A
tsunami wave is not like shown in sensation movies, where you see a huge
wave coming from far on the horizon. Its more like a sudden surge of
water that comes out of the blue with very little warning ahead.
Tilly
modestly said to reporters: Two weeks ago, our geography teacher, Mr.
Kearney, gave a lesson about underwater earthquakes due to shifting of
tectonic plates and how those underwater earthquakes can trigger tsunami
waves. We were on the beach, and the sea-water started to go funny
exactly as our teacher had told us. I recognized what was going to
happen and knew a tsunami was on its way.
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