Rescue Arrives (Full Episode) | Tsunami: Race Against Time | National Geographic

[birds chirping] -I'm on the floor coughing up most of the sea. I look round, and there's total devastation. I mean, every single one of the shacks had gone. The world has been wiped clean... ...and it's like you're the last man on earth. My first thoughts is, "Where could she be?" So, I look round for Rachel... and, at this point in time, I'm holding out hope against hope that she's made it because I know full well that she's a very strong swimmer, um, but, deep, deep, deep down in my heart, I think she's dead. When the wave hit, we were walking through the marketplace. [screams] [rushing water] -As the water started to go above my chest, I looked for Rachel and I reached out and I grabbed the straps of her bikini top. The straps broke, and she went sailing past me. After the water subsided, I just headed back to the hotel, screaming for Rachel. Knowing, in my heart of hearts, she's not there. Then I saw survivors. But I realized when I saw some of the severity of the wounds coming in that some people may not make it unless we did something really, really fast. But we're cut off. We're in the middle of nowhere and no idea when help was gonna come. This is Armageddon. [♪ theme music playing] -My life before the day is totally different. I was a very cheerful girl. I like to talk a lot with people, and I teasing people and make people laugh. When I see the wave come towards me... ...I make decision to run up to the high place. But I still afraid that the wave would come back and kill me and kill everyone. Most the people say, “You better go up to the hills.” I see a lot of dead bodies laying on the beach. I saw this girl on the ground. She's about to die and she say, [Pim Thuleewan] And then I hear the scream of people, "Please help me, get me out of this place." I could not say no to everyone calling for help, and I feel like I have to help them, I could not run to just save myself. And I forgot about my fear. I make decision to go back. I have to help them. [Cici Romain] I was battered, I was broken, and my right shoulder had dislocated, but I was lucky because I was able to walk. I was in reasonably good shape compared to everybody else who wasn't in good shape. If you are caught in any of the buildings, that wall of water smashes through that window, and everything in that room becomes a weapon. Not just a weapon, a weapon that is desperately trying to kill you. There's a poor guy that was literally skewered on some metal in the reception. Hundreds of people had died, and many hundreds of people were injured. So, I just said, you know, “Is there anybody with medical experience?” And they said, “No.” They said, “Well, what do you do?” I said, “I work in psychiatry,” and they said, “Well, maybe we can use a psychiatrist later on, but right now, we need someone with some medical training.” And I thought, well, I've got some medical training, yeah. He said, “Well, you're it.” This is way beyond anybody's capacity to deal with. You've got no supplies. I'm telling people to use bits of wooden slats as splints for people with broken legs. And then Sally came in, and it was difficult for me to process how I was going to manage that. -Sally and I were by the pool when the wave came, and I said, "Go, just go and get somewhere high." And then I ran down the beach to try and help some people. And then we were separated soon after. When I found Sally, she obviously didn't think she was that badly hurt, but then, when I checked under the, checked under the sheet, she had a deep gash right into her stomach, and that was all open; torn to shreds like you'd see in a shark attack. Um... And then her foot, her ankle was all open, and her heel was, sort of, all hanging off. [Cici Romain] She was severe, and I had to be honest with her. This is, this is a toughie. She needs proper surgery. If I don't get her off this island today and get proper medical treatment, she's not gonna last the night. But, the only way people could get to us was by boat or by air. [overlapping foreign chatter] -I heard the news in the morning, but not very much detail. This is unprecedented. We never encountered a tsunami before. But, at the meeting, they reported that there were at least 100 dead and it would increase hour by hour. They said that some people were stranded in many islands, so I contact the Army, the Navy. I said, "Go there and help the people. Every minute matters. We have to get them out." -I was stuck. I could not move, up on something high up. Something was wrapped around my body and it hurt a lot. I'd just turned 25 and I was living with my boyfriend so, yeah, engaged and ready to move on in life. So, I'm just laying there on my stomach and then I heard people scream for help around me. I heard a guy below me, it felt like a couple of meters down. He was breathing really bad and he was moaning like "I'm about to die, I'm going to die, I, I can't make it." I'm like, "Just take it calm, you just relax, you just breathe, I will scream for the both of us." So I'm screaming, I'm resting a couple of seconds, I talk to him. I don't know how long time passed, but he stopped breathing and stopped making a sound. And then I start screaming for help again. [Cici Romain] Sally was getting weaker and weaker. The, the cuts were deep, she had lost a lot of blood, the wounds are gonna come infected, so she was my priority number one to get her off. [Paul Murray] She was just quiet, not moving, not speaking, her breath was wheezing. And it was just the sense of guilt and self-loathing that you get from helping strangers, when you didn't help somebody that you cared about. It all kicks in and then you just... ...you know, she, she isn't gonna get through this, she's gonna die anyway. [sniffs] Nobody's coming in to just pluck us from disaster. But then, somebody said "There's a ferry and it looks like it's heading in towards the pier." Everybody's eyes are fixed on the horizon... and it was at that point, I'm like, "That's coming, that boat's coming in, that is coming in." [♪ suspenseful music playing] [Cici Romain] Somebody said to me, “Some boats have come back to help.” So, I thought, "Great, I can get some of these people off here as fast as possible." So, I said "Anybody who is walking wounded get on the boat." But Sally, she was in the seriously injured category and I didn't want her to go on a boat, because I felt that it would be better for her if she was flown out straight to a hospital. But it's a tough call. If a helicopter doesn't come, she's gonna die. -In my head, there was no way that boat was leaving without myself and Sally on it. Not a flipping chance am I missing that boat. We got Sal as close to the edge as we could, over the edge of the boat and on. The boat was pretty busy. There was other people dotted around, various states of emotion. Some people just absolutely collapsed sobbing, some people just gone, like, just completely vacant. I just remember thinking, “She needed to be on this boat, she's on the boat. Right, what is next?" And then, the, then you get that sort of flood of "But, what if where we're going has been hit?" And I'm just thinking, "Just hold on, just hold on." [Soffie Modin] At this time, the people screaming for help, they became fewer and fewer and it was not because someone helped them. I was thinking about everything. The funeral was, kinda, planned in my head. Like in a movie situation, you imagine it was like me, my boyfriend, my boyfriend's little brother, a friend, all our friends in the same funeral are, like, it was the whole thing, like worst-case scenario thinking at the same time. And we were 25, we were young and I started screaming for help in English. It's like "Help, can anyone hear me?" And then I hear people far away and they say, "Yeah, we can hear you." I'm like... [exhales deeply] "Someone found me." Finally. It felt like I, I don't have the time of it, but it felt like hours and then I hear them switch to Swedish between each other and I hear them talk about the risks. "We can't go in, the building can fall down. So, I just switched to Swedish and like, “I'm also Swedish, you can't leave me here. Like, I'm calling the newspapers, like I'm calling your parents if you leave me.” I was like, “If I get out, I will hunt you down.” And then they reply in Swedish like, “Yeah, but we don't even have shoes on. And, we need to be more people, we can't go in just the two of us. We promise we will get back to get you, we will come back to get you, we promise you." And then they, and then they leave. Then I was like, “Oh my God, they had just talked about all the risks, they are not coming back.” [Cici Romain] There are people being brought in all the time. I thought, "Well, at least we got some people out on the boats," but I still had some serious injuries that still needed to get off the island, and the sun was starting to set. And the devastation around me, I knew there would be people there that are trapped, and you don't know when help is gonna arrive. Deep down, you're thinking, "Why is it taking so long?" It was a difficult thing to feel that helpless. And then somebody says to you, "I can see a helicopter coming." [distant helicopter rotors] And the sense of relief over my body, it was just palpable. You know, it's just like, "Oh, thank God." And I remember Rachel, who, who I thought I'd lost, she just appeared behind me. -I remember seeing you as I picked my way across the rubble. [CiCi Romain] Number two over here okay, IV drip, losing blood. Okay. Number two, here, here, here. Number three. -Standing in front of the hotel with a group of people, shouting orders, and you didn't see me. I came up behind you, and I just tapped you on the shoulder, and I said, "Honey, I'm here," and you just turned round, and it was like that moment in a movie where we were just reunited, and we just hugged each other really tight. And you said, "I thought I'd lost you" and I said, "I thought I had lost you too." And it was that incredible moment of realizing that we'd both survived. [Cici Romain] I was very, very emotional at the time, very emotional, but I just felt, "Right, I can start getting these people off the island now." I've run down to meet the helicopter pilot. His English wasn't particularly good, but, thankfully, he had a lovely woman called Kimmy. -You can help us, but they will help as well. -Okay. [Cici Romain] Helped me to translate as best as possible, so then I said, "I've got injured, I need to prioritize who I need to get off the island first." -Okay, you come here with me. Okay. You, you guy, I, I pick some of these people to come with you. At that time, I just feel that power, that energy come to me. I have more power than strength that I not even feel hungry. I not even feel like want to drink something. People do not realize, actually, I'm one of the survivors as well. [Cici Romain] I didn't save lives on my own. There were a team of wonderful people who stood up and were counted, who took it upon themselves to go out and search for survivors. [rescuer] Yeah, you don't cry, you're a good girl. You're a strong girl. [Cici Romain] A young girl got pulled out and brought back onto the helicopter. It was wonderful. And to watch somebody put a sheet over somebody, so when the helicopter lands, the sand doesn't get in your wounds, pick them up and then take them to the helicopter when, you know, they've got cuts and bruises themselves, that for me was a joyous thing. Yeah, I'm proud of them. I'm very proud of them so, I want to say thank you. This is me, just saying thank you to you guys. [Soffie Modin] They kept their promise. The Swedish guys turned up again and they had more people with them. I think there are four maybe arriving. They got me out of that hole and, we are hugging and I'm like, "Thank you for my life," and he was like, "Yeah, take care, good luck," and then the chopper leaves. [Soffie Modin] I was just so happy to be out of Phi Phi. We were four people going to Thailand for holidays and after the tsunami, we were three coming home. I survived with some injuries, my boyfriend Magnus survived with some injuries. But, Magnus' little brother Frederick did not make it home. So, he was identified April 2005. [overlapping chatter] [Paul Murray] At that point, Sally's condition was still the same. She still wasn't speaking and she was just lying there. And people are dying. I think the lady next to her, who was, was alive when she got on the boat if I remember, she had like a terrible injury to her neck and I, I know the sh-- the sheet was pulled over her head. There was still pangs of, for me, that Sally wasn't gonna survive. And then, when we arrived in Phuket, there was a bit, there was a bit of elation, 'cause, the, as the boat was coming in, there was, like, rows of ambulances and there was tons of people who actually looked clean and neat. You're thinking, "Oh my God, these guys haven't just been washed away, there's actually something functional here," and, as soon as that boat came in and that gangplank hit, they flooded the boat, and they were straight on. I felt... [sighs] ...relief, um... ...and it was the point when I thought, "We might just get out of this. She's going to be going to hospital. She's gonna be okay." -I just felt all these thuds of people jumping onto the boat, and then they just passed me, they thought I was dead. And Paul was like, "No, no, no, she's alive. She's alive." And they grabbed me. And, I just remember, just the relief that Paul was there. He was just so calm, and he was smiling and kept reassuring me, kept telling me I was gonna be fine. The one thing that stood out was that people were just selfless, especially the local people, the Thai people. There was a lot of loss, but we, we were, we were lucky. We were the lucky ones that day. [reporter] Good evening. The largest earthquake in 40 years has devastated large parts of Southern Asia. [reporter 2] Emergency services have been overwhelmed. Communications by road, by telephone have been cut off. [reporter 3] Only now that the waters have subsided can the authorities begin the grim task of establishing exactly how many people have died here. [reporter 4] The latest estimates, they put the death toll from this earthquake as well as the tsunamis, at 7,000. [reporter 5] The death toll is rising. More than 12,000 people are dead across Asia. [reporter 3] It's now more than 23,000 and that number is likely to rise still further. [♪ dramatic music playing] -We were surprised and shocked, just how truly unprecedented the scale of this story was. And, in the midst of all this, as the reports are coming in, first from Sri Lanka and then from India and then from Thailand, and we're still not hearing anything from Indonesia. [reporter 4] And what's known about the areas closest to the epicenter? [reporter 5] Well, most disturbingly, not a single report has come out from that area on that Western Coast of... [Eli Flournoy] My colleague at CNN had been trying to confirm with officials what was going on but the communication systems were wiped out and she hadn't been able to get through to anyone anywhere close to where the earthquake happened. And I'll never forget, when she called me and she said, "Eli, I have a terrible feeling about why we're not getting any information from Aceh." She said, "I think it's gone. I think they're all gone." [helicopter rotors] -When we flew into Banda Aceh, you just couldn't believe it. Just houses flattened, as far as the eye could see. Thousands of people had died, who had been washed away. Everybody that you met had a story to tell. Three weeks later, you could not imagine that there were any survivors. Everybody who would be alive would be accounted for. We couldn't actually drive all the way down to the coast. The road had been washed away, so we left the car a few hundred yards and, whilst they were doing that, I just thought I would get some other shots. And I saw this child walking towards me along the beach, and he's just been through hell. He's lost his family, he's lost everything and he didn't know where he was. He had spent the last two weeks wandering up and down the beach. He'd been sleeping next to dead bodies in the water. The only thing he had been eating was packets of dried noodles that he had managed to scavenge. We were just heartbroken... because he had no one. [reporter] A US Geological Survey official says that a warning center could have saved most of the thousands killed. He says none of the countries hit, including Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, had a tsunami warning system to alert people. Tsunamis in the Indian Ocean are rare. -The tsunami wave itself took about twelve hours and it killed more people than have ever been killed in any previous tsunami in known history. We know with absolute certainty that at some point there will be another event as bad, or worse than the Sumatra event, as horrible as it was. And we have to be prepared. I began dedicating, I guess, the rest of my career, to helping other places form their warning systems and be part of the process of researching and bringing in the new methods to save lives in the future. [Barry Hirshorn] What took many hours to do back then, the warning centers now do in minutes. If the same thing were to happen today that happened then, I think that there's hope that we will be prepared. [♪ reflective music playing] [Cici Romain] Nearly a quarter of a million people left this planet in one day. To see one soul lost is traumatic enough, to try and contemplate that much is, is, is, is, is too difficult, it's 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 will want to help. That is the wonderful power of the human spirit. [♪ somber music playing]